head to head · open source
certificates vs certspotter
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars, 597 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. certspotter has 1,174 stars, 104 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. certificates leads on adoption by 657% (8,885 vs 1,174 stars). certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0; certspotter is written in Go under MPL-2.0. certificates has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, certspotter 9%. certificates was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (pki, security, x509), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| certificates | certspotter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.9K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 597 | ⑂ 104 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick certificates if
- You weight community size — 8.9K stars and counting
- You want the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick certspotter if
- You want the certspotter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and certspotter fits your workflow better
About certificates
step ca is an open source online certificate authority that issues X.509 and SSH certificates and runs as an ACME server, built for DevOps teams that need automated certificate management without a commercial PKI contract.
read the full certificates overview →
About certspotter
Cert Spotter is a lightweight, open source Certificate Transparency log monitor from SSLMate that watches Certificate Transparency logs and alerts you when an SSL/TLS certificate is issued for any domain on your watch list, aimed at site operators, security teams, and PKI administrators who need to catch unauthorized certificates without operating a database.
read the full certspotter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or certspotter more popular?
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars and certspotter has 1,174. certificates has the larger community by that measure.
Are certificates and certspotter free?
Both are open source. certificates is licensed under Apache-2.0 and certspotter under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between certificates and certspotter?
certificates is written in Go and certspotter in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, certificates or certspotter?
Choose certificates if you want the larger community (8,885 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose certspotter if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.