smallstep/certificates
🛡️ A private certificate authority (X.509 & SSH) & ACME server for secure automated certificate management, so you can use TLS everywhere & SSO for SSH.
Build with Backblaze B2
SDKs, agent skills, IDE extensions, and reference pipelines from Backblaze Labs. All open source.
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Where it stands
Rank, growth pace and release cadence relative to everything GStars tracks.
Ranks #15 among Security repositories tracked this week, and #15 over the last 30 days; #911 of 1,681 repositories GStars tracks this week (top 54%).
No releases in the last 90 days; the most recent was 216 days ago, with 97 contributors on GitHub.
Gained 7% more stars in the last 90 days than in the 90 days before.
Use Cases & Benefits
- Provides a private certificate authority and ACME server for automated management of X.509 and SSH certificates to enable secure TLS everywhere and SSH SSO.
- Enables flexible, automated certificate issuance and renewal with support for multiple authentication methods and ACME challenge types, simplifying PKI for DevOps teams.
- Use for issuing HTTPS server and client certificates that are browser-trusted in development and pre-production environments.
- Use for automating SSH user and host certificate issuance integrated with single sign-on providers to enhance SSH security and simplify access management.
- Use for running a private ACME server to automate TLS certificate issuance for cloud VMs, containers, APIs, and Kubernetes pods with customizable key types and lifetimes.
Should you depend on it?
License terms, project hygiene and risks, from GitHub metadata and GStars' snapshots.
License
Apache 2.0
Permissive: commercial use, modification and redistribution are allowed with attribution; includes an explicit patent grant from contributors.
Community files
- README: present
- Contributing guide: present
Watch-outs
No watch-outs from GStars' checks.
General guidance from repository metadata, not legal advice. How we score
From the README
step-cais an online certificate authority for secure, automated certificate management for DevOps. It's the server counterpart to thestepCLI tool for working with certificates and keys. Both projects are maintained by Smallstep Labs.
step-cais optimized for a two-tier PKI serving common DevOps use cases.As you design your PKI, if you need any of the following, consider our commerical CA:
See our full feature comparison for more.
You can start a free trial or set up a call with us to learn more.
Questions? Find us in Discussions or Join our Discord.
Daily snapshots
Stars gained per day, and how forks and open issues moved, from GStars' daily snapshots
+273 stars over 88 days across 10 snapshot days; best day +5 on Sep 7.
Forks
610+42
Open issues
306+22
Compared with peers in Security
Fastest-growing repositories GStars tracks in this cohort for the week of Nov 1, by 7-day star growth
| Repository | Stars | +7d | Health | Last release |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| cloudflare/security-audit-skill | 56.4K | +9.5K | 75 | — |
| goauthentik/authentik | 26.2K | +0 | 75 | 10 days ago |
| cilium/cilium | 25.7K | +0 | 75 | 8 days ago |
| mvt-project/mvt | 15.7K | +0 | 75 | 5 days ago |
| berty/berty | 9.3K | +0 | 75 | 120 days ago |
| smallstep/certificates | 9.0K | +0 | 75 | 216 days ago |
| Category median | 25.7K | +0 | 75 | — |
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