EJBCA vs step-ca
EJBCA
ejbca.orgstep-ca
smallstep.comSide by side
| Figure | EJBCA | step-ca |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | £5,172.08/mo | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | Yes | — |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | Yes | Yes |
| Plans published | 5 | 3 |
| Spec score · Public Key Infrastructure Software | 9.2 (#1) | 8.2 (#7) |
| 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 |
| Support | Enterprise includes professional support with an SLA, while Community users can access GitHub Discussions on a best-effort basis. | Open-source users are directed to community Discord support, with optional paid support contracts available from Smallstep. |
| What it does | EJBCA is a platform-independent public-key-infrastructure certificate authority supporting certificate management, registration, enrollment and validation. | step-ca is an online certificate authority for automated X.509 and SSH certificate management. |
Plans
EJBCA
- EJBCA Community EditionFree
- EJBCA Enterprise Cloud trialFree
- EJBCA Enterprise trialFree
- EJBCA PKI SaaS£62,065 a year
- EJBCA EnterprisePriced on request
step-ca
- step-ca (open source)Free
- step-ca open sourceFree
- Smallstep PlatformPriced on request
In their own words
EJBCA
EJBCA is open-source PKI and Certificate Authority software for managing certificates, registration, enrollment, and validation. A single installation can host multiple independent PKIs separated through CA, RA, and VA modules. Certificate validation uses OCSP and CRL, and enrollment options listed for Community and Enterprise include CMP, SCEP, EST, ACME, SOAP API, and REST APIs. Community Edition can be deployed with Helm, as a container, or from source, with Helm and Ansible playbooks available for automating setup and configuration. Its stated use cases include internal PKIs, DevOps workflows, industrial environments, IoT devices, and national eIDs. Community is free under LGPL version 2.1 or later for learning, testing, and prototyping, but is not intended for production because it lacks production audit, compliance, SLA, high-availability, and security capabilities. Enterprise adds advanced PKI functionality and professional support with an SLA; a 30-day trial is available through AWS or Azure marketplaces.
step-ca
step-ca is an online Certificate Authority for automating X.509 and SSH certificate management. It issues X.509 certificates for TLS, mutual TLS, document signing and authentication, as well as SSH certificates for users and hosts. Provisioners can authorize issuance through ACME challenges, OIDC tokens, cloud instance identity documents and short-lived JWK tokens. Automated issuance and renewal are supported for clients, servers and Kubernetes workloads, alongside passive revocation. Templates can customize SANs or OIDs, restrict domains or key sizes, and create longer certificate chains. For CA signing-key protection, step-ca integrates with Google Cloud KMS, AWS KMS, Azure Key Vault, PKCS#11 HSMs, TPM 2.0 and YubiKey PIV. Its intended PKI design uses an offline root CA and a configured intermediate CA that issues end-entity certificates. Installation options include macOS, Windows, Linux, Kubernetes and Docker, and database choices include Badger, BoltDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL. The open-source plan costs nothing. Community help is available through Discord, with dedicated support contracts from Smallstep.