Kanidm
lastmod 2025-09-03created 2025-09-031 edits
Kanidm: A simple, secure, and fast identity management platform
A simple, secure, and fast Korean: 아이덴티티 관리 (identity management) platform
About
- An identity management platform built with Rust that implements authentication and user management simply and securely
- Aims to provide a complete IDM feature set without separate external components such as Keycloak
- Scales from small homelabs to large enterprise environments through strict defaults, simple configuration, and self-healing components
- Key features: Passkeys (WebAuthn), OAuth2/OIDC-based SSO, RADIUS/VPN authentication, read-only LDAP gateway, CLI management tool, HA configuration, user WebUI
Comparison with other services
- LLDAP: a simple LDAP server that provides a management portal. Kanidm provides more features, such as built-in OAuth2/OIDC
- 389-ds / OpenLDAP: pure LDAP servers that allow advanced customization. Kanidm has fast performance and more built-in IDM features
- FreeIPA: provides very rich features but is complex. Kanidm provides similar features more lightly and quickly (in tests, 3x faster search and 5x faster modify/add)
- Keycloak: mainly provides OIDC/SAML. Its configuration is complex, whereas Kanidm provides OAuth2 without Keycloak
- Rauthy: OIDC-only and lightweight, but narrow in scope. Kanidm supports more authentication scenarios
- Authentik / Authelia / Zitadel: provide Go- or Python-based IDM. However, Kanidm has the edge in WebAuthn Attestation, Unix authentication, and a high-performance DB
- "Kanidm" is a compound of kani (Japanese for crab, associated with the Rust mascot Ferris) + idm (identity management)
- Pronounced “kar-nee-dee-em”