Open or Closed: What Kind of User Identity Stack Should You Trust?
Apr 21, 2025
3 mins
Matt (Co-Founder and CEO)
When evaluating authentication platforms, devs often ask:
“Is it open source?”
It’s a fair question. Transparency matters — especially for systems as sensitive as identity and access control. But open doesn’t always mean better. And closed doesn’t always mean locked down.
Let’s unpack it.
The Case for Open Source Auth
Transparent code = trust and security audits
Self-hosting for full data control
Community-driven innovation
Great for hobby projects, internal tooling, privacy-critical apps
But…
Operational burden is high
You’re on the hook for patching, scaling, monitoring
Often lacks unified design (auth + authz + audit)
Enterprise features (SSO, RBAC, compliance tooling) are gated or missing
The Case for Closed Source
Managed services = less operational stress
Battle-tested scalability
Faster roadmap velocity
Cleaner integrations and onboarding
The tradeoff: Control vs Velocity.
Where Prefactor Fits Prefactor isn’t open source — but it’s built with open principles:
Transparent DSL you can audit and version
Self-service CLI and test environments
Dev-first workflows
No lock-in logic — just logical control
We believe trust isn’t just about license types — it’s about how the platform behaves in your stack.
In the end, it’s not “open vs closed.”
It’s:
Do I trust this to be my infrastructure — now, and when I scale?