macrostack
Head-to-head · Identity & access management

ZITADEL vs Logto

Both are alternatives to Okta. Here's how they stack up — verified facts, no spin.

Also searched as Logto vs ZITADEL — same comparison, one verdict.

88

ZITADEL

Multi-tenant identity built for products, not just employees.

OPEN SOURCEAGPL-3.0 (open core; paid cloud and enterprise tiers)SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST

ZITADEL is aimed at a different job: identity for your customers rather than your staff. It is multi-tenant by design, so a SaaS company can give each customer organisation its own users, branding and policies without running separate deployments. Event-sourced audit trail, passwordless and OIDC/SAML support, AGPL-3.0, around 15k stars, Swiss-based — which matters to buyers who care where the directory lives. If you are choosing an Auth0 replacement rather than an Okta replacement, this is the closest fit.

87

Logto

The fastest route from nothing to working sign-in.

OPEN SOURCEMPL-2.0 (open core; paid cloud tier)SELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST

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

 ZITADELLogto
Sovereignty Score8887
Open sourceYesYes
Self-hostableYesYes
Local-firstYesYes
LicenseAGPL-3.0 (open core; paid cloud and enterprise tiers)MPL-2.0 (open core; paid cloud tier)
PricingFree and self-hostable. ZITADEL Cloud is paid per active user.Free and self-hostable. Logto Cloud is paid with a free tier.
The verdict

ZITADEL edges it on the Sovereignty Score, but the right pick depends on the trade-offs below.

ZITADEL

Strengths

  • +Multi-tenant by design — the right shape for customer identity
  • +Event-sourced, so the audit trail is complete by construction
  • +Swiss company and hosting, which answers a real procurement question
  • +Modern passwordless and OIDC support

Trade-offs

  • Aimed at customer identity; weaker for internal employee SSO
  • AGPL-3.0 copyleft needs reading
  • Smaller ecosystem than Keycloak
  • Some features reserved for the paid tiers

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
See all 5 Okta alternatives →

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Facts verified 2026-08-03. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.

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