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Remote Access Control in Open Source + Enterprise Plan Updates

· 4 min read
Fletcher Heisler
Fletcher Heisler
CEO at Authentik Security Inc

authentik is an open source Identity Provider that unifies your identity needs into a single platform, replacing Okta and Auth0, Ping, and Entra ID. Authentik Security is a public benefit company building on top of the open source project.

We're making some updates to our open source and enterprise features and support. These changes allow us to scale with the demand we're seeing for authentik—both open source and enterprise—and maintain our commitment to open source as a Public Benefit Company.

TL;DR:

  • Remote Access Control is free and open source!
  • No minimum user counts are required for paid plans
  • Ticket-based support is available for paid plans over $1,000
  • Enterprise support is available for contracts over $20,000

Read more details below!

We're open sourcing remote access​

We moved Remote Access Control (RAC) via RDP, SSH, and VNC from authentik's enterprise functionality to our free, open source code with our latest major release, 2025.2. We try our best to limit enterprise-specific functionality to features that clearly fit into "enterprise" use cases and that would be non-essential to homelab users. That typically means features around compliance and enterprise-specific integrations. We received a variety of requests from homelab users with compelling use cases for RAC, convincing us that this is core functionality that will benefit the community.

This means giving up some potential revenue, but we believe that opening up RAC is the right thing to do. Homelab users will be able to shell into their home box or use a remote desktop to access their homelab from a remote location. This is a helpful security benefit allowing you to reach your equipment to check in or make changes from wherever you are.

You can read more about how we decide what goes into the enterprise edition versus open source here.

Pricing updates​

We're also evolving our pricing tiers and support to reflect our growing customer base and user base. We are a small team, and as our user base continues to scale, we want to prioritize providing expert support proportionate to our customers' investment in authentik.

New thresholds for enterprise support​

At the "Professional" tier, with no minimum user count requirements, you can purchase a license to access all enterprise functionality for your authentik installation.

All annual subscriptions over $1,000 (around 17 users, or one internal user plus 4,000 external users) will also include access to our support ticketing system. Currently, our team reviews all open tickets every week, and we aim to respond to all requests within 1-3 business days.

At the "Enterprise" tier, custom contracts and dedicated support from our team will now be available for all annual subscriptions of $20,000 and above. For our largest current customers, enterprise support has taken the form of shared Slack Connect channels, biweekly check-in calls, deep involvement from our team in migration and rollout planning, and when appropriate and possible, prioritized feature requests. (Our recent application entitlements, redirect stage, and impossible travel features have all been prioritized in part from requests by enterprise customers.)

We will, as always, give our best effort to respond to any and all requests from all users, paying or not. We recently welcomed a long-time community member as a part-time Authentik Security team member to help with QA and PR reviews. If you are interested in helping us with community + technical support or a related role, please reach out!

What do these changes mean for existing customers?​

We are not removing any support access for existing enterprise subscriptions, regardless of the size of those subscriptions.

If you specifically signed up for an enterprise plan for RAC alone, you are welcome to maintain that subscription to support us, or to downgrade upon subscription renewal (simply remove your license). You will continue to receive enterprise support through the remainder of your subscription. That said, we hope by then we will have delivered enough other interesting enterprise functionality to keep you on!

We look forward to more of the community giving authentik and Remote Access Control a try. If you're looking for advanced enterprise functionality and/or direct support from our team, please reach out to discuss how we can best support you.