head to head · open source
certificates vs ejbca-ce
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars, 597 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. ejbca-ce has 952 stars, 160 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 5 days ago. certificates leads on adoption by 833% (8,885 vs 952 stars). certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0; ejbca-ce is written in Java under LGPL-2.1. certificates has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, ejbca-ce 17%. certificates was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (pki), 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 | ejbca-ce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.9K | ★ 952 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 597 | ⑂ 160 |
| 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 ejbca-ce if
- You want the ejbca-ce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and ejbca-ce 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 ejbca-ce
EJBCA Community Edition is an LGPL licensed, Java based public key infrastructure and certificate authority package for anyone who wants to learn, test, or prototype certificate and PKI workflows without committing to a commercial PKI product.
read the full ejbca-ce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or ejbca-ce more popular?
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars and ejbca-ce has 952. certificates has the larger community by that measure.
Are certificates and ejbca-ce free?
Both are open source. certificates is licensed under Apache-2.0 and ejbca-ce under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between certificates and ejbca-ce?
certificates is written in Go and ejbca-ce in Java. 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 ejbca-ce?
Choose certificates if you want the larger community (8,885 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose ejbca-ce if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.