Tools tagged with "Auth"
Tools tagged "auth" handle user authentication and authorization: sign-up, login, password resets, session management, social login (OAuth), multi-factor authentication, and role-based permissions. Open source auth tools range from drop-in libraries for a single application framework to standalone identity servers that support single sign-on (SSO) across multiple applications via protocols like OAuth2, OpenID Connect, and SAML.
Common use cases include adding login and session management to a new application without building it from scratch, centralizing identity across multiple internal apps so employees sign in once (SSO), enabling social login (Google, GitHub) alongside email and password, adding multi-factor authentication for security-sensitive applications, and B2B products that need to support customers' own SSO providers (SAML, enterprise OIDC). Some tools are framework-specific libraries embedded directly in an app's codebase, while others run as a separate identity provider service that any app can delegate to.
When choosing one, check which protocols and providers it supports out of the box (OAuth2, SAML, passkeys/WebAuthn), whether it is a library you embed versus a service you deploy separately, session and token handling (JWT vs. server-side sessions, refresh token rotation), how easily it integrates with your specific framework, and admin features like a user management UI, audit logs, and organization or team support for multi-tenant products. Security posture matters more here than almost any other category, so checking how actively a project patches vulnerabilities is worth the extra diligence.
Self-hosted auth tools typically replace Auth0, Okta, and Firebase Authentication. Teams self-host to avoid per-monthly-active-user pricing that scales sharply with growth, to keep user credentials and personal data under their own control, and to avoid vendor lock-in on a piece of infrastructure that touches every part of an application. The tradeoff is owning the security responsibility directly instead of outsourcing it to a specialized vendor.
