head to head · open source
certificates vs Quiet
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars, 597 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Quiet has 2,647 stars, 145 forks, 773 open issues and last shipped yesterday. certificates leads on adoption by 236% (8,885 vs 2,647 stars). certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Quiet is written in C under GPL-3.0. certificates has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Quiet 5%. Quiet was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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 | Quiet | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 8.9K | ★ 2.6K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | C |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 597 | ⑂ 145 |
| 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 Quiet if
- You want the Quiet feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches C
- You evaluated both and Quiet 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 Quiet
Quiet is an open source team chat application that aims to provide a private, peer to peer alternative to Slack, Discord, and Element. It is built around Tor and IPFS, and it is designed so that a team can communicate without trusting a central service or operating its own server. The project lives in the privacy and decentralized software ecosystem.
read the full Quiet overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or Quiet more popular?
certificates has 8,885 GitHub stars and Quiet has 2,647. certificates has the larger community by that measure.
Are certificates and Quiet free?
Both are open source. certificates is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Quiet under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between certificates and Quiet?
certificates is written in Go and Quiet in C. 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 Quiet?
Choose certificates if you want the larger community (8,885 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Quiet if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.