SHSelfHostIndex

privacyIDEA 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?
PR privacyIDEA Self-hosted two-factor authentication management VS ZI ZITADEL Cloud-native identity infrastructure with multi-tenancy built in
FeatureprivacyIDEAZITADEL
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseAGPL-3.0Apache-2.0
LanguagePythonGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM512 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, bare-metaldocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 1,751★ 14,671
First released20142020
ReplacesDuo Security, RSA SecurIDAuth0, Okta, Firebase Auth

Why pick each one

Choose privacyIDEA if…

  • Broad token support
  • Strong API
privacyIDEA details

Choose ZITADEL if…

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

Frequently asked questions

Is privacyIDEA 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 privacyIDEA and ZITADEL free and open-source?

Yes. privacyIDEA is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and ZITADEL under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run privacyIDEA and ZITADEL with Docker?

privacyIDEA: yes. ZITADEL: yes.

Related comparisons