head to head · open source
certificates vs certspotter
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars, 616 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. certspotter has 1,197 stars, 104 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. certificates leads on adoption by 655% (9,037 vs 1,197 stars). certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0; certspotter is written in Go under MPL-2.0. certificates has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, certspotter 9%. certificates was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 3 topic tags (pki, security, x509), 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 | certspotter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 9.0K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-03 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 616 | ⑂ 104 |
| 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 certspotter if
- You want the certspotter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and certspotter 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 certspotter
Cert Spotter Certificate Transparency Monitor Open Source Edition Cert Spotter is a Certificate Transparency log monitor from SSLMate that alerts you when an SSL/TLS certificate is issued for one of your domains. Cert Spotter is easier to use than other open source CT monitors, since it does not require a database. It's also more robust, since it uses a special certificate parser that ensures it won't miss certificates. Cert Spotter is available as a hosted service by SSLMate that also provides monitoring for expiring and incorrectly installed certificates, Slack notifications, and a Web dashboard for tracking…
read the full certspotter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is certificates or certspotter more popular?
certificates has 9,037 GitHub stars and certspotter has 1,197. certificates has the larger community by that measure.
Are certificates and certspotter free?
Both are open source. certificates is licensed under Apache-2.0 and certspotter under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between certificates and certspotter?
certificates is written in Go and certspotter in Go. 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 certspotter?
Choose certificates if you want the larger community (9,037 stars) or its Apache-2.0 licence terms. Choose certspotter if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.