Chat | Discussions | Newsletter

Guide | API Docs | Code Docs

Support this project!

Work in Open Source, Ory is hiring!

---

Ory Hydra is a hardened, OpenID Certified OAuth 2.0 Server and OpenID Connect Provider optimized for low-latency, high throughput, and low resource consumption. Ory Hydra is not an identity provider (user sign up, user login, password reset flow), but connects to your existing identity provider through a login and consent app. Implementing the login and consent app in a different language is easy, and exemplary consent apps (Node) and SDKs for common languages are provided.

Ory Hydra can use Ory Kratos as its identity server.

Ory Hydra on the Ory Network

The Ory Network is the fastest, most secure and worry-free way to use Ory's Services. Ory OAuth2 & OpenID Connect is powered by the Ory Hydra open source federation server, and it's fully API-compatible.

The Ory Network provides the infrastructure for modern end-to-end security:

• Identity & credential management scaling to billions of users and devices
• Registration, Login and Account management flows for passkey, biometric, social, SSO and multi-factor authentication
• Pre-built login, registration and account management pages and components
• OAuth2 and OpenID provider for single sign on, API access and machine-to-machine authorization
• Low-latency permission checks based on Google's Zanzibar model and with built-in support for the Ory Permission Language

It's fully managed, highly available, developer & compliance-friendly!

• GDPR-friendly secure storage with data locality
• Cloud-native APIs, compatible with Ory's Open Source servers
• Comprehensive admin tools with the web-based Ory Console and the Ory Command Line Interface (CLI)
• Extensive documentation, straightforward examples and easy-to-follow guides
• Fair, usage-based pricing

Sign up for a free developer account today!

Ory Hydra On-premise support

Are you running Ory Hydra in a mission-critical, commercial environment? The Ory Enterprise License (OEL) provides enhanced features, security, and expert support directly from the Ory core maintainers.

Organizations that require advanced features, enhanced security, and enterprise-grade support for Ory's identity and access management solutions benefit from the Ory Enterprise License (OEL) as a self-hosted, premium offering including:

• Additional features not available in the open-source version.
• Regular releases that address CVEs and security vulnerabilities, with strict SLAs for patching based on severity.
• Support for advanced scaling and multi-tenancy features.
• Premium support options, including SLAs, direct engineer access, and concierge onboarding.
• Access to private Docker registry for a faster, more reliable access to vetted enterprise builds.

A valid Ory Enterprise License and access to the Ory Enterprise Docker Registry are required to use these features. OEL is designed for mission-critical, production, and global applications where organizations need maximum control and flexibility over their identity infrastructure. Ory's offering is the only official program for qualified support from the maintainers. For more information book a meeting with the Ory team to discuss your needs!

Get Started

You can use Docker to run Ory Hydra locally or use the Ory CLI to try out Ory Hydra:

# This example works best in Bash
bash <(curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ory/meta/master/install.sh) -b . ory
sudo mv ./ory /usr/local/bin/

# Or with Homebrew installed
brew install ory/tap/cli

create a new project (you may also use Docker)

ory create project --name "Ory Hydra 2.0 Example"
project_id="{set to the id from output}"

and follow the quick & easy steps below.

OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials / Machine-to-Machine

Create an OAuth 2.0 Client, and run the OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials flow:

ory create oauth2-client --project $project_id \
    --name "Client Credentials Demo" \
    --grant-type client_credentials
client_id="{set to client id from output}"
client_secret="{set to client secret from output}"

ory perform client-credentials --client-id=$client_id --client-secret=$client_secret --project $project_id
access_token="{set to access token from output}"

ory introspect token $access_token --project $project_id

OAuth 2.0 Authorize Code + OpenID Connect

Try out the OAuth 2.0 Authorize Code grant right away!

By accepting permissions openid and offline_access at the consent screen, Ory refreshes and OpenID Connect ID token,

ory create oauth2-client --project $project_id \
    --name "Authorize Code with OpenID Connect Demo" \
    --grant-type authorization_code,refresh_token \
    --response-type code \
    --redirect-uri http://127.0.0.1:4446/callback
code_client_id="{set to client id from output}"
code_client_secret="{set to client secret from output}"

ory perform authorization-code \
    --project $project_id \
    --client-id $code_client_id \
    --client-secret $code_client_secret
code_access_token="{set to access token from output}"

ory introspect token $code_access_token --project $project_id

---

• What is Ory Hydra?
  • Who's using it?
  • OAuth2 and OpenID Connect: Open Standards!
  • OpenID Connect Certified
• Quickstart
  • Installation
• Ecosystem
  • Ory Kratos: Identity and User Infrastructure and Management
  • Ory Hydra: OAuth2 & OpenID Connect Server
  • Ory Oathkeeper: Identity & Access Proxy
  • Ory Keto: Access Control Policies as a Server
• Security
  • Disclosing vulnerabilities
• Benchmarks
• Telemetry
• Documentation
  • Guide
  • HTTP API documentation
  • Upgrading and Changelog
  • Command line documentation
  • Develop
    • Dependencies
    • Formatting Code
    • Running Tests
      • Short Tests
      • Regular Tests
    • E2E Tests
      • OpenID Connect Conformity Tests
    • Build Docker
    • Run the Docker Compose quickstarts
    • Add a new migration
• Libraries and third-party projects

What is Ory Hydra?

Ory Hydra is a server implementation of the OAuth 2.0 authorization framework and the OpenID Connect Core 1.0. Existing OAuth2 implementations usually ship as libraries or SDKs such as node-oauth2-server or Ory Fosite, or as fully featured identity solutions with user management and user interfaces, such as Keycloak.

Implementing and using OAuth2 without understanding the whole specification is challenging and prone to errors, even when SDKs are being used. The primary goal of Ory Hydra is to make OAuth 2.0 and OpenID Connect 1.0 better accessible.

Ory Hydra implements the flows described in OAuth2 and OpenID Connect 1.0 without forcing you to use a "Hydra User Management" or some template engine or a predefined front-end. Instead, it relies on HTTP redirection and cryptographic methods to verify user consent allowing you to use Ory Hydra with any authentication endpoint, be it Ory Kratos, authboss, User Frosting or your proprietary Java authentication.

Who's using it?

The Ory community stands on the shoulders of individuals, companies, and maintainers. The Ory team thanks everyone involved - from submitting bug reports and feature requests, to contributing patches and documentation. The Ory community counts more than 50.000 members and is growing. The Ory stack protects 7.000.000.000+ API requests every day across thousands of companies. None of this would have been possible without each and everyone of you!

The following list represents companies that have accompanied us along the way and that have made outstanding contributions to our ecosystem. If you think that your company deserves a spot here, reach out to office@ory.sh now!

Name	Logo	Website	Case Study
OpenAI		openai.com	OpenAI Case Study
Fandom		fandom.com	Fandom Case Study
Lumin		luminpdf.com	Lumin Case Study
Sencrop		sencrop.com	Sencrop Case Study
OSINT Industries		osint.industries	OSINT Industries Case Study
HGV		hgv.it	HGV Case Study
Maxroll		maxroll.gg	Maxroll Case Study
Zezam		zezam.io	Zezam Case Study
T.RowePrice		troweprice.com
Mistral		mistral.ai
Axel Springer		axelspringer.com
Hemnet		hemnet.se
Cisco		cisco.com
Presidencia de la República Dominicana		presidencia.gob.do
Moonpig		moonpig.com
Booster		choosebooster.com
Zaptec		zaptec.com
Klarna		klarna.com
Raspberry PI Foundation		raspberrypi.org
Tulip		tulip.com
Hootsuite		hootsuite.com
Segment		segment.com
Arduino		arduino.cc
Sainsbury's		sainsburys.co.uk
Contraste		contraste.com
inMusic		inmusicbrands.com
Buhta		buhta.com
Amplitude		amplitude.com

Many thanks to all individual contributors

OAuth2 and OpenID Connect: Open Standards!

Ory Hydra implements Open Standards set by the IETF:

• The OAuth 2.0 Authorization Framework
• OAuth 2.0 Threat Model and Security Considerations
• OAuth 2.0 Token Revocation
• OAuth 2.0 Token Introspection
• OAuth 2.0 for Native Apps
• OAuth 2.0 Dynamic Client Registration Protocol
• OAuth 2.0 Dynamic Client Registration Management Protocol
• Proof Key for Code Exchange by OAuth Public Clients
• JSON Web Token (JWT) Profile for OAuth 2.0 Client Authentication and Authorization Grants

and the OpenID Foundation:

• OpenID Connect Core 1.0
• OpenID Connect Discovery 1.0
• OpenID Connect Dynamic Client Registration 1.0
• OpenID Connect Front-Channel Logout 1.0
• OpenID Connect Back-Channel Logout 1.0

OpenID Connect Certified

Ory Hydra is an OpenID Foundation certified OpenID Provider (OP).

The following OpenID profiles are certified:

• Basic OpenID Provider (response types code)
• Implicit OpenID Provider (response types id_token, id_token+token)
• Hybrid OpenID Provider (response types code+id_token, code+id_token+token, code+token)
• OpenID Provider Publishing Configuration Information
• Dynamic OpenID Provider

To obtain certification, we deployed the reference user login and consent app (unmodified) and Ory Hydra v1.0.0.

Quickstart

This section is a starter guide to working with Ory Hydra. In-depth docs are available as well:

• The documentation is available here.
• The REST API documentation is available here.

Installation

Head over to the Ory Developer Documentation to learn how to install Ory Hydra on Linux, macOS, Windows, and Docker and how to build Ory Hydra from source.

Ecosystem

We build Ory on several guiding principles when it comes to our architecture design:

• Minimal dependencies
• Runs everywhere
• Scales without effort
• Minimize room for human and network errors

Ory's architecture is designed to run best on a Container Orchestration system such as Kubernetes, CloudFoundry, OpenShift, and similar projects. Binaries are small (5-15MB) and available for all popular processor types (ARM, AMD64, i386) and operating systems (FreeBSD, Linux, macOS, Windows) without system dependencies (Java, Node, Ruby, libxml, ...).

Ory Kratos: Identity and User Infrastructure and Management

Ory Kratos is an API-first Identity and User Management system that is built according to cloud architecture best practices. It implements core use cases that almost every software application needs to deal with: Self-service Login and Registration, Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA/2FA), Account Recovery and Verification, Profile, and Account Management.

Ory Hydra: OAuth2 & OpenID Connect Server

Ory Hydra is an OpenID Certified™ OAuth2 and OpenID Connect Provider which easily connects to any existing identity system by writing a tiny "bridge" application. It gives absolute control over the user interface and user experience flows.

Ory Oathkeeper: Identity & Access Proxy

Ory Oathkeeper is a BeyondCorp/Zero Trust Identity & Access Proxy (IAP) with configurable authentication, authorization, and request mutation rules for your web services: Authenticate JWT, Access Tokens, API Keys, mTLS; Check if the contained subject is allowed to perform the request; Encode resulting content into custom headers (X-User-ID), JSON Web Tokens and more!

Ory Keto: Access Control Policies as a Server

Ory Keto is a policy decision point. It uses a set of access control policies, similar to AWS IAM Policies, in order to determine whether a subject (user, application, service, car, ...) is authorized to perform a certain action on a resource.

Security

Why should I use Ory Hydra? It's not that hard to implement two OAuth2 endpoints and there are numerous SDKs out there!

OAuth2 and OAuth2 related specifications are over 400 written pages. Implementing OAuth2 is easy, getting it right is hard. Ory Hydra is trusted by companies all around the world, has a vibrant community and faces millions of requests in production each day. Of course, we also compiled a security guide with more details on cryptography and security concepts. Read the security guide now.

Disclosing vulnerabilities

If you think you found a security vulnerability, please refrain from posting it publicly on the forums, the chat, or GitHub. You can find all info for responsible disclosure in our security.txt.

Benchmarks

Our continuous integration runs a collection of benchmarks against Ory Hydra. You can find the results here.

Telemetry

Our services collect summarized, anonymized data that can optionally be turned off. Click here to learn more.

Documentation

Guide

The full Ory Hydra documentation is available here.

HTTP API documentation

The HTTP API is documented here.

Upgrading and Changelog

New releases might introduce breaking changes. To help you identify and incorporate those changes, we document these changes in CHANGELOG.md.

Command line documentation

Run hydra -h or hydra help.

Develop

We love all contributions! Please read our contribution guidelines.

Dependencies

You need Go 1.13+ with GO111MODULE=on and (for the test suites):

• Docker and Docker Compose
• Makefile
• NodeJS / npm

It is possible to develop Ory Hydra on Windows, but please be aware that all guides assume a Unix shell like bash or zsh.

Formatting Code

You can format all code using make format. Our CI checks if your code is properly formatted.

Running Tests

There are three types of tests you can run:

• Short tests (do not require a SQL database like PostgreSQL)
• Regular tests (do require PostgreSQL, MySQL, CockroachDB)
• End to end tests (do require databases and will use a test browser)

All of the above tests can be run using the makefile. See the commands below.

Makefile commands

# quick tests
make quicktest

# regular tests
make test

# updates all snapshots
make test-refresh

# end-to-end tests
make e2e

Short Tests

It is recommended to use the make file to run your tests using make quicktest , however, you can still use the go test command.

Please note:

All tests run against a sqlite in-memory database, thus it is required to use the -tags sqlite build tag.

Short tests run fairly quickly. You can either test all of the code at once:

go test -v -failfast -short -tags sqlite ./...

or test just a specific module:

go test -v -failfast -short -tags sqlite ./client

or a specific test:

go test -v -failfast -short -tags sqlite -run ^TestName$ ./...

Regular Tests

Regular tests require a database set up. Our test suite is able to work with docker directly (using ory/dockertest) but we encourage to use the Makefile instead. Using dockertest can bloat the number of Docker Images on your system and are quite slow. Instead we recommend doing:

make test

Please be aware that make test recreates the databases every time you run make test. This can be annoying if you are trying to fix something very specific and need the database tests all the time. In that case we suggest that you initialize the databases with:

make test-resetdb
export TEST_DATABASE_MYSQL='mysql://root:secret@(127.0.0.1:3444)/mysql?parseTime=true&multiStatements=true'
export TEST_DATABASE_POSTGRESQL='postgres://postgres:secret@127.0.0.1:3445/postgres?sslmode=disable'
export TEST_DATABASE_COCKROACHDB='cockroach://root@127.0.0.1:3446/defaultdb?sslmode=disable'

Then you can run go test as often as you'd like:

go test -p 1 ./...

# or in a module:
cd client; go test .

E2E Tests

The E2E tests use Cypress to run full browser tests. You can execute these tests with:

make e2e

The runner will not show the Browser window, as it runs in the CI Mode (background). That makes debugging these type of tests very difficult, but thankfully you can run the e2e test in the browser which helps with debugging! Just run:

./test/e2e/circle-ci.bash memory --watch

# Or for the JSON Web Token Access Token strategy:
# ./test/e2e/circle-ci.bash memory-jwt --watch

or if you would like to test one of the databases:

make test-resetdb
export TEST_DATABASE_MYSQL='mysql://root:secret@(127.0.0.1:3444)/mysql?parseTime=true&multiStatements=true'
export TEST_DATABASE_POSTGRESQL='postgres://postgres:secret@127.0.0.1:3445/postgres?sslmode=disable'
export TEST_DATABASE_COCKROACHDB='cockroach://root@127.0.0.1:3446/defaultdb?sslmode=disable'

# You can test against each individual database:
./test/e2e/circle-ci.bash postgres --watch
./test/e2e/circle-ci.bash memory --watch
./test/e2e/circle-ci.bash mysql --watch
# ...

Once you run the script, a Cypress window will appear. Hit the button "Run all Specs"!

The code for these tests is located in ./cypress/integration and ./cypress/support and ./cypress/helpers. The website you're seeing is located in ./test/e2e/oauth2-client.

OpenID Connect Conformity Tests

To run Ory Hydra against the OpenID Connect conformity suite, run

$ test/conformity/start.sh --build

and then in a separate shell

$ test/conformity/test.sh

Running these tests will take a significant amount of time which is why they are not part of the CI pipeline.

Build Docker

You can build a development Docker Image using:

make docker

Run the Docker Compose quickstarts

If you wish to check your code changes against any of the docker-compose quickstart files, run:

docker compose -f quickstart.yml up --build # ....

[!WARNING] If you already have a production image (e.g. oryd/hydra:v2.2.0) pulled, the above make docker command will replace it with a local build of the image that is more equivalent to the -distroless variant on Docker Hub.

You can pull the production image any time using docker pull

Add a new migration

1. mkdir persistence/sql/src/YYYYMMDD000001_migration_name/
2. Put the migration files into this directory, following the standard naming conventions. If you wish to execute different parts of a migration in separate transactions, add split marks (lines with the text --split) where desired. Why this might be necessary is explained in https://github.com/gobuffalo/fizz/issues/104.
3. Run make persistence/sql/migrations/<migration_id> to generate migration fragments.
4. If an update causes the migration to have fewer fragments than the number already generated, run make persistence/sql/migrations/<migration_id>-clean. This is equivalent to a rm command with the right parameters, but comes with better tab completion.
5. Before committing generated migration fragments, run the above clean command and generate a fresh copy of migration fragments to make sure the sql/src and sql/migrations directories are consistent.

Libraries and third-party projects

Official:

• User Login & Consent Example

Community:

• Visit this document for an overview of community projects and articles

Developer Blog:

• Visit the Ory Blog for guides, tutorials and articles around Ory Hydra and the Ory ecosystem.