🚀 Big Changes for Fief

[frankie567]

Hey everyone,

Today, I’m announcing that Fief is officially wrapping up its current chapter.
While it’s never easy to sunset a project in its original form, I’m genuinely excited for what’s coming next — and I wanted to take a moment to explain why.

Why this decision?

When I first started working on Fief, my goal was to build a simple, open-source authentication platform that developers could easily integrate into their applications.
But over time, it became clear that:

• Fief didn’t really take off the way I had hoped. While there was some interest, it didn’t reach the level of adoption needed to justify growing and maintaining it long-term.
• The authentication landscape is already well-served. Platforms like Clerk, Auth0, Keycloak, and others offer robust, mature solutions. Fief didn't have a strong enough unique selling point to stand out in an increasingly competitive space.

Rather than continue to push something that didn’t feel quite right, I’ve decided to close this chapter and focus on something that feels a lot more exciting and meaningful.

What’s next?

Fief isn't going away — it's transforming.

I’m incredibly excited to tease the next evolution of Fief:

I'm building a Python authentication toolkit — a library designed to make integrating authentication in Python backends (FastAPI, Flask, Django, you name it) simple, powerful, and flexible.

Think of it like what Better Auth has done for the JavaScript ecosystem — but for Python developers.
Whether you need basic login/logout flows, OAuth integrations, magic links, passwordless login, or even multi-tenant authentication setups, this new toolkit will aim to be your go-to resource.

Thank You ❤️

I’m beyond grateful for everyone who supported Fief, tried it out, sent feedback, opened issues, and encouraged the project. Your support has meant everything.

Stay tuned — I can’t wait to share more very soon!

[fubuloubu]

Fief was a very difficult idea to pull off, but worked pretty well for us. Thank you for building it!

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So the idea behind the new library is essentially evolving the fief-python client library? Being able to easily integrate client-side auth into our CLI as well as implementing auth in our backend was such a useful, useful part of the Fief! There really is no easy way to do that kind of thing in Python today, with other auth systems

[frankie567]

Thank you 🙏

The idea is that instead of having a dedicated micro service which has to run on its own, it'll be a flexible library to implement auth directly into your Python backend. With a big focus on DX.

I don't have clear plans for the client side, but this might be part of the project as well 😄

[fubuloubu]

I think it's worth considering because in reality, implementing auth in a backend service is also client-side integration. That's why you shipped FastAPI support, etc. w/ fief-python alongside the same method that worked for me with CLI. All you really need is that little browser popup and then insert the right localhost port combo into your auth system's oauth callbacks.

I liked using Fief because it was open source, but the real thing that drove me there is there either are no easy-to-use Python SDKs for working with those auth services you mentioned, or they are very badly written/autogenerated and not fun to maintain. That was the biggest value driver for using Fief to me. The auth service itself is more commoditized and competitive, like you said (and there are other open source options too like Keycloak that work just fine if you want to go that route), and also OAuth 2.0 is a widely used standard by basically all the auth services, so it makes sense to have a Python library that provides superior UX for working with them since OAuth is somewhat complicated to get right

[beevabeeva]

Hi @frankie567,
I recently discovered Fief and have spent a full day playing with it.
I am 99.9% sure I'm going to use it in production.
I especially appreciate the docs!

I understand that I will have to should fork and maintain it myself, but I am more comfortable with that than going with these other services that often change their pricing plans/shut their doors once you're locked in (hello Gitlab).

I was busy building something myself just using NGINX, Flask and the MS library - and it was so complicated!
Eventually it seemed that Flask had a bug in it that at least one other random person I found in a Youtube comments section was also having. She gave up after a month and switched to FastAPI and everything worked - that's how I found Fief (she put me on to FastAPI, then I found FastAPI-Users lib, then I found Fief).

I thought all I wanted was a login page with SSO (like the new library you are describing sounds like it would have made my life easy).
But I'm glad I found Fief because I was already realising I'd need user management as well - and I already don't have time to be doing that from scratch. And setting up the MS integration took less than 5 minutes - where as I fought with NGINX and Flask for 3 weeks :(

So just wanted to say thank you for your great work, it will (most likely) be used and (most definitely) be appreciated!

[realchandan]

As a long-term Fief user who started using it early on, I feel sad to see it go, but I understand the reasoning behind your choices.

I agree that Fief didn't really take off; I always wondered why it got so few stars! Not only the mentioned platforms but also BaaS providers are in this authentication landscape, making competition very tough.

Still, there's some room left for those looking to self-host it. It's very niche, but there's a place for it.

Anyway, best of luck with your new venture.