AuthentikOpen source, self-hosted identity provider for unified authentication.

ZITADELIdentity infrastructure, simplified for you.

Comparison · Identity & Access Management · weekly run Nov 3

Authentik vs ZITADEL

Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?

The short answer

Authentik is the stronger AI pick in Identity & Access Management: it has a visibility score of 2.7 versus 1.3 for ZITADEL, and ranks ahead in 100% of the answers that name both.

Choose Authentik if…

You want the brand AI engines rank higher (2.7 vs 1.3)
You want a lower entry price ($5 vs $100)
You need OpenID Certified coverage
Per seat pricing suits your budget better than usage-based

Choose ZITADEL if…

AI answers describe it more positively (83% vs 67% positive)
You need a self-hosted or on-premises option
You need ISO/IEC 27001:2022 or SOC 2 Type II coverage
You prefer a larger, established vendor (11–50 employees)

AI visibility side by side

Latest weekly run · Nov 3

Metric	Authentik	ZITADEL
Visibility score	2.7%	1.3%
Change vs last week	up+1.7%	up+0.5%
Rank in Identity & Access Management	#24	#27
Share of voice	0.6%	0.4%
Mentions this run	2	1
Positive in AI answers	67%	83%

The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.

Visibility score trend

Weekly runs over the last 60 days

Authentik +1.0000000000000002pp · ZITADEL −1.8pp over 1 weekly runs.

Engine by engine

Authentik leads on 3 of 3 engines

ChatGPT

7.7%

3.9%

AI Mode

3.7%

2.6%

Perplexity

1.7%

AuthentikZITADEL

Head to head in AI answers

1 engine answers name both brands

1Authentik ranked higher

0ZITADEL ranked higher

Prompt	Engine	Authentik	ZITADEL
Is there a free identity and access management platform for small teams?	AI Mode	#1	#3

Features, pricing & fit

Dimension	Authentik	ZITADEL
Pricing model	Per seat	Usage-based
Entry price	Free; paid from $5 per seat / mo	Free; paid from $100 / mo
Free plan	Yes	Yes
Deployment	Self-hosted (Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker Compose, AWS CloudFormation); no hosted version offered	Cloud and self-hosted
Compliance	OpenID Certified	ISO/IEC 27001:2022, SOC 2 Type II
Support	Community Discord, GitHub community support, Ticket-based support (Enterprise over $1k), Dedicated support with SLAs (Enterprise Plus)	Discord community, GitHub, Documentation, Technical Account Manager (Enterprise)
Founded	2018	2020
Headquarters	—	San Francisco, CA, United States
Employees	1–10	11–50
Funding	Later-stage VC · $2M raised	Series A · $16M raised
Best for	Organizations that want to self-host their identity provider and keep control of their identity data, from homelabs to enterprises with thousands of users.	Developers building applications that need authentication for consumers, businesses or employees, including multi-tenant B2B apps.