head to head · open source
gokey vs sysPass
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars, 110 forks, 8 open issues and last shipped 4 months ago. sysPass has 994 stars, 220 forks, 280 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. gokey leads on adoption by 145% (2,440 vs 994 stars). gokey is written in Go under BSD-3-Clause; sysPass is written in PHP under GPL-3.0. gokey has attracted 5% as many forks as stars, sysPass 22%. sysPass 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.
← all 20902 open source comparisons
Side by side
| gokey | sysPass | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 2.4K | ★ 994 |
| License | BSD-3-Clause | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Go | PHP |
| Last push | 2026-07-10 | 2026-10-26 |
| Forks | ⑂ 110 | ⑂ 220 |
| 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 sysPass if
- You want the sysPass feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches PHP
- You evaluated both and sysPass 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 sysPass
sysPass Systems Password Manager Join us in the Gitter chat room: PHP web based Password Manager for business and personal use. [x] AES 256 encryption in CTR mode [x] RSA for sending passwords from forms [x] Two factor authentication [x] HTML5 and Ajax interface [x] Users, groups and profiles management with up to 29 access levels [x] MySQL, OpenLDAP and Active Directory authentication [x] Tags, custom fields, public links, private accounts, favorites, history, etc. [x] Activity notifications by email and in app, and event log [x] Multilanguage [x] JSON RPC API Installation instructions and documentation at Doc…
read the full sysPass overview →
More in Security & Privacy
Related comparisons
More Identity & Access Management (IAM) projects
Compare either of these against the rest of the Identity & Access Management (IAM) field.
Frequently asked questions
Is gokey or sysPass more popular?
gokey has 2,440 GitHub stars and sysPass has 994. gokey has the larger community by that measure.
Are gokey and sysPass free?
Both are open source. gokey is licensed under BSD-3-Clause and sysPass under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between gokey and sysPass?
gokey is written in Go and sysPass in PHP. 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 sysPass?
Choose gokey if you want the larger community (2,440 stars) or its BSD-3-Clause licence terms. Choose sysPass if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.