Cloudflare Access vs Keycloak
Cloudflare Access
Cloudflare Access is a zero trust network access (ZTNA) product, part of the Cloudflare Zero Trust platform. Instead of handing out VPN credentials, Access puts Cloudflare's global network in front of your internal apps and SSH/RDP hosts, enforcing identity-aware policies on every request. It brokers authentication to your existing identity provider (Okta, Entra ID, Google Workspace, etc.) rather than replacing it, which keeps deployment lightweight.
Pros
- Replaces VPN with simpler identity-based access
- Works with your existing identity provider (doesn't replace it)
- Generous free tier up to 50 users
- Cloudflare's global network means low-latency access anywhere
Cons
- Not a full IAM platform; you still need an identity provider
- Best experience requires the Warp client on devices
- Less mature than legacy ZTNA vendors for some enterprise features
- Pricing tiers bundle features you may not need
Pricing: Free up to 50 users; Zero Trust Standard $7/user/mo
Keycloak
Keycloak is the open-source identity and access management platform backed by Red Hat. It provides SSO, federation, identity brokering, and social login for modern applications and services. Keycloak is the upstream project for Red Hat Build of Keycloak (the commercially supported version) and is widely deployed in both enterprise and community settings where full control over the identity stack is required.
Pros
- Free, fully open source, self-hosted forever
- Rich feature set comparable to commercial platforms
- Strong federation with LDAP and Active Directory
- Large community and extensive extension ecosystem
Cons
- Operational overhead of running it yourself
- Admin UI is functional but dated
- Requires expertise to deploy for high availability
- Upgrades between major versions can be painful
Pricing: Free (open source) / Red Hat Build of Keycloak via subscription