Tinyauth - lightweight OIDC authentication server for self-hosted apps

Source 1 min read
authenticationoidcself-hostedreverse-proxyoauthldaplightweight

Summary

Tinyauth is a minimal OpenID Connect (OIDC) authentication and authorization server designed for self-hosted setups. It runs entirely from environment variables with no dashboard or config files, and supports OAuth providers and LDAP backends out of the box.

Key Insight

  • Targets the gap between “no auth” and “full Keycloak/Authentik deployment” for homelabbers and small self-hosted stacks
  • Zero-config philosophy: environment variables only, no database, no admin UI - makes it trivially deployable as a sidecar or forward-auth middleware
  • Supports OAuth (social login) and LDAP, meaning it can slot into existing directory setups without migration
  • Being an OIDC provider itself, it can front any reverse proxy (Traefik, Caddy, nginx) that supports forward authentication
  • Open source on GitHub with an active Discord community