Hanko – Open-Source Auth and User Management for the Passkey Era
Hey HN! I'm excited to introduce Hanko, a passkey-first authentication platform that allows you to integrate authentication and user management into your apps with minimal effort, all via pre-built components and a flexible API. The origins of the project date back almost 10 years, when we started working on “replacing the password” with a push-based, white-label authenticator app. Early on, we came across the FIDO standards, which eventually became what we know today as passkeys. As big fans of passkeys, we always knew that we wanted to build solutions for other developers to make the…
In plain words
Hanko is an open-source authentication platform that helps developers add passkey-based login and user management to their applications using pre-built components and APIs. Designed for the passkey era, it aims to simplify integration with minimal effort. The project evolved from a decade-long effort to replace passwords, building on FIDO standards to provide developers with straightforward tools for implementing passkey authentication.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN! I'm excited to introduce Hanko, a passkey-first authentication platform that allows you to integrate authentication and user management into your apps with minimal effort, all via pre-built components and a flexible API. The origins of the project date back almost 10 years, when we started working on “replacing the password” with a push-based, white-label authenticator app. Early on, we came across the FIDO standards, which eventually became what we know today as passkeys. As big fans of passkeys, we always knew that we wanted to build solutions for other developers to make the integration of passkey authentication as easy as possible. The latest iteration of this mission is project Hanko. Now, what does “for the passkey era” actually mean? We spent months (years, honestly) getting all the UX flows right, while the ecosystem of browsers and operating systems wasn’t even there yet. And we added features to support the switch from passwords to passkeys. E.g. optional prompts to create passkeys during sign up and login, passwords can be set to optional and can be deleted by the users themselves, all controllable in fine-grained configurations. Users can create and manage as many passkeys as they like, passkey autofill, and more. You can even set up Hanko for passkeys only if you want (some of our users are running this in production already). Apart from passkeys, Hanko also supports most other common authentication methods, including “legacy” TOTP MFA, hardware security keys, and even enterprise SSO via SAML (although we are still finalizing that at the moment). Hanko is an open-source project, and we’re eager to see how you use it and contribute to its development. If you’re working on an app and need a customizable authentication solution, we’d love to hear your feedback and suggestions! Check out the full documentation and get started today: https://docs.hanko.io And here’s our roadmap: https://www.hanko.io/roadmap Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and questions! Felix and the Hanko Team
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