Ory Kratos Has a Free API: Cloud-Native Identity and User Management

#identity #security #api #opensource

Why Ory Kratos

Ory Kratos is a headless identity server — registration, login, 2FA, account recovery, profile management. No UI lock-in. Bring your own frontend, Kratos handles the identity logic.

Quick Start with Docker

git clone https://github.com/ory/kratos.git
cd kratos
docker compose -f quickstart.yml up

Self-Service Flows

# Initialize registration flow
curl -s http://localhost:4433/self-service/registration/api | jq .

# Submit registration
curl -X POST http://localhost:4433/self-service/registration?flow=FLOW_ID \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"method": "password", "traits": {"email": "user@example.com"}, "password": "securepassword"}'

# Login
curl -s http://localhost:4433/self-service/login/api | jq .flow
curl -X POST http://localhost:4433/self-service/login?flow=FLOW_ID \
  -d '{"method": "password", "identifier": "user@example.com", "password": "securepassword"}'

Identity Schema

{
  "$id": "https://example.com/user.schema.json",
  "$schema": "http://json-schema.org/draft-07/schema#",
  "title": "User",
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "traits": {
      "type": "object",
      "properties": {
        "email": {
          "type": "string",
          "format": "email",
          "title": "Email",
          "ory.sh/kratos": {
            "credentials": {"password": {"identifier": true}},
            "verification": {"via": "email"},
            "recovery": {"via": "email"}
          }
        },
        "name": {"type": "string", "title": "Full Name"}
      },
      "required": ["email"]
    }
  }
}

Key Features

Headless — API-first, bring your own UI
Self-service flows — registration, login, recovery, verification, settings
MFA — TOTP, WebAuthn, lookup secrets
Social login — Google, GitHub, Apple, OIDC
Webhooks — trigger on any identity event
Open source — Apache 2.0

Ory Ecosystem

Component	Purpose
Kratos	Identity management
Hydra	OAuth2/OIDC server
Keto	Authorization (Zanzibar)
Oathkeeper	API gateway/proxy

Resources

Need to extract identity data, user metrics, or auth configs? Check out my Apify tools or email spinov001@gmail.com for custom solutions.

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