head to head · open source
gokey vs passforios
gokey has 2,436 GitHub stars, 109 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. passforios has 1,645 stars, 114 forks, 176 open issues and last shipped 1 months ago. gokey leads on adoption by 48% (2,436 vs 1,645 stars). gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; passforios is written in Swift under MIT. gokey has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, passforios 7%. passforios was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 2 topic tags (password-manager, password-store), 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
| gokey | passforios | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 2.4K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Swift |
| Last push | 2026-07-10 | 2026-08-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 109 | ⑂ 114 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick gokey if
- You weight community size — 2.4K stars and counting
- You want the BSD-3-Clause license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick passforios if
- You want the passforios feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You evaluated both and passforios fits your workflow better
About gokey
gokey is a vaultless password and key generator written in Go that derives passwords and cryptographic private keys on demand from a master password or a seed file instead of storing them in a vault, aimed at developers and system administrators who want deterministic credentials available anywhere without managing, backing up, or syncing a password store.
read the full gokey overview →
About passforios
Pass for iOS is an open source iOS client for ZX2C4's Pass command line password manager, built for people who already keep credentials in a GPG encrypted, Git versioned password store and want to view, copy, or edit them from an iPhone or iPad.
read the full passforios overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gokey or passforios more popular?
gokey has 2,436 GitHub stars and passforios has 1,645. gokey has the larger community by that measure.
Are gokey and passforios free?
Both are open source. gokey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and passforios under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gokey and passforios?
gokey is written in Go and passforios in Swift. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, gokey or passforios?
Choose gokey if you want the larger community (2,436 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose passforios if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.