SHSelfHostIndex

Open Policy Agent vs FreeRADIUS

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?
OP Open Policy Agent General-purpose policy engine for cloud-native stacks VS FR FreeRADIUS High-performance open-source RADIUS server
FeatureOpen Policy AgentFreeRADIUS
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0GPL-2.0
LanguageGoC
Setup difficultyMediumHard
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarybare-metal, source, docker
GitHub stars★ 12,086★ 2,569
First released20161999
ReplacesAWS IAM policiesCisco ISE

Why pick each one

Choose Open Policy Agent if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Kubernetes-ready with Helm charts available
  • Mature project with 12.1k GitHub stars
Open Policy Agent details

Choose FreeRADIUS if…

  • Industry standard
  • Extremely flexible
FreeRADIUS details

Frequently asked questions

Is Open Policy Agent or FreeRADIUS better?

Open Policy Agent is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider FreeRADIUS if its specific feature set fits your needs better.

Are Open Policy Agent and FreeRADIUS free and open-source?

Yes. Open Policy Agent is licensed under Apache-2.0 and FreeRADIUS under GPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Open Policy Agent and FreeRADIUS with Docker?

Open Policy Agent: yes. FreeRADIUS: yes.

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