head to head · open source
gokey vs pwd.sh
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars, 110 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. pwd.sh has 1,564 stars, 132 forks, 0 open issues and last shipped 19 days ago. gokey leads on adoption by 56% (2,440 vs 1,564 stars). gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; pwd.sh is written in Shell under MIT. gokey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, pwd.sh 8%. pwd.sh 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 | pwd.sh | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 2.4K | ★ 1.6K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | MIT |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-07-10 | 2026-10-19 |
| Forks | ⑂ 110 | ⑂ 132 |
| 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 pwd.sh if
- You want the pwd.sh feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and pwd.sh 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 pwd.sh
pwd.sh is a Bash script to manage text secrets, such as passwords, using GnuPG. Each secret is saved to a randomly named file in a directory. An encrypted index maps usernames to secrets contained in files. Both the index and files can be decrypted directly with GnuPG without pwd.sh. Install Download from Releases, or to use the latest version, clone the repository: Or download the script directly: Use Run the script interactively using ./pwd.sh or symlink to a directory in PATH : w write (create) a secret r read (access) a secret l list secret names and paths s generate a random secret u generate a random…
read the full pwd.sh overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gokey or pwd.sh more popular?
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars and pwd.sh has 1,564. gokey has the larger community by that measure.
Are gokey and pwd.sh free?
Both are open source. gokey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and pwd.sh under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gokey and pwd.sh?
gokey is written in Go and pwd.sh in Shell. 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 pwd.sh?
Choose gokey if you want the larger community (2,440 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose pwd.sh if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.