All 100 ideasPrivacy and security
#74 of 100 · Privacy and security
Sign-in not owned by big tech
A trusted sign-in option not run by Google or Facebook that works across many sites, and an easy auth service developers can rely on.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay46%
- Want it local or private15%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted31%
- Want AI to do it0%
Share of the 13 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Built, still asked for28 Show HN launches do this job, and 18 more do part of it. People still ask, so the launches are missed, unknown, or not what they want. Ask what they’re missing before you build.
- Obligator – An OpenID Connect server for self-hosters2023 · 273 pts
- Tesseral – Open-Source Auth2025 · 193 pts
- BoxyHQ – open-source alternative to Auth0/WorkOS2022 · 176 pts
- Run your own OAuth2/OpenID Connect provider2016 · 161 pts
- Stack, an open-source Clerk/Firebase Auth alternative2024 · 144 pts
- Open Source Authentication and Authorization2022 · 128 pts
- Open-source OAuth2 & OpenID server Ory Hydra v22022 · 108 pts
- Open-Source Auth for NextJS / React2021 · 107 pts
Instead of: Facebook, Google, Auth0, Mozilla Persona
The idea, as matched
A sign-in provider not tied to Google, Facebook or Apple, run by a trusted privacy-focused company or self-hosted, giving users one login across sites and developers an easy auth service.
Jev first matched 17 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 13 of 17.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
Reader’s note. Split between user SSO and developer auth; Persona nostalgia.
- Feb 2025Wants a privacy-friendly login option, such as Proton's, offered on many sites instead of Google login. Read it: a comment in “US authorities can see more than ever, with Big Tech as their eyes”
- Oct 2023Wants a self-hostable identity provider that federates company Microsoft logins and a users table for internal tools. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: Obligator – An OpenID Connect server for self-hosters”
- Jun 2023Wants an optionally centralized or federated, portable identity-only system with account recovery to replace big-tech logins. Read it: a comment in “June 2023 Data Dump is missing”
- Jan 2022Wants an authentication service alternative to Cognito that integrates well with AWS services. Read it: a comment in “I took a job at Amazon, only to leave after 10 months”
- Apr 2021Wants an open-source alternative to the attack protection features in Okta, Azure and Auth0. Read it: a comment in “Microsoft says mandatory password changing is “ancient and obsolete” (2019)”
- Oct 2020Wants a self-hostable single sign-on option with broad site support, replacing Google login. Read it: a comment in “Google disabled my husband's account”
- Sep 2020Would happily pay for Mozilla to act as an independent, secure login provider rivaling Login with Facebook. Read it: a comment in “Firefox's JIT is getting significantly faster”
- May 2019Would pay for a privacy-centered OAuth login service that verifies real humans and replaces Google or Facebook login. Read it: a post: “NoAuth – Easy Authentication with Privacy”
- May 2017Would pay for an Auth0-like service that avoids JWT and is trusted by security experts. Read it: a comment in “Things to Use Instead of JSON Web Tokens”
- Jan 2016Wants a replacement for Mozilla Persona to outsource authentication to a trusted third party. Read it: a comment in “Shutting down persona.org in November 2016”
- Feb 2014Would pay under $100/month for a proven, easy-to-integrate login service like Persona, if it looked durable. Read it: a comment in “Why we love Mozilla Persona”
- Feb 2012Would pay for a Facebook Connect-like login service if login data stays exportable so they own their users. Read it: a comment in “The Problem with Facebook Connect”
- Jan 2011Would pay for email-only sign-on where typing an email logs you in within seconds. Read it: a comment in “E-mail Sign On”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.