Open source certificate-authority projects
Every project in the registry tagged certificate-authority, ranked by real GitHub adoption.
🛡️ A private certificate authority (X.509 & SSH) & ACME server for secure automated certificate management, so you can use TLS everywhere & SSO for SSH.
Tools to bootstrap CAs, certificate requests, and signed certificates.
Automatically create and renew website certificates for free using the Let's Encrypt certificate authority.
Frequently asked questions
How many open source certificate-authority projects are there?
This registry tracks 3 projects tagged certificate-authority, with 12,537 GitHub stars between them. The most-adopted is certificates at 8,878 stars.
Are these certificate-authority projects free to use?
Yes — 3 of the 3 carry an explicit open-source licence across 2 distinct licences, so there is no licence fee. Where a project also sells a hosted or enterprise version, the self-hosted path remains free.
Which certificate-authority project should I choose?
The list above is ranked by GitHub stars, but stars measure attention rather than fit. Check three things on each card: the licence (permissive versus copyleft), the language it is written in, and the last-push date — a high-star project that has not been pushed in a year is a liability.
Are these certificate-authority projects still maintained?
2 of the 3 were pushed in the last 90 days, and every card shows its exact last-push date so you can see the rest. Sort your shortlist by that date before committing to a migration.