authentik
Modern identity that a small team can actually operate.
85
sovereigntyauthentik was built on the premise that Keycloak is more than most companies need and harder than most can run. It covers SSO, MFA, SAML, OIDC, LDAP outposts and a genuinely good flow builder for custom login journeys, with a clean interface and a Docker Compose deployment. Around 23k stars. The licence is worth stating precisely: the core is MIT, the `website/` directory is CC BY-SA, and enterprise features sit under a separate commercial licence — so it is MIT-with-carve-outs rather than plainly MIT.
OPEN SOURCEMIT core, with enterprise and documentation carve-outsSELF-HOSTLOCAL-FIRST
LicenseMIT core, with enterprise and documentation carve-outs
PricingFree and self-hostable for the open core. Enterprise tier is commercial.
Open sourceYes
Self-hostableYes
Local-first dataYes
What it does well
- +By far the easiest of these to stand up and keep running
- +Flow builder makes custom login journeys genuinely configurable
- +Modern interface a small team can navigate without training
- +Docker Compose deployment; sensible defaults
Where it falls short
- −Enterprise features are carved out of the MIT core
- −Younger and smaller than Keycloak
- −Single-vendor governance rather than a foundation
- −Fewer third-party integrations
authentik as an alternative to
Where authentik shows up in our comparisons, and how it ranked.
authentik head-to-head
Straight comparisons against the tools people weigh it against.