Keycloakvs
Penpot
Penpot: Open source design and prototyping platform
Keycloak
Open-source identity and access management server.
As of 29 August 2026, Keycloak is free to use. Keycloak is an open-source IAM platform supporting OpenID Connect, OAuth 2. Softwr lists it under Developer Tools. Keycloak is available on Self-hosted, Linux, Windows, API.
Overview
What Keycloak does
Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management platform designed to enable developers to add authentication to applications and secure services with minimal effort. The platform supports industry-standard protocols including OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 and SAML 2.0, providing flexibility for integrations with diverse systems. Key capabilities include single sign-on across multiple applications (users authenticate once rather than to individual services), user federation allowing organisations to connect to existing LDAP or Active Directory systems, and fine-grained authorisation services for defining detailed permission policies beyond simple role-based access control. Keycloak includes administrative controls through a centralised admin console, user self-service capabilities via an account management portal, clustering for scalability and customisable themes with extensibility through custom code and configurable password policies. As a Cloud Native Computing Foundation incubation project, Keycloak emphasises modern cloud-native deployment patterns. The platform is fully open-source and free to self-host, though it requires operational expertise to deploy and maintain. Organisations requiring managed hosting or enterprise support typically look to commercial distributions, though Keycloak itself incurs no licensing fees.
What people use it for
- Organisations requiring self-hosted identity infrastructure for compliance or data residency
- Companies with existing LDAP/Active Directory systems needing federated authentication
- Open-source projects and communities requiring free IAM without licensing costs
- Enterprises building custom identity workflows requiring fine-grained authorisation
- Teams with sufficient operational expertise to manage infrastructure
The honest half
Where it falls short
Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Keycloak.
- Requires self-hosted deployment and operational expertise to install, configure and maintain
- No managed cloud option provided by Red Hat; organisations must operate infrastructure themselves or use third-party distributions
- Clustering and high-availability configurations require additional operational knowledge
- Community support only; commercial support requires third-party vendors or distributions
Cross-shopped
What people choose instead of Keycloak
Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.
- KeycloakvsDebian
Debian: Community-maintained Linux distribution and universal computing platform
- KeycloakvsFedora
Fedora: Community Linux distribution with cutting-edge upstream software
- KeycloakvsUbuntu
Ubuntu: Enterprise Linux distribution with 15-year support options
Pricing
What Keycloak costs
Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.
Open-source
Free
- Full platform functionality
- Self-hosted deployment
- Community support
- Unlimited users
- Unlimited applications
Answered, with sources
Questions people ask
Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
What protocols does Keycloak support?
Keycloak supports OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 and SAML 2.0 protocols for authentication and authorisation.
SourceCan Keycloak integrate with existing user directories?
Yes. Keycloak supports user federation with LDAP and Active Directory systems, allowing organisations to leverage existing user directories.
SourceIs Keycloak free?
Yes. Keycloak is fully open-source and free to deploy and use. No licensing fees are required.
SourceKeep looking
Where to go from Keycloak
- Keycloak alternativesEvery product people weigh against it
- Keycloak pricingPlans, floors and what the tiers exclude
- Keycloak badgesWhich rules it meets, and the figure behind each
- All Developer Tools softwareThe full category
- Best Developer Tools softwareThe shortlist, and how it was cut
Best Developer Tools software for
Compare Keycloak with
- Penpot
- Atlantis
- Soketi
- Vite
- Depot
- Ansible
- Buildkite
- Coder
- Bitbucket
- Sweep
- Turborepo
- CodeSandbox
- Azure DevOps
- Backstage
- Claude Code
- Cloud Native Buildpacks
- Cody
- Bitbucket
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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Keycloak, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.
More on Keycloak
Keycloak alternatives
What people switch to, and what they give up
Keycloak pricing
Every tier, and where the cost actually lands
Compare Keycloak
Put it head to head with anything we hold
Keycloak badge
Its rating, and an embed for your own site
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