head to head · open source
gokey vs passman
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars, 110 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. passman has 829 stars, 120 forks, 101 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gokey leads on adoption by 194% (2,440 vs 829 stars). gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; passman is written in JavaScript under AGPL-3.0. gokey has attracted 5% 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 | ★ 829 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | JavaScript |
| Last push | 2026-07-10 | 2026-11-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 110 | ⑂ 120 |
| 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 A simple vaultless password manager in Go gokey is a password manager, which does not require a password vault. Instead of storing your passwords in a vault it derives your password on the fly from your master password and supplied realm string (for example, resource URL). This way you do not have to manage, backup or sync your password vault (or trust its management to a third party) as your passwords are available immediately anywhere. example options o by default gokey outputs generated data to stdout P path to master password file which will be used to generate other passwords/keys or to encrypt seed…
read the full gokey overview →
About passman
Passman Passman is a full featured, open source password manager for Nextcloud. Join us! Visit the “Passman General Talk” Telegram Group to participate in all sorts of topical discussions about Passman and its apps! Features Multiple vaults Vault keys are never sent to the server 256 bit AES encrypted credentials (see security) User defined custom credentials fields Built in OTP (One Time Password) generator Password analyzer Securely share passwords internally and via link Import from various password managers (experimental): KeePass LastPass DashLane ZOHO Clipperz.is EnPass ocPasswords Try a Passman demo here…
read the full passman overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gokey or passman more popular?
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars and passman has 829. 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 (2,440 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.