SHSelfHostIndex

Apereo CAS vs FreeIPA

A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted identity & sso options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.

Not the right match-up?
AP Apereo CAS Enterprise single sign-on server for web applications VS FR FreeIPA Integrated identity management for Linux and Unix environments
FeatureApereo CASFreeIPA
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0GPL-3.0
LanguageJavaPython
Setup difficultyHardHard
Min. RAM1,024 MB2,048 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, bare-metalbare-metal, source
GitHub stars★ 11,354★ 1,252
First released20042008
ReplacesOkta, Ping IdentityActive Directory

Why pick each one

Choose Apereo CAS if…

  • Mature SSO with broad protocol support
  • Widely adopted in academia
Apereo CAS details

Choose FreeIPA if…

  • All-in-one identity stack
  • Strong Linux integration
FreeIPA details

Frequently asked questions

Is Apereo CAS or FreeIPA better?

Neither is universally better. Apereo CAS has the larger community; both share a hard setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.

Are Apereo CAS and FreeIPA free and open-source?

Yes. Apereo CAS is licensed under Apache-2.0 and FreeIPA under GPL-3.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Apereo CAS and FreeIPA with Docker?

Apereo CAS: yes. FreeIPA: check the project docs for container support.

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