head to head · open source
certificates vs Certipy
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars, 616 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. Certipy has 3,715 stars, 490 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. certificates leads on adoption by 143% (9,037 vs 3,715 stars). certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0; Certipy is written in Python under MIT. certificates has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, Certipy 13%. 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 | Certipy | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.0K | ★ 3.7K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Python |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-07-30 |
| Forks | ⑂ 616 | ⑂ 490 |
| 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 Certipy if
- You want the Certipy feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You evaluated both and Certipy 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 Certipy
Certipy AD CS Attack & Enumeration Toolkit Certipy is a powerful offensive and defensive toolkit for enumerating and abusing Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS). It helps red teamers, penetration testers, and defenders assess AD CS misconfigurations including full support for identifying and exploiting all known ESC1 ESC17 attack paths. [!WARNING] Use only in environments where you have explicit authorization. Unauthorized use may be illegal. 🔍 Features 🔎 Discover Certificate Authorities and Templates 🚩 Identify misconfigurations 🔐 Request and forge certificates 🎭 Perform authentication using…
read the full Certipy overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or Certipy more popular?
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars and Certipy has 3,715. certificates has the larger community by that measure.
Are certificates and Certipy free?
Both are open source. certificates is licensed under Apache-2.0 and Certipy under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between certificates and Certipy?
certificates is written in Go and Certipy in Python. 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 Certipy?
Choose certificates if you want the larger community (9,037 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose Certipy if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.