Keycloak Pricing Guide 2025: Cost Estimation for Hosting Open-Source Identity and Access Management

In today’s identity-first digital landscape, securing and managing user access is critical. For growing user bases and compliance-heavy sectors like fintech or healthcare, Keycloak has emerged as a leading open-source identity and access management solution. However, hosting Keycloak and operating it in-house introduces significant overhead. That’s why managed Keycloak services are on the rise, and understanding Keycloak pricing is essential to making an informed decision.

This guide evaluates the identity and access management company Keycloak on pricing and scale, comparing it with other IAM solutions, and showing how Inteca offers transparent pricing for identity and access management with Keycloak.

Keycloak pricing breakdown: What factors affect the cost?

The cost of managed Keycloak services for growing user bases depends on several factors:

• Infrastructure complexity: Number of environments (dev, staging, prod), high availability clusters, and geo-distributed setups impact CPU and resource needs.

• Feature scope: Multi-factor authentication, passwordless authentication, identity federation, and adaptive access control increase the effort to configure and manage applications and services.

• Integrations: with various applications and services are a key feature of Keycloak’s identity access management offerings.: Connecting to LDAP directories, Active Directory servers, SAP systems, and external OIDC or SAML providers adds engineering overhead.

• SLA tier: Higher SLA levels (like Inteca’s Gold or Platinum) offer faster response and resolution times—critical for fintech or public sector use cases.

• Red Hat build vs. Open Source: Red Hat build of Keycloak pricing includes support, hardened releases, and enterprise-grade patching, while open-source offers full control but requires more in-house expertise.

Architecture-based pricing model for IAM with Keycloak – Inteca

Unlike IAM solutions that charge per user or authentication, Inteca offers a pricing model based on architectural factors:

• No cost per user: Ideal for organizations with millions of users, Keycloak provides scalable identity access management solutions.

• Transparent pricing: Clear estimates based on Keycloak instance complexity, integrations, and SLA level.

• Scalability built-in: The model flexibly adapts as your identity access management needs grow.

This identity management system with flexible pricing eliminates MAU penalties and aligns IAM cost with real infrastructure needs.

What makes up the cost of managed Keycloak services in Inteca?

Inteca’s Managed Keycloak pricing is architecture-driven not user-based and tailored to your IAM maturity, scale, and regulatory needs. Stages 1–3 are typically delivered under a Time & Materials model due to variability in architecture and goals. Stages 4–6 can be offered at a Fixed Price once the implementation scope is clearly defined. Below are the typical components that influence the total cost:

Inteca’s project key pricing components

MD = Man Day (standard unit for planning)

Cost depends on your architecture

Your final price depends on these variables:

• Number of environments (e.g., dev, test, prod)

• Type of integrations (LDAP, AD, SAP, CRM, social login)

• Federation setup complexity

• Red Hat build or open-source Keycloak

• Migration scope (if replacing legacy IAM or SaaS IAM)

• SLA tier (Bronze to Platinum)

SLA tiers for Inteca managed Keycloak: Access control and response guarantees – Inteca tieres

All tiers include a 30-day Early Life Support phase and proactive Keycloak instance monitoring.

Why use managed Keycloak as your identity and access management solution?

Self-hosting Keycloak requires managing IAM end-to-end: configuration, patching, scaling, authentication methods, and integrations. For organizations with millions of users or enterprise-scale apps, this effort becomes substantial.

Managed Keycloak services provide:

• Expert deployment and configuration via the Keycloak admin console

• Ongoing updates, SLA-backed monitoring, and compliance alignment

• Simplified support for OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0, and SAML 2.0 identity providers

• Focused delivery on user authentication, account management, and password policies

Inteca’s managed Keycloak simplifies your IAM stack while boosting resilience and security.

Keycloak vs other IAM solutions: Pricing and feature comparison 

Keycloak IAM pricing offers distinct advantages:

• No vendor lock-in: As open-source software, Keycloak allows deep customization and self-hosting flexibility.

• Cost-effective scaling: Pricing doesn’t spike with increased authentications or user counts.

• Rich feature set: SSO, user federation, role-based access, authentication flows, and admin control via a single open-source platform.

• Versus Okta or Entra ID: Those platforms offer SaaS delivery with per-user pricing, making Keycloak more attractive for high-scale apps.

How does keycloak’s pricing compare to other iam solutions? Evaluating the identity and access management company Keycloak on pricing shows it’s an optimal solution when combined with managed hosting and Kubernetes-native delivery from Inteca.

IAM cost estimation: Hosting Keycloak for large-scale access needs

Keycloak is an open-source identity and access management platform—but that doesn’t mean it’s free to run. Hosting Keycloak in-house requires:

• High-availability Kubernetes or EC2 infrastructure

• IAM engineers to manage roles and permissions, password policies, and authentication flows

• Monitoring, patching, and SLA response overhead

With Inteca, your cost estimation becomes transparent. Monthly costs are tied to actual usage: environment size, SLA level, integrations, and whether you use Red Hat build or pure open-source.

Keycloak IAM pricing plans: Use cases and enterprise solutions

Compare Red Hat build of Keycloak pricing vs Open-Source

• Red Hat build of Keycloak pricing includes CVE protection and compliance updates.

• Open-source Keycloak is fully featured but requires internal IAM expertise.

Keycloak IAM pricing for organizations with millions of users

• Keycloak IAM pricing at scale avoids traditional cost per user.

• Perfect for apps and companies with high authentication volume and long session management needs where keycloak identity access management pricing is not growing rapidly due to scaling user-base. 

Fintech IAM pricing use cases

• How much does a hosted Keycloak solution cost for fintech companies looking to implement single sign-on?

  • Depends on authentication flows (e.g., SSO, adaptive MFA), high-availability needs, and compliance workflows (PSD2, GDPR).

  • Inteca offers secure hosting on EU cloud or hybrid infra, plus fast SLA tiers for AML/financial systems.

Transparent IAM pricing with keycloak features

• Architecture-first model = predictable budgets

• No licensing traps or user-tier jumps

• Aligned with your compliance, not penalizing your growth

Final thoughts: Why Managed Keycloak service is a cost-effective IAM solution

The great question is it how to evaluate the identity and access management company keycloak on pricing? If you need an access management solution that supports millions of users, advanced authentication and authorization, and deep integration with existing OpenID Connect and LDAP providers—Keycloak is the right IAM solution.

Inteca helps you:

• Deploy Keycloak on Kubernetes or AWS

• Simplify SSO, passwordless, and federated access flows

• Get SLA-backed support and compliance alignment

Managed Keycloak combines the flexibility of open-source with the reliability of enterprise IAM. It’s scalable, transparent, and built to simplify identity and access management at every layer.

Aleksandra Malesa

I’m a Content Marketing Specialist who loves creating engaging content that connects with people and helps businesses. I specialize in writing technical blogs for the IT industry, focusing on clear strategies and storytelling to deliver real results. When I’m not writing, I’m keeping up with the latest trends to stay ahead in the game.

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