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Comparison · Infra & APIs
Authelia vs Dragonfly
A side-by-side editorial comparison of Authelia and Dragonfly — release velocity, themes, recent moves, and the top alternatives to consider.
Authelia vs Dragonfly: at a glance
What is Authelia?
Authelia patches two access control bypass paths from canonicalization gaps.
Authelia v4.39.x is in a sustained hardening cycle: a critical security release in May fixed two authentication bypass paths, and subsequent patch releases have worked through a dense queue of OIDC protocol compliance bugs — resource indicators, client credentials foreign key handling, authentication strategy configuration, and resource strategy matching. The pace of micro-patches (v4.39.21 through v4.39.25 in a two-week window) reflects active production use surfacing edge cases.
What is Dragonfly?
Dragonfly tags v2.0.0 while hardening memory accounting and patching a HyperLogLog CVE across the 1.x line
Dragonfly is shipping across two concurrent tracks: the 1.40.x stable line is receiving steady improvements to connection memory accounting correctness, tiering metrics, and Redis ecosystem compatibility (RedisShake RDB format), while v2.0.0 has been tagged. The 2.0.0 entry's visible content is minimal — scope-based memory tracking is added but disabled — suggesting 2.0.0 is an architectural milestone marker for accumulated work rather than a single user-visible feature introduction.
Authelia vs Dragonfly: editorial side-by-side
Authelia
5.0INFRA · APIS
Authelia patches two access control bypass paths from canonicalization gaps.
◆ Current state
Authelia v4.39.x is in a sustained hardening cycle: a critical security release in May fixed two authentication bypass paths, and subsequent patch releases have worked through a dense queue of OIDC protocol compliance bugs — resource indicators, client credentials foreign key handling, authentication strategy configuration, and resource strategy matching. The pace of micro-patches (v4.39.21 through v4.39.25 in a two-week window) reflects active production use surfacing edge cases.
◆ Where it's heading
The OIDC fix pattern is deliberate: Authelia is closing gaps in the parts of OAuth 2.0/OIDC that enterprise clients actually use — resource indicators, client credentials grants, pooled authentication. This isn't maintenance drift; it's building toward a more complete OIDC server for complex multi-client deployments. The access control canonicalization fix from May signals a broader audit of how Authelia normalizes domain names and usernames before authorization decisions.
◆ Prediction
The OIDC compliance fixes in v4.39.x are groundwork for new grant types and flows in a future major version. Expect device authorization flow or Pushed Authorization Requests (PAR) to appear in a v4.40 or v5.x roadmap entry once the protocol surface is cleaned up.
Dragonfly
6.3INFRA · APIS
Dragonfly tags v2.0.0 while hardening memory accounting and patching a HyperLogLog CVE across the 1.x line
◆ Current state
Dragonfly is shipping across two concurrent tracks: the 1.40.x stable line is receiving steady improvements to connection memory accounting correctness, tiering metrics, and Redis ecosystem compatibility (RedisShake RDB format), while v2.0.0 has been tagged. The 2.0.0 entry's visible content is minimal — scope-based memory tracking is added but disabled — suggesting 2.0.0 is an architectural milestone marker for accumulated work rather than a single user-visible feature introduction.
◆ Where it's heading
The project's operational focus is sharpening around production reliability and Redis compatibility: O(1) connection memory tracking, per-shard tiering metrics, CVE-2025-32023 remediation in HyperLogLog, and AVX2/NEON SIMD acceleration for dense HLL operations (8-29x measured gains). The staged 2.0.0 release and the disabled scope-based memory tracking point to Dragonfly building toward granular per-connection memory visibility as a differentiating feature for operators running large clusters.
◆ Prediction
Scope-based memory tracking will be re-enabled in a near-term 2.x patch — the code is already shipped in 2.0.0, just gated off. That re-enable will be the actual headline for what 2.0.0 unlocks operationally.
Alternatives to Authelia and Dragonfly
Other Infra & APIs products tracked by Sparkpulse, ranked by recent ship velocity. Each card links to a full editorial trajectory and lets you pivot into a head-to-head comparison with either Authelia or Dragonfly.
Honeybadger
Honeybadger pivots from error tracker to full observability layer with AI-native query and anomaly detection
Resend
Resend expands from email API to full platform with SSO, analytics, and AI-native dev tooling
Helm
Helm 3 ships its final minor release while Helm 4.3 eliminates multi-minute status computation delays.
Quay
Quay ships a series of SSRF fixes in mirroring and proxy cache alongside steady CVE patching across 3.10 and 3.12 branches.
Redocly
Redocly releases daily Reunite builds, hardening AI search RBAC and expanding MCP tool support.
See all Authelia alternatives → · See all Dragonfly alternatives →
Recent activity from Authelia and Dragonfly
Latest ship moves from both products, interleaved chronologically. ⚡ = editorial spark.
- 12h agoAutheliav4.39.25
- 1d agoAutheliav4.39.24
- 1d agoDragonflyDragonfly v2.0.0: major version milestone with scope-based memory tracking staged ⚡
- 2d agoAutheliaFive OIDC protocol fixes in v4.39.23
- 4d agoDragonflyi1.40.8: fix(server): make connection memory accounting constant time (#8245)
- 6d agoDragonflyFix RDB listpack compatibility with RedisShake migrations
- 7d agoAutheliav4.39.22
- 7d agoAutheliaMulti-area hardening: LDAP auth, OIDC, and API endpoint fixes in v4.39.21
- 27d agoDragonflyTiering: unified pending-bytes limit and metrics export
- 29d agoDragonflyi1.40.2: backport: mem accounting fix, journal flushslots in tx (#8061)
- 1mo agoDragonflyHyperLogLog: CVE-2025-32023 patch, SIMD acceleration (8-29x), and three correctness fixes ⚡
- 3mo agoAutheliaAuthelia patches two access control bypass paths: domain miss and LDAP username canonicalization ⚡
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Authelia and Dragonfly?
They serve adjacent needs but don't currently overlap on shipped themes. Dragonfly is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. See the at-a-glance table above for a side-by-side breakdown of velocity, recent sparks, and editorial themes.
Is Authelia better than Dragonfly?
Sparkpulse doesn't pick a winner — we score release velocity, not feature parity. Dragonfly is currently shipping more aggressively (velocity 6.3 vs 5.0), with 1 editorial sparks in the last 30 days against 0. For your specific use case, the alternatives sections above list other Infra & APIs products to evaluate alongside.
What are the best alternatives to Authelia?
Top Authelia alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Authelia alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/authelia for the full list with editorial commentary on each.
What are the best alternatives to Dragonfly?
Top Dragonfly alternatives in Infra & APIs are ranked by recent ship velocity. Browse the "Dragonfly alternatives" section above for the current picks, or visit /alternatives/dragonfly for the full list with editorial commentary on each.