head to head · open source
Certipy vs pki
Certipy has 3,715 GitHub stars, 490 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. pki has 515 stars, 160 forks, 46 open issues and last shipped 3 days ago. Certipy leads on adoption by 621% (3,715 vs 515 stars). Certipy is written in Python under MIT; pki is written in Java under GPL-2.0. Certipy has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, pki 31%. pki 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| Certipy | pki | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.7K | ★ 515 |
| License | MIT | GPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Java |
| Last push | 2026-07-30 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 490 | ⑂ 160 |
| 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 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 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 pki
Dogtag PKI The Dogtag Certificate System is an enterprise class open source Certificate Authority (CA). It is a full featured system, and has been hardened by real world deployments. It supports all aspects of certificate lifecycle management, including key archival, OCSP and smartcard management, and much more. The Dogtag PKI suite provides the following subsystems: Certificate Authority (CA) Key Recovery Authority (KRA) Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) Responder Token Key Service (TKS) Token Processing System (TPS) Automatic Certificate Management Environment (ACME) Responder Documentation The best…
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Data Security & Privacy projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Data Security & Privacy field.
Frequently asked questions
Is Certipy or pki more popular?
Certipy has 3,715 GitHub stars and pki has 515. Certipy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Certipy and pki free?
Both are open source. Certipy is licensed under MIT and pki under GPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Certipy and pki?
Certipy is written in Python 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, Certipy or pki?
Choose Certipy if you want the larger community (3,715 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose pki if its feature set, stack or GPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.