head to head · open source
Certipy vs certspotter
Certipy has 3,715 GitHub stars, 490 forks, 25 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. certspotter has 1,197 stars, 104 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Certipy leads on adoption by 210% (3,715 vs 1,197 stars). Certipy is written in Python under MIT; certspotter is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Certipy has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, certspotter 9%. certspotter 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 | certspotter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.7K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Python | Go |
| Last push | 2026-07-30 | 2026-10-29 |
| Forks | ⑂ 490 | ⑂ 104 |
| 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 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 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 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 Certipy or certspotter more popular?
Certipy has 3,715 GitHub stars and certspotter has 1,197. Certipy has the larger community by that measure.
Are Certipy and certspotter free?
Both are open source. Certipy is licensed under MIT and certspotter under MPL-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Certipy and certspotter?
Certipy is written in Python 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, Certipy or certspotter?
Choose Certipy if you want the larger community (3,715 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose certspotter if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.