SHSelfHostIndex

Open Policy Agent vs step-ca

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 ST step-ca Private online certificate authority for internal PKI
FeatureOpen Policy Agentstep-ca
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM256 MB256 MB
Deploymentdocker, kubernetes, binarydocker, binary
GitHub stars★ 12,086★ 8,734
First released20162019
ReplacesAWS IAM policiesDigiCert

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 step-ca if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Mature project with 8.7k GitHub stars
  • Written in Go
step-ca details

Frequently asked questions

Is Open Policy Agent or step-ca better?

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

Are Open Policy Agent and step-ca free and open-source?

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

Can I run Open Policy Agent and step-ca with Docker?

Open Policy Agent: yes. step-ca: yes.

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