cidaas – the sovereign European
Keycloak alternative
Keycloak is an SSO toolkit you build on and run yourself. cidaas brings Identity & Access Management, digital sovereignty and enterprise support together in one cloud-native platform – without the operational burden of running it yourself.
DSGVO
Sovereign by Design
Feature-complete platform
ISO 27001 Certified
Fully managed SaaS
Companies that already trust cidaas
cidaas is Europe´s leading Identity & Access Management solution and it offers a secure alternative to Keycloak.
Why a Keycloak alternative: scalability instead of administrative effort
Keycloak is one of the best-known Open Source solutions for authentication, Single Sign-On, and Identity Management. However, as demands for security, scalability, and user-friendliness increase, companies may reach the limits of their ability to operate the solution themselves – and are therefore beginning to look for a Keycloak alternative.
Operations and maintenance effort
Complex configurations and upgrades
Community-based Support, with commercial support only through third parties
Full responsibility for infrastructure, updates and availability
How cidaas solves these challenges
The European IAM platform cidaas addresses exactly these challenges – a scalable, cloud-native alternative offering:
Fast deployment
Start right away: no environment to build, no clusters to configure. cidaas is ready to use as a managed service – go live in days, not months.
24/7 managed operations
Hosting, scaling, patching and upgrades – run around the clock as a managed SaaS. No on-call duty for your identity infrastructure.
Integrated support
SLA-backed support in German and English during European business hours, with direct access to the European product team.
Comprehensive features
Identity verification, adaptive MFA, no-code orchestration, consent management and more – built into the platform instead of assembled from extensions.
GDPR compliance & full control
EU hosting with dedicated German server locations, built-in consent management and a European vendor accountable for the platform.
Predictable costs
Transparent pricing per registered user – instead of free software with unpredictable operating costs for infrastructure, engineering and maintenance.
Leading analysts recognize cidaas
The KuppingerCole analysts recommend cidaas in the current Leadership Compass reports:
cidaas is recognized as an Overall, Product and Innovation Leader in the latest KuppingerCole Leadership Compass reports for CIAM, B2B IAM and IGA.
This recognition across categories reflects what sets cidaas apart: one holistic European identity platform instead of stitched-together point solutions. Certifications such as ISO 27001 and awards from Frost & Sullivan and the European Identity & Cloud Awards complete the picture.
Feature-complete – this is what cidaas delivers.
cidaas covers everything you run Keycloak for today – and everything you would otherwise have to build around it. One platform for modern IAM and CIAM, with digital sovereignty, GDPR compliance, high security standards and user experience at its core.
Single Sign-On (SSO)
One login, secure access to all applications and services. Centralized Identity Management that improves user experience and strengthens security.
Passwordless authentication & passkeys
ace ID, Touch ID, passkeys, OTP or authenticator app – modern login methods that improve security and user experience at the same time.
Multi-factor & adaptive authentication
Flexible MFA with 16+ methods, made smart through adaptive, risk-based authentication that responds to device, location and behaviour.
Consent Management
Users view and manage their consents transparently and in line with GDPR. Changes to privacy policies or terms are easily communicated and documented.
AI-based fraud detection
Machine learning identifies suspicious activity and anomalies early – protecting users, applications and digital identities from fraud and abuse.
Integrated identity verification (IDV)
The cidaas ID validator enables AI-based digital identity verification directly within the platform – no external provider required.
Identity orchestration & lifecycle
Orchestrate identities across their entire lifecycle with cnips – from registration and onboarding to role changes and offboarding. Integrate your applications easily, all without custom development.
Group & multi-tenant management
Manage users, groups and permissions, with typed groups, hierarchies and delegated administration for B2B and B2C.
Social Login, Progressive Profiling & Real-World Identification
From social login and progressive profiling to linking digital and physical identities – innovative capabilities beyond classic login.
And it doesn’t stop there:
Securing AI Agents, automated provisioning, and the scalability to serve mid-sized companies as well as global enterprises with millions of users.
More reasons to switch:
Keycloak´s dependencies
Open source is often chosen for reasons of independence – but that independence deserves a closer look.
Keycloak development is concentrated within the Red Hat and IBM ecosystems. Analyses based on Linux Foundation Insights show that the overwhelming majority of contributions come from these two organizations, and the Linux Foundation itself states that the project is primarily dependent on them.
As a result, the direction and pace of the Keycloak roadmap are determined outside your organization – and outside Europe.
There is also a technical dependency. Keycloak covers the SSO core, while many capabilities organizations require beyond that are added through custom SPIs, extensions, and themes. Each of these becomes code that your team is responsible for maintaining, testing, and revalidating with every upgrade, gradually tying your architecture more closely to Keycloak.
The result is a different type of lock-in – not through licensing, but through operations and custom code.
cidaas follows a different approach: a European vendor with a transparent, independent roadmap, capabilities that are built into the platform instead of being custom-developed around it, and open standards (OIDC, OAuth 2.0, SAML) that ensure application portability without protocol lock-in.
cidaas vs. Keycloak
The main differences between cidaas and Keycloak, and why cidaas is the best Keycloak alternative.
This comparison is provided for informational purposes. Keycloak is open-source software, and several of the capabilities above depend on how a given deployment is configured, hosted and maintained. Whether a solution fits an organization’s requirements depends on its specific configuration and use case.
Why a Keycloak alternative: scalability instead of administrative effort
With cidaas, you start right away – there is no environment to build. With Keycloak, standing up a production-ready deployment – clustering, database, high availability, theming – typically takes an experienced engineer several days, and the effort doesn’t end after the setup or even the go-live.
Operating Keycloak is a permanent task: upgrades need to be tested and rolled out, security patches applied, availability monitored, performance tuned as usage grows.
Even organizations running Keycloak at very large scale note that “effort must be permanently dedicated to the service” – in their words, not ours. Every hour spent here is engineering capacity that doesn’t go into your product.
cidaas is cloud-native and scales elastically with your user base – from mid-sized companies to global platforms with millions of users. Scaling, tuning and capacity are the vendor’s job, not yours.
And because cidaas is developed and operated as one continuously evolving platform, improvements – from performance to ML-based fraud detection – reach you automatically, without upgrade projects.
A simple migration path makes the transition from Keycloak to cidaas much easier.
More than managed Hosting
eycloak-as-a-Service providers take over hosting and operations and that solves one part of the equation. But the platform itself remains Keycloak: capabilities like integrated identity verification, adaptive MFA, consent management or no-code orchestration don’t appear because someone else runs the servers – and the roadmap remains outside their influence. Managed hosting changes who operates Keycloak – not what Keycloak is.
Migration path from Keycloak to cidaas
Thanks to open standards and proven migration tooling, switching from Keycloak to cidaas is a straightforward, low-risk process – in three steps:
Set up
Your cidaas environment is available immediately – no infrastructure to build. Configure authentication methods, flows and branding to your needs.
Migration
User data is transferred with out-of-the-box migration tooling – including password hashes, so your users keep their passwords, with no forced reset.
Integration
Because both cidaas and Keycloak build on open standards, applications are switched over with minimal changes – client by client, at your pace.
Good to know
During the migration, both systems run in parallel – end users are not affected at any point, and the switch happens without downtime.
The Keycloak alternative with digital sovereignty built in
When choosing an IAM solution, digital Sovereignty, data protection and long-term control over identities and data re decisive. cidaas delivers all of this by design – built into service, not something you have to build and maintain yourself.
- Developed and operated in Europe: by a European vendor with an independent roadmap and clear accountability.
- EU hosting with dedicated German server locations: data residency guaranteed, including options for sectors with heightened requirements such as KRITIS, finance and the public sector.
- Open standards for long-term flexibility: OIDC, OAuth2 and SAML keep your environment interoperable and your investment secure, with no protocol lock-in.
The regulatory bar keeps rising
NIS2 and DORA increasingly demand demonstrable accountability for identity and access infrastructure – who operates it, who patches it, who answers for it. With cidaas, that accountability is contractually anchored with one European vendor. With self-operated open source, it remains entirely with your organization.
European identities deserve European solutions
Protect your users, data and applications with cidaas – the leading European identity platform under European control.
FAQs: cidaas as a Keycloak alternative
– A wide range of authentication options for passwordless authentication and multi-factor authentication
– Group management to support B2B as well as Family & Friends scenarios
– A mature consent management solution for capturing user consent, along with many other innovative features
– Data sovereignty under European legislation with exclusive hosting in Europe