Ory Kratos vs Logto
Both are alternatives to Okta. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.
Also searched as Logto vs Ory Kratos — same comparison, one verdict.
Ory Kratos and Logto are closely matched on ownership (92 vs 87) — this one comes down to pricing and to which trade-offs below you can live with.
Ory Kratos
Identity as an API — no UI, no opinions, entirely yours.
Ory takes the opposite approach to everything else here: Kratos handles identity, Hydra handles OAuth2, Keto handles permissions, and none of them ship a login screen. You build the interface; they provide the correctness. For a team that wants authentication fully inside their own product with no vendor's branding or flow, that is exactly right, and Apache-2.0 means no licence surprises. For a team that wanted SSO configured by Friday, it is the wrong tool — you are assembling identity from parts.
Logto
The fastest route from nothing to working sign-in.
Logto is the pragmatic middle: pre-built sign-in UI, SDKs for the common frameworks, social logins, MFA and multi-tenancy, deployable with Docker in well under an hour. It is aimed squarely at product teams who need authentication to work this week rather than an identity platform to administer for a decade. MPL-2.0 with a paid cloud tier. It is the smallest and youngest option here, which is the honest caveat, but for a startup replacing Auth0 it removes the most friction.
Side by side
10 points of comparison, every one read from a verified field. Green marks the side that wins a row outright. A dash means we do not hold that fact — never that it is zero.
| Ory Kratos | Logto | |
|---|---|---|
| Sovereignty ScoreOur transparent 0–100 composite for data ownership and exit cost. | 92 | 87 |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| Local-first data | Yes | Yes |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 (open core; paid cloud tier) |
| Pricing | Free and open source. Ory Network is a paid hosted option. | Free and self-hostable. Logto Cloud is paid with a free tier. |
| RAM to run it wellThe figure that actually matters, not the vendor's minimum. | 1–2 GB for Kratos, PostgreSQL and a login UI together. Kratos itself is a single Go binary and keeps no state of its own. | — |
| Realistic running costWhat the box costs each month if you run it yourself. | $6–12/mo for a small app's login service on a 1–2 GB VPS, plus an SMTP provider for verification and recovery emails | — |
| Setup timeHonest first-install estimate, not the marketing quickstart. | An hour for the quickstart; days to a week for production, because you build or adapt the login UI and write the identity schema | — |
| Ongoing maintenanceThe part nobody budgets for. | Back up, read the changelog for breaking changes and run `kratos migrate sql` on every upgrade. Open-source releases have come about twice a year (v25.4.0 in November 2025, v26.2.0 in March 2026), and your UI has to keep up with SDK changes. | — |
Ory Kratos edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.
Weighing both against staying on Okta? Is Okta free? What it actually costs →
Ory Kratos
Strengths
- +Apache-2.0 across the whole stack — no carve-outs
- +API-first: your product owns the entire login experience
- +Cloud-native, stateless, scales horizontally without ceremony
- +Security-first design with a strong track record
Trade-offs
- −No UI at all — you build every screen
- −Composed of several services to deploy and understand
- −Most engineering effort of anything on this page
- −No admin console for non-technical staff
Logto
Strengths
- +Fastest of these from zero to a working sign-in flow
- +Sign-in UI included — no screens to build
- +Good SDKs for React, Next.js, Vue and the mobile frameworks
- +MPL-2.0 is permissive and easy to reason about
Trade-offs
- −Youngest and smallest project on this page
- −Not built for employee SSO across hundreds of apps
- −Fewer enterprise features than Keycloak
- −Multi-tenancy is newer and less proven than ZITADEL's
Which one fits you
The trade-offs above, turned into a decision. Find the line that describes your team.
Choose Ory Kratos
if a lower exit cost matters more to you than any single feature, and apache-2.0 across the whole stack — no carve-outs.
Choose Logto
if fastest of these from zero to a working sign-in flow.
Neither, yet
if both carry a real cost you should weigh first — no UI at all — you build every screen, and youngest and smallest project on this page. If either of those is a dealbreaker for your team, the shortlist is wrong rather than the choice.
What it takes to run these yourself
Real requirements and honest running costs, not the vendor quickstart.
Ory Kratos vs Logto — common questions
Is Ory Kratos a better fit than Logto for identity & access management?
It depends on what you are optimising for, and the honest split is this: Ory Kratos scores 92 to Logto's 87 on data ownership and exit cost, so it is the safer choice if you care about being able to leave. Logto earns its place on a different axis — fastest of these from zero to a working sign-in flow. Neither is a wrong answer for every team; the table above is the actual comparison.
What happens if we want to switch later?
Ory Kratos keeps its data local or in open formats, so leaving is an export rather than a negotiation. Logto is still self-hostable, so the files stay on your server either way — but it is not local-first by design, so check what its export produces before you rely on it.
Can I self-host Ory Kratos or Logto?
Both can be self-hosted. The difference is what it costs you in time rather than whether it is possible — see the setup and maintenance rows above.
Are Ory Kratos and Logto both alternatives to Okta?
Yes — both appear in our Okta comparison, which is why they are worth putting side by side. People usually arrive here already having decided to move off Okta and now choosing between the two replacements, which is a narrower and much easier question.
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Facts verified 2026-08-03. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.