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Firebase Authentication

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Firebase Authentication vs Keycloak: What are the differences?

Key Differences: Firebase Authentication vs Keycloak

Firebase Authentication and Keycloak are both popular identity management systems used for authentication and authorization. While they share some similarities, there are several key differences between the two platforms.

  1. Integration with Platform Ecosystem: Firebase Authentication is a service provided by Google that seamlessly integrates with other Firebase products, such as Firebase Realtime Database and Firestore. On the other hand, Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management solution that can be integrated with various platforms and technologies, making it more flexible and compatible with different ecosystems.

  2. Deployment Options: Firebase Authentication is a fully managed service provided by Google, which means that it requires minimal setup and maintenance efforts. Keycloak, on the other hand, can be self-hosted, allowing organizations to have full control over their authentication infrastructure and tailor it to their specific needs. This can be advantageous for organizations that require more customization and control over their authentication processes.

  3. Scalability and Performance: Firebase Authentication benefits from Google's robust infrastructure, meaning that it can handle high traffic volumes and offers excellent scalability and performance. Keycloak's performance, on the other hand, may depend on the hardware and setup of the hosting environment, making it potentially less scalable for organizations with significant scalability requirements.

  4. Development Resources and Community Support: Firebase Authentication is backed by Google, one of the largest technology companies, which ensures a vast pool of resources, extensive documentation, and strong community support. Keycloak, being an open-source project, also has a strong community of developers contributing to its development and providing support. However, the level of available resources and community support may vary compared to Firebase Authentication.

  5. Pricing Model: Firebase Authentication is part of the Firebase suite of products and follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, which is based on the number of active users. Keycloak, being an open-source solution, is free to use, but organizations need to consider the cost associated with self-hosting, maintenance, and support.

  6. Customization and Extensibility: Firebase Authentication provides a streamlined and easy-to-use interface, which allows for quick integration into applications. It offers pre-built UI components and customizable branding options. Keycloak, being an open-source and self-hosted solution, offers greater customization and extensibility options, allowing organizations to tailor the authentication process according to their specific requirements.

In summary, Firebase Authentication is a Google-backed, managed service that seamlessly integrates with the Firebase platform, offers high scalability and performance, and provides extensive resources and support. Keycloak, on the other hand, is an open-source, customizable solution that offers greater flexibility in terms of deployment options and integration with different ecosystems, but requires more effort and expertise for setup and maintenance.

Advice on Firebase Authentication and Keycloak
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KeycloakKeycloakOktaOkta
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Spring SecuritySpring Security

I am working on building a platform in my company that will provide a single sign on to all of the internal products to the customer. To do that we need to build an Authorisation server to comply with the OIDC protocol. Earlier we had built the Auth server using the Spring Security OAuth project but since in Spring Security 5.x it is no longer supported we are planning to get over with it as well. Below are the 2 options that I was considering to replace the Spring Auth Server. 1. Keycloak 2. Okta 3. Auth0 Please advise which one to use.

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Replies (3)
Luca Ferrari
Solution Architect at Red Hat, Inc. · | 5 upvotes · 202.2K views
Recommends
on
KeycloakKeycloak

It isn't clear if beside the AuthZ requirement you had others, but given the scenario you described my suggestion would for you to go with Keycloak. First of all because you have already an onpremise IdP and with Keycloak you could maintain that setup (if privacy is a concern). Another important point is configuration and customization: I would assume with Spring OAuth you might have had some custom logic around authentication, this can be easily reconfigured in Keycloak by leveraging SPI (https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/server_development/index.html#_auth_spi). Finally AuthZ as a functionality is well developed, based on standard protocols and extensible on Keycloak (https://www.keycloak.org/docs/latest/authorization_services/)

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Sandor Racz
Recommends
on
KeycloakKeycloak

We have good experience using Keycloak for SSO with OIDC with our Spring Boot based applications. It's free, easy to install and configure, extensible - so I recommend it.

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Recommends
on
KeycloakKeycloak

You can also use Keycloak as an Identity Broker, which enables you to handle authentication on many different identity providers of your customers. With this setup, you are able to perform authorization tasks centralized.

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Pros of Firebase Authentication
Pros of Keycloak
  • 12
    Completely Free
  • 8
    Native App + Web integrations
  • 8
    Email/Password
  • 7
    Passwordless
  • 6
    Works seemlessly with other Firebase Services
  • 5
    Integration with OAuth Providers
  • 4
    Anonymous Users
  • 4
    Easy to Integrate and Manage
  • 1
    MFA
  • 33
    It's a open source solution
  • 24
    Supports multiple identity provider
  • 17
    OpenID and SAML support
  • 12
    Easy customisation
  • 10
    JSON web token
  • 6
    Maintained by devs at Redhat

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Cons of Firebase Authentication
Cons of Keycloak
  • 6
    Heavy webpack
  • 7
    Okta
  • 6
    Poor client side documentation
  • 5
    Lack of Code examples for client side

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What is Firebase Authentication?

It provides backend services, easy-to-use SDKs, and ready-made UI libraries to authenticate users to your app. It supports authentication using passwords, phone numbers, popular federated identity providers like Google,

What is Keycloak?

It is an Open Source Identity and Access Management For Modern Applications and Services. It adds authentication to applications and secure services with minimum fuss. No need to deal with storing users or authenticating users. It's all available out of the box.

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What companies use Firebase Authentication?
What companies use Keycloak?
See which teams inside your own company are using Firebase Authentication or Keycloak.
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What tools integrate with Firebase Authentication?
What tools integrate with Keycloak?

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What are some alternatives to Firebase Authentication and Keycloak?
Auth0
A set of unified APIs and tools that instantly enables Single Sign On and user management to all your applications.
MongoDB
MongoDB stores data in JSON-like documents that can vary in structure, offering a dynamic, flexible schema. MongoDB was also designed for high availability and scalability, with built-in replication and auto-sharding.
Passport
It is authentication middleware for Node.js. Extremely flexible and modular, It can be unobtrusively dropped in to any Express-based web application. A comprehensive set of strategies support authentication using a username and password, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
Okta
Connect all your apps in days, not months, with instant access to thousands of pre-built integrations - even add apps to the network yourself. Integrations are easy to set up, constantly monitored, proactively repaired and handle authentication and provisioning.
Firebase
Firebase is a cloud service designed to power real-time, collaborative applications. Simply add the Firebase library to your application to gain access to a shared data structure; any changes you make to that data are automatically synchronized with the Firebase cloud and with other clients within milliseconds.
See all alternatives