Authelia vs Keycloak
Side-by-side comparison of identity tools. Sponsored placement is disclosed where applicable.
Quick answer
Authelia vs Keycloak: which should you choose?
Short answer
Authelia vs Keycloak have overlapping use cases in identity and access management. The right pick depends on your company size, deployment model, integrations, and pricing tolerance — compare those attributes side-by-side below.
- Best for
- Authelia: Self-hosters, homelabs and small platform teams that want free SSO and 2FA in front of web apps behind an existing reverse proxy. · Keycloak: Organizations that require a fully open source, self-hosted IAM platform with enterprise-grade features and no licensing cost. Strong fit for large enterprises with technical resources to operate it, government agencies with data sovereignty requirements, and universities or research institutions managing complex identity federation.
- When to choose
- Pick the option whose company-size fit, deployment model, and integrations most closely match your stack.
- When not to choose
- Skip a head-to-head if you haven't shortlisted a category yet — start with the IAM Stack Finder instead.
- Related tools & categories
- AutheliaKeycloakIAM Stack FinderBuyer resources
| Attribute | ||
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Self-hosters, homelabs and small platform teams that want free SSO and 2FA in front of web apps behind an existing reverse proxy. | Organizations that require a fully open source, self-hosted IAM platform with enterprise-grade features and no licensing cost. Strong fit for large enterprises with technical resources to operate it, government agencies with data sovereignty requirements, and universities or research institutions managing complex identity federation. |
| Short description | Apache-2.0 open-source authentication and authorization server that adds SSO, two-factor and passkey login and access-control rules in front of applications via reverse proxies, and acts as an OpenID Connect 1.0 provider. | Keycloak is the most widely deployed open source IAM platform, providing enterprise-grade SSO, MFA, SAML, OIDC, LDAP, and Kerberos support in a self-hosted, Apache 2.0 licensed package maintained by Red Hat. |
| Company size | startup, smb | Mid-market, Enterprise, Government / Education |
| Deployment | self_hosted | Self-hosted |
| Source | open source | Open source (Apache 2.0) |
| Pricing model | free | Free (open source); Red Hat SSO commercial support available separately |
| Integrations | Traefik, NGINX, Caddy, HAProxy, Envoy, SWAG, NGINX Proxy Manager, Skipper | Active Directory, LDAP, Google, GitHub, Facebook, Kubernetes, Istio, Envoy |
| Categories | SSO, MFA / Passwordless, Customer Identity / CIAM, Developer Authentication | |
| Claimed profile |
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