Dex vs Supabase Auth
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted identity & sso options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
| Feature | Dex | Supabase Auth |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 90 · Excellent | 87 · Excellent |
| Category | Identity & SSO | Identity & SSO |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Language | Go | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Medium |
| Min. RAM | 128 MB | 128 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, binary | docker, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 11,120 | ★ 2,569 |
| First released | 2016 | 2017 |
| Replaces | Okta, Auth0 | Auth0 |
What are Dex and Supabase Auth?
Dex
Dex is an identity service that uses OpenID Connect to drive authentication for other applications. It acts as a portal to other identity providers through connectors such as LDAP, SAML and GitHub.
- OIDC federation broker
- Connectors for LDAP, SAML and GitHub
- Popular in Kubernetes environments
- Lightweight and stateless
Supabase Auth
GoTrue is a lightweight JSON Web Token based authentication API for managing users and sessions, originally from Netlify and extended by Supabase. It is self-hosted as a small Go service.
- JWT-based auth API
- Email and OAuth login
- Lightweight Go service
- Self-hostable
Dex vs Supabase Auth: key differences
Both projects are written in Go. Licensing differs — Apache-2.0 for Dex versus MIT for Supabase Auth. Dex has the considerably larger community, at 11,120 GitHub stars versus 2,569.
Why pick each one
Choose Dex if…
- Great Kubernetes integration
- Simple and reliable
Watch out for
- No user management of its own
Choose Supabase Auth if…
- Released under the MIT license
- First-class Docker support for quick deployment
- Active community (2.6k GitHub stars)
- Written in Go
Frequently asked questions
Is Dex or Supabase Auth better?
Neither is universally better. Dex has the larger community; both share a medium setup difficulty, so the decision comes down to features and licensing.
Are Dex and Supabase Auth free and open-source?
Yes. Dex is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Supabase Auth under MIT. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Dex and Supabase Auth with Docker?
Dex: yes. Supabase Auth: yes.