SHSelfHostIndex

Casbin vs ZITADEL

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?
CA Casbin Authorization library supporting many access control models VS ZI ZITADEL Cloud-native identity infrastructure with multi-tenancy built in
FeatureCasbinZITADEL
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB512 MB
Deploymentsourcedocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 20,311★ 14,671
First released20172020
ReplacesAuth0 RBACAuth0, Okta, Firebase Auth

Why pick each one

Choose Casbin if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • Mature project with 20.3k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
  • Tiny footprint — runs in 128 MB RAM
Casbin details

Choose ZITADEL if…

  • Strong multi-tenant model
  • Modern Go codebase
ZITADEL details

Frequently asked questions

Is Casbin or ZITADEL better?

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

Are Casbin and ZITADEL free and open-source?

Yes. Casbin is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ZITADEL under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Casbin and ZITADEL with Docker?

Casbin: check the project docs for container support. ZITADEL: yes.

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