Self-Hosting Zitadel with Docker Compose

What Is Zitadel? Zitadel is an open-source identity management platform that handles authentication, authorization, and user management. It supports OIDC, SAML, passkeys, multi-factor authentication, and multi-tenancy out of the box. Think of it as a modern alternative to Keycloak — built with a cleaner API, a more intuitive console, and first-class support for machine-to-machine auth. Prerequisites A Linux server (Ubuntu 22.04+ recommended) Docker and Docker Compose installed ( guide ) 2 GB of RAM (minimum) 10 GB of free disk space A domain name (required for production — OIDC doesn't work properly on IP addresses) Architecture Overview Zitadel v4 uses a two-container architecture: Component Purpose Image Zitadel Core API, gRPC, admin console, OIDC/SAML endpoints ghcr.io/zitadel/zitadel Login UI User-facing login flows (Next.js) ghcr.io/zitadel/zitadel-login PostgreSQL Database for all identity data postgres:17 The Login UI runs in the same network namespace as the core service (via n