Zitadel
Shares rank 5 of 12 identity providers by recommenders
Open-source identity server that can be used hosted or self-hosted, with multitenant management and OIDC support. Most common caveat: still complicated to deploy something small.
Open-source identity server that can be used hosted or self-hosted, with multitenant management and OIDC support. Most common caveat: still complicated to deploy something small.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 2
- approval share
- 80%
Recommended in 5 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: 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.
- 4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 5 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
Easy to deploy and run
“I was able to use it pretty easily with the built in service and postgres service”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” “You can easy deploy Zitadel to Hetzner though”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: European Tech Alternatives?” Preferred over Keycloak
“only takes a fraction of what Keycloak needs”
Comment from 11 Jun 2026 in “Claude Desktop spins up a VM without no way of stopping it” “Zitadel has been far better”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Complicated for small deployments
“still sort of painfully complicated if you want to deploy something small and simple”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “SAML: A fractal of bad design” Nix build not reproducible
“couldn't because for whatever reason it's Nix build isn't reproduceable”
Comment from 13 Nov 2025 in “Kratos - Cloud native Auth0 open-source alternative (self-hosted)” Only runs on Google Cloud
“it only operates on Gcloud. Makes it not European”
Comment from 2 Apr 2026 in “Ask HN: European Tech Alternatives?”
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
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“still sort of painfully complicated if you want to deploy something small and simple”
“has managed UI for orgs multitenancy, OIDC/PKCE supports”
“only takes a fraction of what Keycloak needs”
“You can easy deploy Zitadel to Hetzner though”
“it only operates on Gcloud. Makes it not European”
“it's open source and you can use it hosted or self-hosted”
“I was able to use it pretty easily with the built in service and postgres service”
“couldn't because for whatever reason it's Nix build isn't reproduceable”
“Zitadel has been far better”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.