head to head · open source
gokey vs passman
gokey has 2,437 GitHub stars, 109 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 3 months ago. passman has 823 stars, 118 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped today. gokey leads on adoption by 196% (2,437 vs 823 stars). gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; passman is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. gokey has attracted 4% as many forks as stars, passman 14%. passman was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (password-manager), 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 | passman | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 2.4K | ★ 823 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-10 | 2026-09-28 |
| Forks | ⑂ 109 | ⑂ 118 |
| 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 passman if
- You want the passman feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches JavaScript
- You evaluated both and passman 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 passman
Passman is a full featured, open source password manager that runs as an app inside Nextcloud, for individuals and teams who already self host Nextcloud and want their credentials to stay on infrastructure they control.
read the full passman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gokey or passman more popular?
gokey has 2,437 GitHub stars and passman has 823. gokey has the larger community by that measure.
Are gokey and passman free?
Both are open source. gokey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and passman under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gokey and passman?
gokey is written in Go and passman in JavaScript. 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 passman?
Choose gokey if you want the larger community (2,437 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose passman if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.