head to head · open source
gokey vs Strongbox
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars, 110 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. Strongbox has 1,474 stars, 126 forks, 230 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. gokey leads on adoption by 66% (2,440 vs 1,474 stars). gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; Strongbox is written in Objective-C under AGPL-3.0. gokey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, Strongbox 9%. Strongbox was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 4 topic tags (password-generator, password-manager, password-store, password-vault), 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 | Strongbox | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 2.4K | ★ 1.5K |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | AGPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | Objective-C |
| Last push | 2026-07-10 | 2026-07-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 110 | ⑂ 126 |
| 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 Strongbox if
- You want the Strongbox feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Objective-C
- You evaluated both and Strongbox 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 Strongbox
Strongbox A native Password Manager for iOS & macOS crafted by artisan Indie developers! Strongbox supports the well known, portable and open Password Safe (version 3) and KeePass file formats (KeePass 1 and 2, i.e. KDB, KDBX (3.1 and 4)). Strongbox uses encryption algoritms likes TwoFish, Argon2d, ChaCha20, Aes, Salsa20 and various other cryptographic techniques (SHA256s, HMACs, CSPRNGs) to store groups and entries, containing various secrets, mostly designed around password storage. You can also store file attachments in KeePass format safes. YubiKey is also supported. Localization Help Wanted If you would…
read the full Strongbox overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is gokey or Strongbox more popular?
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars and Strongbox has 1,474. gokey has the larger community by that measure.
Are gokey and Strongbox free?
Both are open source. gokey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and Strongbox under AGPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gokey and Strongbox?
gokey is written in Go and Strongbox in Objective-C. 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 Strongbox?
Choose gokey if you want the larger community (2,440 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose Strongbox if its feature set, stack or AGPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.