SHSelfHostIndex

Logto 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?
Logto Developer-friendly authentication and authorization platform VS ZITADEL Cloud-native identity infrastructure with multi-tenancy built
FeatureLogtoZITADEL
Deploy effortUnder-an-hour setupUnder-an-hour setup
Health score94 · Excellent95 · Excellent
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseMPL-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageTypeScriptGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 14,621★ 15,083
First released20222020
ReplacesAuth0, Firebase Auth, ClerkAuth0, Okta, Firebase Auth

What are Logto and ZITADEL?

Logto

Logto is an open-source identity solution built for developers, offering passwordless sign-in, social login and enterprise SSO. It provides prebuilt sign-in experiences and SDKs for many frameworks.

  • Prebuilt customizable sign-in experiences
  • Passwordless and social authentication
  • Multi-framework SDKs
  • Role-based access control

Read the full Logto guide →

ZITADEL

ZITADEL is an open-source identity and access management platform built for multi-tenant applications. It offers OpenID Connect, OAuth2, SAML, passwordless login and a powerful management API.

  • Multi-tenancy as a first-class concept
  • Passwordless and FIDO2 authentication
  • Event-sourced audit trail
  • Comprehensive gRPC and REST APIs

Read the full ZITADEL guide →

Logto vs ZITADEL: key differences

Logto is written in TypeScript, while ZITADEL is built with Go. Licensing differs — MPL-2.0 for Logto versus Apache-2.0 for ZITADEL. ZITADEL is the more established project (first released 2020), while Logto arrived in 2022.

Why pick each one

Choose Logto if…

  • Great developer experience
  • Modern UI and SDKs

Watch out for

  • Younger project with evolving APIs
Logto details

Choose ZITADEL if…

  • Strong multi-tenant model
  • Modern Go codebase

Watch out for

  • Smaller community than Keycloak
ZITADEL details

Frequently asked questions

Is Logto or ZITADEL better?

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

Are Logto and ZITADEL free and open-source?

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

Can I run Logto and ZITADEL with Docker?

Logto: yes. ZITADEL: yes.

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