Best Keycloak Alternatives
Looking for a Keycloak alternative? Keycloak is the free, self-hosted IAM workhorse everyone reaches for when procurement won't approve a SaaS auth bill. That's a good fit for plenty of teams, but not everyone — here are 7 real authentication tools worth comparing it against, each with an honest take on what it does differently. Auth0 is the one people mention most: the battle-tested default for customer identity; heavier and pricier than newer options, but nobody gets fired for picking it. WorkOS is another solid option — bolt on enterprise SSO, SCIM, and directory sync only when a big customer demands it, without rearchitecting your existing auth. None of these are ranked by who pays the most to be listed first; they're ordered the same way the rest of this directory is, sponsors aside.
The battle-tested default for customer identity; heavier and pricier than newer options, but nobody gets fired for picking it.
Bolt on enterprise SSO, SCIM, and directory sync only when a big customer demands it, without rearchitecting your existing auth.
Own your user table instead of renting it — a framework-agnostic TypeScript auth library that's fast becoming the default for new projects.
Open-source and self-hostable if you want Auth0-grade features without an Auth0-grade bill or vendor lock-in.
API-first passwordless and passkey auth for teams that want to design their own flows instead of using prebuilt UI.
Headless, API-first identity infrastructure that scales to a billion users if you're willing to run it yourself.