head to head · open source
certificates vs pki
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars, 616 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. pki has 515 stars, 160 forks, 46 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. certificates leads on adoption by 1,655% (9,037 vs 515 stars). certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0; pki is written in Java under GPL-2.0. certificates has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, pki 31%. certificates was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (acme, ca, certificate-authority, 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| certificates | pki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.0K | ★ 515 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 616 | ⑂ 160 |
| 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 pki if
- You want the pki feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and pki 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 pki
Dogtag PKI The Dogtag Certificate System is an enterprise class open source Certificate Authority (CA). It is a full featured system, and has been hardened by real world deployments. It supports all aspects of certificate lifecycle management, including key archival, OCSP and smartcard management, and much more. The Dogtag PKI suite provides the following subsystems: Certificate Authority (CA) Key Recovery Authority (KRA) Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) Responder Token Key Service (TKS) Token Processing System (TPS) Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) Responder Documentation The best…
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Data Security & Privacy projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Security & Privacy field.
Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or pki more popular?
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars and pki has 515. certificates has the larger community by that measure.
Are certificates and pki free?
Both are open source. certificates is licensed under Apache-2.0 and pki under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between certificates and pki?
certificates is written in Go and pki 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 pki?
Choose certificates if you want the larger community (9,037 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose pki if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.