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Okta vs Keycloak

A side-by-side look at Okta (the paid SaaS) and Keycloak (the open source alternative). Use this page to decide if the switch fits your team and workflow.

Okta Keycloak
Tagline Enterprise identity, SSO and MFA cloud. Enterprise-grade identity and access management from Red Hat.
License Proprietary SaaS Apache-2.0
Pricing SSO from $2/user/month; MFA, Lifecycle Management tiers climb quickly. Free to self-host
Self-host option No Yes — difficulty 4/5
Hosted cloud available Yes (only option) No
Desktop apps Varies by product Web only
Mobile apps Official apps typically available None official
Ad slot — between tables

Best for

The enterprise-grade replacement when you need SAML, OIDC and LDAP in one place.

Keycloak strengths

  • SAML, OIDC, OAuth2, LDAP federation — the full kit.
  • Fine-grained RBAC, scopes and client management.
  • Backed by Red Hat with a mature release cadence.

Keycloak weaknesses

  • Admin console is complex — real operational learning curve.
  • Memory-hungry under load; not trivial to right-size.
  • Upgrades between major versions require careful migration.

What's the catch with Okta?

  • Per-user per-feature pricing balloons past 200 seats.
  • Every outage takes down everything your team signs into.
  • Breach history has eroded trust for security-conscious teams.

Still unsure?

Check the full list of alternatives to Okta: see Okta alternatives, or learn more about Keycloak on its project page.

Other comparisons

Okta vs Authentik

A modern admin UX and flow-based policies without the Keycloak learning curve.

Okta vs Zitadel

Multi-tenant B2B SaaS builders who want event-sourced identity.

Okta vs Authelia

Smaller setups that want SSO on top of a reverse proxy like Traefik or nginx.

Recommended reading

When self-hosting goes wrong: seven failure modes and how to avoid them

An honest retrospective on the ways self-hosted setups break — not in theory, but in practice — and the small habits that prevent most of them.

Will the open source project you depend on still exist in three years?

Bus factor, maintainer burnout, funding models, and the signals that separate OSS projects that survive from those that quietly decay.

From SaaS to self-hosted: a 30-day migration playbook

A week-by-week plan to move one service off SaaS and onto your own server without breaking your team's workflow.