EJBCA
8.2#1 in certificate management softwareFrom £62,065 a yearFree planWebAPILinuxmacOS
VisitEJBCA vs step-ca
What both publish
| Fact | EJBCA | step-ca |
|---|---|---|
| Company facts | LinkedIn lists Keyfactor as privately held, founded in 2001, headquartered in Independence, Ohio, with 501–1,000 employees. | LinkedIn lists Smallstep as privately held, founded in 2016, headquartered in San Francisco and employing 11–50 people. |
| Company legal name | Crunchbase lists Keyfactor's legal name as Certified Security Solutions Inc., also known as CSS. | Crunchbase lists the legal entity as Smallstep Labs, Inc. |
| Integrations | The comparison lists HSM and crypto-token support, including PKCS#11-based and REST API-based key vault integration, AWS CloudHSM, and AWS KMS. | Documented integrations include Kubernetes cert-manager, Envoy SDS, ACME clients, OIDC providers, PKCS#11, Google Cloud KMS, AWS KMS and YubiKey PIV. |
| License | EJBCA Community is released under LGPL version 2.1 or later. | The certificates repository is distributed under the Apache-2.0 license. |
| Purpose | EJBCA is open-source PKI and Certificate Authority software for certificate management, registration, enrollment, and validation. | step-ca is an online Certificate Authority for secure, automated X.509 and SSH certificate management. |
| Rating on G2 | 4.5 out of 5 from 38 reviews | 4.2 out of 5 from 10 reviews |
EJBCA plans
- EJBCA Community EditionFree
- EJBCA Enterprise Cloud trialFree
- EJBCA Enterprise trialFree
- EJBCA PKI SaaS£62,065 a year
- EJBCA EnterprisePriced on request
step-ca plans
- step-ca (open source)Free
- step-ca open sourceFree
- Smallstep PlatformPriced on request
Pick EJBCA if…
EJBCA suits teams managing PKI for internal systems, DevOps, industrial environments, IoT devices, or national eIDs. Community is for learning, testing, and prototyping; production users should consider its stated limitations and Enterprise support offering.
Pick step-ca if…
step-ca is positioned for DevOps teams managing certificates for VMs, containers, APIs, databases, Kubernetes workloads, and people. It may suit teams building a private CA with automated certificate workflows.