head to head · open source
certificates vs routinator
certificates has 9,038 GitHub stars, 616 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. routinator has 580 stars, 90 forks, 34 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. certificates leads on adoption by 1,458% (9,038 vs 580 stars). certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0; routinator is written in Rust under BSD-3-Clause. certificates has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, routinator 16%. routinator 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 | routinator | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.0K | ★ 580 |
| License | Apache-2.0 | BSD-3-Clause |
| Written in | Go | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-11-04 |
| Forks | ⑂ 616 | ⑂ 90 |
| 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 routinator if
- You want the routinator feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and routinator 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 routinator
Routinator Routinator 3000 is free, open source RPKI Relying Party software. The project is written in Rust, a programming language designed for performance and memory safety. Lightweight and portable Routinator has minimal system requirements and it can run on almost any hardware and platform, with packages available for most. You can also easily run with Docker or Cargo, the Rust package manager. Full featured and secure Routinator runs as a service that periodically downloads and verifies RPKI data. The built in HTTPS server offers a user interface, API endpoints for various file formats, as well as logging…
read the full routinator overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or routinator more popular?
certificates has 9,038 GitHub stars and routinator has 580. certificates has the larger community by that measure.
Are certificates and routinator free?
Both are open source. certificates is licensed under Apache-2.0 and routinator under BSD-3-Clause. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between certificates and routinator?
certificates is written in Go and routinator in Rust. 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 routinator?
Choose certificates if you want the larger community (9,038 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose routinator if its feature set, stack or BSD-3-Clause licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.