README

The Identity Infrastructure for Developers

ZITADEL is an open-source identity and access management platform built for teams that need more than basic auth. Whether you're securing a SaaS product, building a B2B platform, or self-hosting a production IAM stack — ZITADEL gives you everything out of the box: SSO, MFA, Passkeys, OIDC, SAML, SCIM, and a battle-tested multi-tenancy model.

No vendor lock-in. No compromise on control. Just a robust, API-first identity platform you can own.

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 Why ZITADEL

We built ZITADEL to handle the hardest IAM challenges at scale — starting with multi-tenancy.

| | ZITADEL | FusionAuth | Keycloak | Auth0/Okta |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-source | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Self-hostable | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ |
| Infrastructure-level tenants | ✅ Instances (High scale) | ✅ Tenants | 🟡 Realms (Scaling limits) | ❌ (Multi-tenant = multi-account) |
| B2B Organizations | ✅ Native & Unlimited | 🟡 via Entity Management | ✅ (Recent addition) | 🟡 (Plan/Account dependent) |
| Full audit trail | ✅ Comprehensive Event Stream | 🟡 Audit logs | 🟡 Audit logs | 🟡 Audit logs |
| Passkeys (FIDO2) | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Actions / webhooks | ✅ | ✅ | 🟡 via SPI | ✅ |
| API-first (gRPC + REST) | ✅ | 🟡 REST only | 🟡 REST only | 🟡 REST only |
| SaaS + self-host parity | ✅ | ✅ | ➖ N/A | ➖ N/A |

ZITADEL Cloud and self-hosted ZITADEL run the same codebase.

Key differentiators for architects:
- Relational core, event-driven soul — every mutation is written as an immutable event for a complete, API-accessible audit trail. Unlike systems that log only select activities, ZITADEL provides a comprehensive event stream that can be audited or streamed to external systems via Webhooks.
- Strict multi-tenant hierarchy — Identity System → Organizations → Projects, with isolated data and policy scoping at multiple levels
- API-first design — every resource and action is available via connectRPC, gRPC, and HTTP/JSON APIs
- Zero-downtime updates and horizontal scalability without external session stores

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 Get Started in 3 Minutes

👉 Quick Start Guide

 ZITADEL Self-Hosted

bash
 Docker Compose — up and running in under 3 minutes
curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zitadel/zitadel/main/deploy/compose/docker-compose.yml \
  && curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zitadel/zitadel/main/deploy/compose/.env.example \
  && cp .env.example .env \
  && docker compose up -d --wait


Full deployment guides:
- Docker Compose 
- Kubernetes

 Need professional support for your self-hosted deployment? Contact us.

 ZITADEL Cloud (SaaS)

Start for free at zitadel.com — no credit card required. Available in US · EU · AU · CH. Pay-as-you-go pricing.

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 Integrate with the V2 API

ZITADEL exposes every capability over a typed API. Here's how to create a user with the V2 REST API:

bash
curl -X POST https://$ZITADEL_DOMAIN/v2/users/human \
  -H "Authorization: Bea