head to head · open source
Stoat vs certspotter
Stoat has 3,336 GitHub stars, 388 forks, 139 open issues and last shipped today. certspotter has 1,174 stars, 104 forks, 18 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. Stoat leads on adoption by 184% (3,336 vs 1,174 stars). Stoat is written in Rust under a custom or non-standard licence; certspotter is written in Go under MPL-2.0. Stoat has attracted 12% as many forks as stars, certspotter 9%. Stoat was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| Stoat | certspotter | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 3.3K | ★ 1.2K |
| License | Custom / other | MPL-2.0 |
| Written in | Rust | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-20 | 2026-09-13 |
| Forks | ⑂ 388 | ⑂ 104 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Stoat if
- You weight community size — 3.3K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick certspotter if
- You want the certspotter feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MPL-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and certspotter fits your workflow better
About Stoat
Stoat is a Rust backend project that provides the services and libraries powering the Stoat group chat service. The repository is organized around core crates for configuration, database implementation, files, API models, permissions, presence, result types, and a coalesced crate.
read the full Stoat overview →
About certspotter
Cert Spotter is a lightweight, open source Certificate Transparency log monitor from SSLMate that watches Certificate Transparency logs and alerts you when an SSL/TLS certificate is issued for any domain on your watch list, aimed at site operators, security teams, and PKI administrators who need to catch unauthorized certificates without operating a database.
read the full certspotter overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Stoat or certspotter more popular?
Stoat has 3,336 GitHub stars and certspotter has 1,174. Stoat has the larger community by that measure.
Are Stoat and certspotter free?
Both are open source. Stoat has no licence declared in this registry, and certspotter is licensed under MPL-2.0. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between Stoat and certspotter?
Stoat is written in Rust and certspotter in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Stoat or certspotter?
Choose Stoat if you want the larger community (3,336 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose certspotter if its feature set, stack or MPL-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.