Descope vs Keycloak
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
Keycloak is the stronger AI pick in Identity & Access Management: it has a visibility score of 5.6 versus 1.9 for Descope, and ranks ahead in 0% of the answers that name both.
Choose Descope if…
- AI answers describe it more positively (62% vs 33% positive)
- You need SOC 2 Type 2 or ISO 27001 or CSA STAR Level 2 or PCI DSS or HIPAA or FedRAMP High coverage
- Low-code option
- High user ratings (4.8/5) in a narrow category
Choose Keycloak if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (5.6 vs 1.9)
- Free and open-source software
- Strong flexibility and customization for technical teams
- Top pick as a self-hosted option
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | Descope | Keycloak |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 1.9% | 5.6% |
| Change vs last week | down−3% | down−0.3% |
| Rank in Identity & Access Management | #26 | #15 |
| Share of voice | 0.6% | 2.1% |
| Mentions this run | 2 | 7 |
| Positive in AI answers | 62% | 33% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Descope −2pp · Keycloak −0.7000000000000002pp over 1 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
Keycloak leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
1 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | Descope | Keycloak |
|---|---|---|---|
| Top identity and access management platform options for B2B SaaS companies | Perplexity | #5 | #7 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Descope | Keycloak |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | Usage-based | — |
| Entry price | Free; paid from $249 / mo | — |
| Free plan | Yes | — |
| Deployment | Cloud SaaS | Self-hosted; ships as a single lightweight container image, with clustering for scalability and availability |
| Compliance | SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, CSA STAR Level 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP High | — |
| Support | Community support, Web and email support, Slack support, Dedicated CS engineer | Community support via GitHub Discussions, Commercial support via Red Hat build of Keycloak |
| Founded | 2022 | 2014 |
| Headquarters | Los Altos, California, United States | — |
| Employees | 51–200 | — |
| Funding | Seed extension · $88M raised | — |
| Best for | Startups, SaaS companies and enterprises adding customer auth, B2B SSO/SCIM, or identity for AI agents and MCP servers. | Teams that want to self-host standards-based single sign-on and identity brokering for their applications |
Plans side by side
Descope
Keycloak
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
Descope
- Low-code option
- High user ratings (4.8/5) in a narrow category
- Robust developer-focused free tier with built-in MFA
- Visual drag-and-drop workflow builder that is easy to use
Keycloak
- Free and open-source software
- Strong flexibility and customization for technical teams
- Top pick as a self-hosted option
- Backed by Red Hat and community; popular open-source IAM tool
- Supports SAML, OAuth 2.0, and OpenID Connect
- Team must handle hosting, upgrades, backups, and security
- Less operational simplicity than managed alternatives
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 98.8%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Descope vs Keycloak”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/descope-vs-keycloak, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.