head to head · open source
certificates vs ejbca-ce
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars, 616 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. ejbca-ce has 967 stars, 166 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. certificates leads on adoption by 835% (9,037 vs 967 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 | ★ 9.0K | ★ 967 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 616 | ⑂ 166 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick certificates if
- You weight community size — 9.0K 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 step ca is an online certificate authority for secure, automated certificate management for DevOps. It's the server counterpart to the step CLI tool for working with certificates and keys. Both projects are maintained by Smallstep Labs. You can use step ca to: Issue HTTPS server and client certificates that work in browsers (RFC5280 and CA/Browser Forum compliance) Issue TLS certificates for DevOps: VMs, containers, APIs, database connections, Kubernetes pods... Issue SSH certificates: For people, in exchange for single sign on identity tokens For hosts, in exchange for cloud instance identity documents…
read the full certificates overview →
About ejbca-ce
EJBCA Community Note: We take the security of EJBCA and the trust of our users seriously. If you believe you have identified a security vulnerability in EJBCA, please report it responsibly by contacting us at security@primekey.com. EJBCA Community Edition is not intended for production use. For PKI production deployments, use Keyfactor EJBCA Enterprise Edition. Welcome to the EJBCA Community EJBCA is a public key infrastructure (PKI) and certificate authority (CA) solution and one of the longest running CA software projects. It is platform independent and covers the full certificate lifecycle, from enrollment…
read the full ejbca-ce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or ejbca-ce more popular?
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars and ejbca-ce has 967. 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 (9,037 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.