Keycloak vs WorkOS
Which one do AI engines recommend, and how do they differ on price, fit and features?
The short answer
WorkOS is the stronger AI pick in Identity & Access Management: it has a visibility score of 9.5 versus 5.6 for Keycloak, and ranks ahead in 67% of the answers that name both.
Choose Keycloak if…
- 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
Choose WorkOS if…
- You want the brand AI engines rank higher (9.5 vs 5.6)
- AI answers describe it more positively (56% vs 33% positive)
- You need SOC 2 Type 2 or GDPR or CCPA or SOC 3 or SIG Lite coverage
- Highly transparent for B2B SaaS authentication
AI visibility side by side
Latest weekly run · Nov 3
| Metric | Keycloak | WorkOS |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility score | 5.6% | 9.5% |
| Change vs last week | down−0.3% | down−1.3% |
| Rank in Identity & Access Management | #15 | #11 |
| Share of voice | 2.1% | 3% |
| Mentions this run | 7 | 10 |
| Positive in AI answers | 33% | 56% |
The stronger value in each row is marked with a ✓.
Visibility score trend
Weekly runs over the last 60 days
Keycloak −0.7000000000000002pp · WorkOS +0.5999999999999996pp over 1 weekly runs.
Engine by engine
WorkOS leads on 3 of 3 engines
Head to head in AI answers
3 engine answers name both brands
| Prompt | Engine | Keycloak | WorkOS |
|---|---|---|---|
| What are the best Identity & Access Management tools in 2026? | Perplexity | #8 | #13 |
| Top identity and access management platform options for B2B SaaS companies | Perplexity | #7 | #1 |
| Best identity and access management platform for startups | Perplexity | #6 | #5 |
Features, pricing & fit
| Dimension | Keycloak | WorkOS |
|---|---|---|
| Pricing model | — | Usage-based |
| Entry price | — | Contact sales |
| Free plan | — | Yes |
| Deployment | Self-hosted; ships as a single lightweight container image, with clustering for scalability and availability | Cloud APIs and SDKs |
| Integrations | — | 20+ |
| Compliance | — | SOC 2 Type 2, GDPR, CCPA, SOC 3, SIG Lite |
| Support | Community support via GitHub Discussions, Commercial support via Red Hat build of Keycloak | Email support, In-dashboard web support, Slack channel, Video calls |
| Founded | 2014 | 2019 |
| Headquarters | — | San Francisco, California, United States |
| Employees | — | 51–200 |
| Funding | — | Seed · $195M raised |
| Best for | Teams that want to self-host standards-based single sign-on and identity brokering for their applications | SaaS and AI companies that need to add enterprise features like SSO and SCIM to sell to large organizations. |
Plans side by side
Keycloak
Pricing not available.
Pros and cons
Themes from the AI answers that mention each brand
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
WorkOS
- Highly transparent for B2B SaaS authentication
- Best overall choice for typical B2B SaaS authentication
- Purpose-built for B2B SaaS to quickly unlock enterprise contracts
- Generous free tier and usage-based pricing
- Rapid enterprise feature integration (SSO, SCIM, provisioning)
- Advanced enterprise SAML connections may incur extra costs
Data collected ·ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Mode·coverage 98.8%·next run
Cite as: SlateIndex, “Keycloak vs WorkOS”, https://slateindex.ai/compare/keycloak-vs-workos, data of Nov 3, 2026. Licence: CC BY 4.0.