Products · Product
Keycloak
Raised as a usability problem by 37 people on Hacker News over 10 years (2017–2026), in 22 threads.
People raised many different problems with Keycloak, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 39 complaints
- Clunky interface, and overlapping roles and groups make it confusing2026-07-07
- Keycloak is too clunky and cumbersome to use2025-11-13
- Keycloak has a somewhat bad UI, though it does its job well2025-04-28
- Management REST API is full of inconsistencies and poorly documented parameters2024-11-10
- Hard to figure out how to do things; features require digging to learn2024-02-11
- Confusing for beginners, with a lot of features and poor documentation2024-02-11
- Hard to get working in production, gave up after hours of trying2024-02-11
- Steep learning curve for OIDC and Keycloak, and FreeMarker templates are awful2024-01-04
- Keycloak is an absolute pain to configure and acts strangely behind reverse proxies2023-12-22
- Keycloak web interface is painfully slow to use2023-12-22
- Needed a lot of time to configure correctly, with odd bugs causing dropped connections2023-12-02
- Adding properties that are simple in the GUI becomes a nightmare through the API2023-11-02
- Expired token sends users to an error page instead of silently re-logging in2023-06-19
- Takes 2-3 minutes to become responsive after starting2023-06-19
- Past versions were a pain to deploy because of EJB and WildFly2023-06-19
- Role assignment now hidden behind multiple screens, previously straightforward2023-06-19
- Admin UI becomes basically unusable once there are a couple hundred realms2023-06-19
- Configuring Keycloak is clunky and finicky, with realm setup needing manual reconfiguration2023-06-18
- Keycloak admin UI is sometimes clunky to use2023-06-18
- Configuration lives in the database and must be clicked through the UI, so changes can't be tested and promoted like code2023-06-18
- Hard to run on OpenShift; clustering nearly impossible and startup needs obscure script patching2023-06-18
- Two instances on the same version behave differently and the documented flag does not restore old logout behavior2023-04-27
- Can't maintain realm config declaratively; Terraform state is painful and JSON import is unreadable2023-04-11
- Keycloak's OIDC config screens were reorganized and renamed, so outdated guides no longer match2022-12-22
- Configuring Keycloak to connect to another IdP turns out to be a nightmare, and it's easy to get wrong2022-05-05
- Cancelling GitHub authentication redirects to a Keycloak page instead of the app's login page2022-05-04
- Account console UI/UX is poor, so users must build their own console2022-05-04
- No way to search inside the documentation, making it hard to find things2022-05-04
- Documentation is incomprehensible for initial setup, with jargon and no simple walkthroughs2022-05-04
- Login asks for WebAuthn key first, forcing a click to switch to TOTP2022-04-26
- Always shows TOTP prompt first, forcing extra clicks to reach security key2022-04-26
- UI elements and terminology were confusing to the commenter2021-03-10
- Config only through the UI, so changes are hard to manage and mistakes creep in2021-03-05
- Listing users with groups needs an extra HTTP call per user2020-11-21
- Hard to find things in the UI; some tasks need curl instead2020-05-06
- Users must wait for an admin to fix credential order or reset their account to add credentials2020-04-15
- SPIs poorly documented, forcing users to read source code to customize2020-04-14
- Keycloak documentation is large and hard to follow, so the commenter can't figure out how to do basic things2017-11-09
- Deploying requires digging into Wildfly/Java configuration files2017-09-05