Ory Kratos
Shares rank 5 of 12 identity providers by recommenders
Open-source identity server covering login, registration, recovery and MFA, with a password migration hook. Critics often find configuration and documentation hard.
Open-source identity server covering login, registration, recovery and MFA, with a password migration hook. Critics often find configuration and documentation hard.
17 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 9
- approval share
- 47%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works well and does the job
“It worked pretty well but in hindsight I would have hosted it as a separate application because it was a pain to bring along all of its dependencies.”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” “It works and does the job.”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” Easy frontend integration and dynamic forms
“you can easily integrate them on the frontend when using Kratos”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” “Their dynamic forms stuff is really cool too”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Hard to deploy with many dependencies
“It worked pretty well but in hindsight I would have hosted it as a separate application because it was a pain to bring along all of its dependencies.”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” “We did eventually get it to work but had to change the sample docker deployment a fair bit.”
Comment from 2 Jul 2026 in “Podman v6.0.0” “their hard dependency on Docker is a showstopper for me”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” Configuration and documentation are poor
“I had a very hard time implementing browser flows, configuration is a mess”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” “Exactly our experience (poor documentation).”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)”
Other identity providers people recommend
The four most recommended other identity providers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 12 identity providers, rankedWhat people said
22 of the 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Ory Kratos has a password migration hook that lets you migrate password credentials out of anything (including Cognito) without password resets.”
“We did eventually get it to work but had to change the sample docker deployment a fair bit.”
“appreciate all your work Hydra, Kratos”
“Ory's Kratos handles identity, login, registration, recovery, MFA”
“Would I really want to tell someone to try starting something for our security that is an immediate attack vector?”
“Exactly our experience (poor documentation).”
“I had a very hard time implementing browser flows, configuration is a mess”
“Really easy to maintain with simple configuration and fully featured API.”
“Additional enterprise features that are not available in the open source version”
“you can easily integrate them on the frontend when using Kratos”
“their hard dependency on Docker is a showstopper for me”
“check out the new version, i'm sure it has improved quite a bit since then”
“possibly a deal breaker if somebody is looking for a versatile option”
“this works well for simple RBAC usecases”
“It works and does the job.”
“Yeah that’s very disappointing and basically kills my interest in the product.”
“I would say in the majority of cases you would be fine with just Ory Kratos.”
“mostly because of the horrible patches to make it do things it was never meant to do”
“This looks like great stuff.”
“I knew it couldn't compete.”
“Their dynamic forms stuff is really cool too”
“It worked pretty well but in hindsight I would have hosted it as a separate application because it was a pain to bring along all of its dependencies.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.