What is Dex used for?

Dex is a federated OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 identity provider that fronts LDAP, SAML and social logins through pluggable connectors. It is a good fit for single sign-on for Kubernetes clusters and putting one OIDC front end over several identity sources.

Yes. Dex is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at dexidp/dex and is written mainly in Go.

Yes. Dex is open source, so the software itself is free to use.

Yes. Dex can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.

What is Dex an alternative to?

Dex is an open-source alternative to Okta and Auth0. Other open-source alternatives to Okta include Authentik, Casdoor and Ory Hydra.

Is Dex actively maintained?

Yes. The most recent commit to Dex was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.45.1, published on 3 March 2026. The project has 11k stars on GitHub.

Dex: open-source alternative to Okta, Auth0

About Dex

Dex is an identity service that uses OpenID Connect to handle authentication for other applications. Rather than storing users itself, it acts as a portal to other identity providers through connectors, so apps only need to implement one authentication flow and let Dex deal with each backend's protocol.

Connectors let it defer login to LDAP servers, SAML providers, and established providers such as GitHub, Google and Active Directory. Its primary output is the ID Token, a JSON Web Token signed by Dex that states which client logged the user in, when the token expires and who the user is. Because these tokens follow standard claims, other services such as Kubernetes and AWS STS can consume them.

Dex runs natively on Kubernetes using Custom Resource Definitions and can drive API server authentication through the OpenID Connect plugin, with clients like kubelogin and kubectl logging users in through any supported provider. The project is written in Go, licensed under Apache-2.0, and you deploy and operate it yourself.

Key features

OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 provider
Pluggable connectors for LDAP, SAML and GitHub
Signed ID Tokens as JSON Web Tokens
Runs on Kubernetes with custom resources
Kubernetes API server authentication
Works with kubelogin and kubectl

Good fit for

→Single sign-on for Kubernetes clusters
→Putting one OIDC front end over several identity sources

Built with: Go; Kubernetes
Tags: oidc; oauth2; identity-provider; sso; kubernetes; authentication; ldap; go

Dex: questions and answers

What is Dex used for?: Dex is a federated OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 identity provider that fronts LDAP, SAML and social logins through pluggable connectors. It is a good fit for single sign-on for Kubernetes clusters and putting one OIDC front end over several identity sources.
Is Dex open source?: Yes. Dex is open source under the Apache-2.0 licence. Its source code is on GitHub at dexidp/dex and is written mainly in Go.
Is Dex free?: Yes. Dex is open source, so the software itself is free to use.
Can I self-host Dex?: Yes. Dex can be self-hosted on your own server or infrastructure; there is no official hosted version.
What is Dex an alternative to?: Dex is an open-source alternative to Okta and Auth0. Other open-source alternatives to Okta include Authentik, Casdoor and Ory Hydra.
Is Dex actively maintained?: Yes. The most recent commit to Dex was on 2 October 2026, and the latest release is v2.45.1, published on 3 March 2026. The project has 11k stars on GitHub.