Zitadel pricing: what 25,000 daily active users actually means

Zitadel's pricing page has three plans: Free, Pro at $100 per month, and Enterprise. The number that decides which one you land on is daily active users (DAU), not monthly active users. That makes Zitadel hard to compare with Auth0, Clerk or Casdoor at a glance.

This article explains what Zitadel publishes, what DAU means in practice, and how the bill compares with Casdoor's flat-price instance. Prices are from Zitadel's pricing page on October 31, 2026.

What Zitadel charges

The pricing page lists "25,000 Daily Active Users per month included" on Pro, but it does not publish an overage price or explain how the monthly allowance is aggregated. If you expect to pass 25,000 DAU, ask Zitadel for the exact formula before you commit.

DAU is not MAU

Zitadel's docs define DAU as the number of unique human users who authenticated successfully at least once in a 24-hour window. A user counts once per window no matter how many times they sign in, and machine-to-machine tokens and service accounts do not count at all.

That is a different meter from MAU:

• MAU counts everyone who signed in at least once in a month. A user who signs in on the first and last day of the month counts once.
• DAU counts the people who signed in on a given day. A user who signs in once a month barely moves the DAU number; a user who signs in every day moves it every day.

So 25,000 DAU is not "25,000 users per month". It is a daily measure. A B2B product with 100,000 monthly users who log in once a month can sit far below 25,000 DAU. A consumer product with 100,000 monthly users who open the app every day can be well above it.

What 25,000 DAU looks like in practice

These examples are illustrative, not Zitadel's billing formula:

If your users are daily active, Zitadel's Pro tier is smaller than the MAU number suggests. If your users sign in occasionally, it can be larger.

What is included, and what is extra

• Identity providers. Free and Pro both include 3 identity providers. If you need more social or enterprise connections, ask about the Enterprise plan.
• Custom domain. Free does not include one; Pro does.
• Support. Pro adds a support SLA; Enterprise adds a technical account manager and a custom SLA.
• Deployment. Zitadel Cloud is the default; Enterprise also offers self-hosted deployment.
• License. Zitadel is AGPL-3.0 since version 3. The open-source edition is free to self-host; Enterprise adds a commercial license and support.

Zitadel does not publish per-connection SSO or directory-sync fees the way Auth0, Clerk and WorkOS do. Its model is the DAU tier plus the plan features above.

Zitadel vs Casdoor pricing

The comparison is not only price. Zitadel is built around delegated administration for B2B SaaS, with organizations and projects as first-class objects. Casdoor is broader on protocols and charges per instance, so a product with a large user base and a small daily active base usually pays less on Casdoor. A company that needs Zitadel's multi-tenant model and enterprise SLA may prefer Zitadel even at a higher price.

When Zitadel is the better choice

• You are building multi-tenant B2B SaaS and need organizations, projects and delegated administration.
• You need data residency in the EU, US, Switzerland or Australia.
• You want a managed enterprise contract with a 99.99% uptime SLA and a technical account manager.
• AGPL-3.0 is acceptable for your self-hosted deployment.

When Casdoor is the better choice

• You want a flat bill that does not grow with monthly active users.
• You need CAS, LDAP or RADIUS as well as OIDC and SAML.
• You want the same code self-hosted or managed, with no per-user or per-connection fees.
• You are a small team that wants a dedicated instance from $6.67/month billed yearly.

See the Casdoor vs Zitadel comparison for the feature-by-feature view, or price out Casdoor Cloud.

FAQ

How much does Zitadel cost? Free is $0 with 100 DAU. Pro is $100/month with 25,000 DAU. Enterprise is a custom quote with unlimited DAU. Zitadel does not publish an overage price for Pro.

Is 25,000 DAU the same as 25,000 users? No. DAU counts unique human users who signed in during a 24-hour window, not everyone who signed in during the month. A user who signs in once a month has little effect on DAU.

Does Zitadel have a free tier? Yes. The Free plan includes 100 DAU, unlimited users and organizations, 3 identity providers and all security features.

Is Zitadel open source? Yes, since version 3 it is licensed under AGPL-3.0. You can self-host it for free; Enterprise adds a commercial license and support.

Is Casdoor cheaper than Zitadel? At small scale, yes: Casdoor Cloud starts at $6.67/month billed yearly with unlimited users. At larger scale it depends on DAU and features; compare the protocols, multi-tenancy and support you actually need.