head to head · open source
certificates vs pki
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars, 597 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. pki has 509 stars, 162 forks, 46 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. certificates leads on adoption by 1,646% (8,885 vs 509 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 32%. pki 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.
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Side by side
| certificates | pki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.9K | ★ 509 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Java |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-18 |
| Forks | ⑂ 597 | ⑂ 162 |
| 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 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 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 pki
Dogtag PKI is an enterprise class open source Certificate Authority suite, written in Java and licensed under GPL 2.0, for administrators who need to run their own certificate lifecycle infrastructure rather than buy it as a hosted service.
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or pki more popular?
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars and pki has 509. 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 (8,885 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.