Cosign vs SignPath

Cosign is a free tool for signing and verifying OCI container images and other software artifacts. It can store container signatures in an OCI registry and publish generic artifacts through OCI. Supported targets include blobs, binaries, scripts, configuration files, SBOMs, WASM modules, Tekton bundles, eBPF modules, and in-toto attestations whose payloads use DSSE. Its default keyless workflow uses temporary keys held in memory, short-lived certificates from Sigstore’s Fulcio certificate authority, and entries in the Rekor transparency log. Other signing options include hardware and KMS-backed keys, encrypted keypairs generated by Cosign, and user-provided PKI. Cosign supports CI/CD signing, with guidance for GitHub Actions and GitLab CI/CD. Offline verification is possible when the image and signature materials are available locally and a trusted root is supplied. The project describes Cosign as a legacy signing system and recommends Sigstore-go for verification integrations. Its CLI-focused design has no API stability guarantees, and the documentation does not recommend it for application integration.

SignPath provides code signing and software integrity controls for builds and releases. Its format-aware signing covers executables, packages, installers, containers, scripts, manifests, SBOMs, and configuration files. Before trusting a release, it can verify source repositories, branches, build systems, approvals, and CI/CD context. SignPath can produce signed, machine-readable attestations, including SLSA provenance, validation summaries, and signed SBOMs. Listed integrations include plugins and REST API connections for GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, and TeamCity. SignPath says private keys remain in FIPS-compliant hardware security modules and are never exposed or shared. Role-based controls determine who can sign which artifacts and with which certificate. Signing records include the user, file, certificate, policy, and result; reports can be exported, with optional WORM-style log archiving. Deployment options are SaaS, self-hosted, or hybrid. The free Open Source Code Signing plan has eligibility conditions: projects must be actively maintained and released, use an OSI-approved open source license, and have no proprietary components.