Zitadel: Identity infrastructure simplified

Zitadel: Identity infrastructure simplified

Zitadel is a self-hosted identity management and authentication tool. Identity infrastructure simplified.

Why self-host Zitadel

Self-hosting Zitadel removes the dependency on a third-party service. For anyone who values data ownership, that matters more than convenience in the long run.

What it does

Zitadel 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 8k 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

Getting Zitadel running usually takes under an hour if you have a working Docker setup. The official documentation covers the basic deployment steps.

Alternatives

If Zitadel 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 2.58.1. 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.

Whether you are just starting with self-hosting or adding to an existing setup, Zitadel is a reasonable pick in the identity management and authentication space.