SHSelfHostIndex

Traefik Forward Auth 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?
TR Traefik Forward Auth Minimal forward authentication service for Traefik VS ZI ZITADEL Cloud-native identity infrastructure with multi-tenancy built in
FeatureTraefik Forward AuthZITADEL
CategoryIdentity & SSOIdentity & SSO
LicenseMITApache-2.0
LanguageGoGo
Setup difficultyEasyMedium
Min. RAM64 MB512 MB
Deploymentdocker, binarydocker, kubernetes, binary
GitHub stars★ 2,390★ 14,671
First released20182020
ReplacesCloudflare AccessAuth0, Okta, Firebase Auth

Why pick each one

Choose Traefik Forward Auth if…

  • Released under the MIT license
  • Easy to set up — beginner-friendly
  • First-class Docker support for quick deployment
  • Active community (2.4k GitHub stars)
Traefik Forward Auth details

Choose ZITADEL if…

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

Frequently asked questions

Is Traefik Forward Auth or ZITADEL better?

Neither is universally better. ZITADEL has the larger community, while Traefik Forward Auth is simpler to set up (easy difficulty). Choose based on the comparison table above and your own setup.

Are Traefik Forward Auth and ZITADEL free and open-source?

Yes. Traefik Forward Auth is licensed under MIT and ZITADEL under Apache-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.

Can I run Traefik Forward Auth and ZITADEL with Docker?

Traefik Forward Auth: yes. ZITADEL: yes.

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