head to head · open source
Certipy vs ejbca-ce
Certipy has 3,717 GitHub stars, 490 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. ejbca-ce has 967 stars, 166 forks, 19 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. Certipy leads on adoption by 284% (3,717 vs 967 stars). Certipy is written in Python under MIT; ejbca-ce is written in Java under LGPL-2.1. Certipy has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, ejbca-ce 17%. ejbca-ce 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
| Certipy | ejbca-ce | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.7K | ★ 967 |
| License | MIT | LGPL-2.1 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-07-30 | 2026-09-15 |
| Forks | ⑂ 490 | ⑂ 166 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Certipy if
- You weight community size — 3.7K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Python
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick ejbca-ce if
- You want the ejbca-ce feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the LGPL-2.1 license terms
- Your stack matches Java
- You evaluated both and ejbca-ce fits your workflow better
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 →
About ejbca-ce
EJBCA Community Note: We take the security of EJBCA and the trust of our users seriously. If you believe you have identified a security vulnerability in EJBCA, please report it responsibly by contacting us at security@primekey.com. EJBCA Community Edition is not intended for production use. For PKI production deployments, use Keyfactor EJBCA Enterprise Edition. Welcome to the EJBCA Community EJBCA is a public key infrastructure (PKI) and certificate authority (CA) solution and one of the longest running CA software projects. It is platform independent and covers the full certificate lifecycle, from enrollment…
read the full ejbca-ce overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Certipy or ejbca-ce more popular?
Certipy has 3,717 GitHub stars and ejbca-ce has 967. Certipy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Certipy and ejbca-ce free?
Both are open source. Certipy is licensed under MIT and ejbca-ce under LGPL-2.1. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Certipy and ejbca-ce?
Certipy is written in Python and ejbca-ce 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, Certipy or ejbca-ce?
Choose Certipy if you want the larger community (3,717 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose ejbca-ce if its feature set, stack or LGPL-2.1 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.