Keycloak: Open-source identity and access management for applications and services
Keycloak is a self-hosted identity management and authentication tool. Open-source identity and access management for applications and services.
Why self-host Keycloak
Running Keycloak yourself means you control the data, the uptime policy, and the upgrade schedule. That is a different relationship with software than subscribing to a hosted service.
What it does
Keycloak falls into the Identity Management, Authentication category of self-hosted software. It is designed to be deployed on your own infrastructure, whether that is a home server, a VPS, or a local machine running Docker.
Community traction
The project has 21k stars on GitHub, which is a reasonable proxy for how widely it is used. Active repositories tend to ship bug fixes faster and have better documentation than projects that stall after the initial release.
Deployment
Most users run Keycloak via Docker Compose. The typical setup involves one or two containers and a volume for persistent data.
Alternatives
If Keycloak does not fit your needs, common alternatives include Okta. The self-hosted versions of these tools often differ in resource requirements and feature focus, so it is worth testing the one that matches your workload.
Maturity
The current release is 25.0.2. The project has moved past early development and tends to ship stable, documented releases.
License
It is licensed under Apache-2.0, making it freely available for personal and commercial use.
Links
If the use case fits, Keycloak is a solid choice. Most of the complexity is in the initial deploy, and the day-to-day operation is low maintenance.