See http://www.keycloak.org/docs/2.5/server_development_guide/topics/provider... Specifically, there is a 'Note' in there that gives you the answer. Maybe we should add some more explanation in the doc. Let me try here ... ProviderFactories are instantiated lazily on first use, and exist within a context of KeycloakSessionFactory object - there is one instance of this per Keycloak server - i.e. ProviderFactories behave as singleton services. Provider instances are also instantiated lazily on first use, but exist within a context of a KeycloakSession, and there are multiple KeycloakSessions created even during server startup. But once Keycloak is up, one KeycloakSession is typically created per HTTP request. For example, when KeycloakSession.getProvider(JpaConnectionProvider.class) is used multiple times on the same session, the first time it will trigger creation of the new JpaConnectionProvider instance by using the JpaConnectionProviderFactory.create() method, and all subsequent times the same instance will be returned. And if another KeycloakSession is started - by using KeycloakSessionFactory.create() - and method getProvider(JpaConnectionProvider.class) is called on it, that will use existing JpaConnectionProviderFactory instance from the same KeycloakSessionFactory object to create a new JpaConnectionProvider instance. On subsequent calls the same JpaConnectionProvider instance will be returned. On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 2:47 PM, Istvan Orban <istvan.orban(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: