Head-to-head
Keycloak vs ZITADEL
Keycloak leads: the AI models rank it above its rival on 3 of 3 shared leaderboards. Based on how ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini & Grok rank both across 3 shared leaderboards — re-polled on demand, reasoning shown verbatim.
| Leaderboard | Keycloak | ZITADEL |
|---|---|---|
| Best self-hosted auth platform | #1 / 8 | #2 / 8 |
| Best self-hosted OAuth and OpenID Connect server | #1 / 7 | #2 / 7 |
| Best self-hosted OAuth and OpenID Connect servers | #1 / 6 | #2 / 6 |
Why the models rank Keycloak — on best self-hosted auth platform
“Best overall balance of mature OIDC/SAML, identity brokering, LDAP/AD federation, fine-grained authorization, organizations, passkeys, extensibility, and zero license cost; especially strong when standards coverage and long-term operability matter”
Why the models rank ZITADEL — on best self-hosted auth platform
“Narrowly beats Keycloak for SaaS apps due to its first-class multi-tenant organization isolation, modern Go codebase, and event-sourced audit logging, making it much easier to deploy and scale for client-facing applications.”
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Ranks from the merged 4-model leaderboards · re-polled on demand · methodology