head to head · open source
Ente vs certificates
Ente has 29,841 GitHub stars, 1,893 forks, 229 open issues and last shipped yesterday. certificates has 9,032 stars, 615 forks, 299 open issues and last shipped yesterday. Ente leads on adoption by 230% (29,841 vs 9,032 stars). Ente is written in Dart under AGPL-3.0; certificates is written in Go under Apache-2.0. Ente has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, certificates 7%. certificates was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Ente | certificates | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 30K | ★ 9.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Dart | Go |
| Last push | 2026-11-02 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.9K | ⑂ 615 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ente if
- You weight community size — 30K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Dart
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick certificates if
- You want the certificates feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and certificates fits your workflow better
About Ente
Fully open source end to end encrypted photos, authenticators and more. Ente Ente is a service that provides a fully open source, end to end encrypted platform for you to store your data in the cloud without needing to trust the service provider. On top of this platform, we have built three apps so far: Ente Photos (an alternative to Apple and Google Photos), Ente Locker (a safe space for your most important documents and credentials), and Ente Auth (a 2FA alternative to the deprecated Authy). This monorepo contains all our source code the client apps (iOS / Android / F Droid / Web / Linux / macOS / Windows) for…
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 →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ente or certificates more popular?
Ente has 29,841 GitHub stars and certificates has 9,032. Ente has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ente and certificates free?
Both are open source. Ente is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and certificates under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ente and certificates?
Ente is written in Dart and certificates 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, Ente or certificates?
Choose Ente if you want the larger community (29,841 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose certificates if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.