Hanko
Auth & CIAM Germany
Passkey-first authentication API with open-source, self-hosted core Alternative to Auth0.
Details
Hanko is an authentication backend that treats passkeys as the primary factor rather than an add-on, with email passcodes and passwords as fallbacks. It issues OIDC and OAuth 2.0 tokens, supports seven social providers plus custom OIDC, and offers TOTP and security-key MFA, server-side revocable sessions, webhooks, and an admin API.
Developers drop in prebuilt web components for login and profile management, or self-host the whole stack under AGPL-3.0 with MIT-licensed frontend elements. Hanko Cloud runs on AWS Frankfurt, and the data-processing agreement commits to German data centres.
It is aimed at teams building consumer-facing sign-in. Enterprise federation is the gap: Hanko acts as a SAML service provider but not an identity provider, and SCIM provisioning is absent.
About Hanko
Hanko GmbH is a German software company founded in Kiel in 2018 by Felix Magedanz, registered at the Kiel district court under HRB 19885 KI. It builds open-source authentication infrastructure centred on passkeys and the WebAuthn standard, released under AGPL-3.0 with MIT-licensed frontend components.
The company also runs Hanko Cloud, a hosted version served from Frankfurt. Its investors are German — High-Tech Gründerfonds, Smart Infrastructure Ventures, and adesso Ventures, alongside angels from PAYONE and Intershop. There is no parent company.
