Zitadel Has a Free Identity Platform — Auth, SSO, and User Management Without Auth0 Pricing

#auth #webdev #opensource #security

Zitadel Has a Free Identity Platform

Auth0 starts at $35/month for 500 users. Clerk charges per MAU. Zitadel gives you unlimited users when self-hosted — with the same enterprise features.

What Zitadel Does

Zitadel is a cloud-native identity and access management platform:

Authentication — email/password, social login, passwordless, MFA
SSO — OIDC, SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0
User management — organizations, projects, roles
Branding — custom login pages per organization
Actions — serverless hooks for custom logic
Audit logs — complete event history
Multi-tenancy — built-in B2B support

Quick Start

# Docker
docker run --name zitadel \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  ghcr.io/zitadel/zitadel:latest start-from-init \
  --masterkey "MasterkeyNeedsToHave32Characters" \
  --tlsMode disabled

# Visit http://localhost:8080
# Default: zitadel-admin@zitadel.localhost / Password1!

Integration

import { createZitadelAuth } from "@zitadel/react";

const zitadel = createZitadelAuth({
  issuer: "https://your-instance.zitadel.cloud",
  client_id: "your-client-id",
  project_resource_id: "your-project-id",
});

// Login
await zitadel.authorize();

// Get user
const user = await zitadel.userinfo();

Free vs Paid

Feature	Self-Hosted (Free)	Cloud (Free)	Cloud Pro
Users	Unlimited	25K MAU	Custom
SSO	✅	✅	✅
Custom domain	✅	❌	✅
SLA	—	—	99.9%

Why Zitadel Over Auth0/Clerk

Open source — Apache 2.0, self-host without limits
Multi-tenant native — built for B2B SaaS
Event-sourced — complete audit trail of every action
Actions — custom logic without external services
OIDC certified — fully compliant identity provider

Need auth for your SaaS? I help teams implement Zitadel for B2B authentication with SSO, RBAC, and multi-tenancy.

📧 spinov001@gmail.com — Identity platform consulting

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