Softwr
Keycloak logo

Keycloak

Open-source identity and access management server.

Visit Keycloak

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.

  • Keycloak logo
    Keycloak    vs
    Debian logo
    Debian

    Debian: Community-maintained Linux distribution and universal computing platform

  • Keycloak logo
    Keycloak    vs
    Fedora logo
    Fedora

    Fedora: Community Linux distribution with cutting-edge upstream software

  • Keycloak logo
    Keycloak    vs
    Ubuntu logo
    Ubuntu

    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.

Source
Can Keycloak integrate with existing user directories?

Yes. Keycloak supports user federation with LDAP and Active Directory systems, allowing organisations to leverage existing user directories.

Source
Is Keycloak free?

Yes. Keycloak is fully open-source and free to deploy and use. No licensing fees are required.

Source
ShareXLinkedInRedditWhatsAppEmail

Keep looking

Where to go from Keycloak

Best Open Source software for

Compare Keycloak with

Other Open Source software

  • Penpot logo

    Penpot

    Open source design and prototyping platform

  • Debian logo

    Debian

    Community-maintained Linux distribution and universal computing platform.

  • Fedora logo

    Fedora

    Community Linux distribution with cutting-edge upstream software

  • Ubuntu logo

    Ubuntu

    Enterprise Linux distribution with 15-year support options.

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