SHSelfHostIndex

Rauthy 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?
RA Rauthy Lightweight OpenID Connect provider written in Rust VS ZI ZITADEL Cloud-native identity infrastructure with multi-tenancy built in
FeatureRauthyZITADEL
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseApache-2.0Apache-2.0
LanguageRustGo
Setup difficultyMediumMedium
Min. RAM128 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, binarydocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 1,256★ 14,671
First released20232020
ReplacesKeycloak, Auth0Auth0, Okta, Firebase Auth

Why pick each one

Choose Rauthy if…

  • Released under the Apache-2.0 license
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (1.3k GitHub stars)
  • Written in Rust
Rauthy details

Choose ZITADEL if…

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

Frequently asked questions

Is Rauthy 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 Rauthy and ZITADEL free and open-source?

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

Can I run Rauthy and ZITADEL with Docker?

Rauthy: yes. ZITADEL: yes.

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