ZITADEL vs Okta
ZITADEL is a European alternative to Okta — same security & identity use case, built under EU data-protection law.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Manage user identities securely with customizable authentication, SSO, MFA, and RBAC. Offers easy APIs, programmable workflows, and multi-tenancy for developers.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- GDPR by default
- Yes
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
Okta by Okta.
- Jurisdiction
- US
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
About ZITADEL
ZITADEL is an open-source identity infrastructure platform that combines the flexibility of self-hosting with the convenience of a managed cloud — bridging enterprise authentication and developer-friendly APIs in a single product.
The platform handles the full identity lifecycle: login pages, social logins, SSO, MFA, passkeys, RBAC, machine identities, and multi-tenancy — all configurable through gRPC and REST APIs. ZITADEL Actions let teams run custom workflows after any auth event without writing a custom server.
Key features:
- Authentication — hosted login UI, social logins, passkeys, MFA, and SSO
- Authorization — role-based access control with fine-grained permission management
- Multi-tenancy — add new organisations, delegate admin rights, and isolate data per tenant
- Machine identities — service accounts and API key management for non-human actors
- Extensible — ZITADEL Actions execute serverside logic after any auth event
- APIs — modern gRPC and REST, with SDKs for Go, Angular, React, Next.js, Flutter, and Python
- Compliance — OpenID certified, ISO 27001, GDPR, and SOC 2 Type II
Open source with 4,000+ GitHub stars and 50+ contributors. Deploy to your own infrastructure or use ZITADEL Cloud with EU data residency.
Why choose ZITADEL over Okta?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. Okta is headquartered in US, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes — the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
ZITADEL removes that overhead. As a Switzerland-based provider, it operates natively under GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors — health, public administration, finance — that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single non-EU jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.