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Government · head to head

American Legal Publishing vs Sigstore

A

American Legal Publishing

Government

Municipal Code Solutions

From
$150/month
Free plan
No
Sigstore logo

Sigstore

Cybersecurity

Free public signing and transparency infrastructure for open source artifacts

From
Free
Free plan
Yes

The short version

  • Only Sigstore has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: American Legal Publishing a 2019 recodification contract between American Legal Publishing Corporation and the City of Dry Ridge, Kentucky, publicly posted by a separate Kentucky municipality as a model agreement, sets a base codification cost of $9,485 (USD) plus per-page increase rates of $18 (single column) and $21 (dual column) once the code exceeds the estimated page count, a one-time $550 setup fee to put the code in a searchable online format, $495 per year to host the code online after that, and a five-year supplement plan billed at $18-21 per reprinted page plus $200 per annual statutory update. This is one specific signed municipal contract, not a general price list, and actual costs for other municipalities will scale with code length.; Sigstore the security model depends on somebody watching the log. The documentation states that compromise of an identity provider or of Fulcio itself is detectable only if third parties monitor the transparency log, the monitoring tool is a community-tier rather than core project, and almost no consumer runs one.
  • They diverge on capability: American Legal Publishing covers Code Codification, Sigstore covers Fulcio.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which American Legal Publishing and Sigstore actually diverge.

Attributes where American Legal Publishing and Sigstore differ
AttributeAmerican Legal PublishingSigstore
Starting price$150/monthFree
Pricing modelsubscriptionOpen source, public instance free to use
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWebWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity
Founded1912Unknown

Identical on both: user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in American Legal Publishing

  • Code Codification
  • Online Publishing
  • Print Services
  • Editorial Support
  • Code Search
  • Legislative Systems
  • Document Management
  • Public Portals

Only in Sigstore

  • Fulcio
  • Rekor
  • Keyless signing
  • Multi-language clients
  • Timestamp authority
  • Neutral governance

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

American Legal Publishing

  • Citizen Servicesnot Sigstore
  • Records Managementnot Sigstore
  • Public Safetynot Sigstore
  • Civic Engagementnot Sigstore

Sigstore

  • Open source projects signing releases without running a certificate authoritynot American Legal Publishing
  • Organisations meeting a signed-artifact requirement without buying a signing productnot American Legal Publishing
  • Publishing provenance that a consumer can verify independently of younot American Legal Publishing
  • Self-hosting the same components where a public log is unacceptablenot American Legal Publishing

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

American Legal Publishing

  • A 2019 recodification contract between American Legal Publishing Corporation and the City of Dry Ridge, Kentucky, publicly posted by a separate Kentucky municipality as a model agreement, sets a base codification cost of $9,485 (USD) plus per-page increase rates of $18 (single column) and $21 (dual column) once the code exceeds the estimated page count, a one-time $550 setup fee to put the code in a searchable online format, $495 per year to host the code online after that, and a five-year supplement plan billed at $18-21 per reprinted page plus $200 per annual statutory update. This is one specific signed municipal contract, not a general price list, and actual costs for other municipalities will scale with code length.

Sigstore

  • The security model depends on somebody watching the log. The documentation states that compromise of an identity provider or of Fulcio itself is detectable only if third parties monitor the transparency log, the monitoring tool is a community-tier rather than core project, and almost no consumer runs one.
  • It is a 99.5 percent objective with no service level agreement, which permits several hours of downtime a month and offers no remedy. A pipeline that signs on every build has taken a hard dependency on a free service with no contract behind it.
  • Log scale is a live engineering problem rather than a theoretical one. The active shard holds billions of entries, the log has already been sharded twice, and sharding version 1 requires stopping traffic, which is why a replacement was built.
  • Ten-minute certificates make trust depend on log availability. Verifying an older signature relies on the log entry proving it was made inside that window, so a lost or unreachable entry can render a valid artifact unverifiable.
  • Migration debt is substantial and ongoing. Version 2 of the log is generally available but not the public default, the signing client has an announced breaking release ahead, some official clients lag the new log format, and a post-quantum migration is named as the next break after that.

Pricing, plan by plan

American Legal Publishing

$150/month
  • Online Code$150/month
    • Online Publishing
    • Code Updates
    • Search

Sigstore

Free
  • Public good instanceFree
    • Free to everyone with no contract
    • 99.5 percent availability objective, not an agreement
    • 100KB cap per attestation upload
  • Self-hostedFree
    • Apache-2.0
    • Run your own Fulcio and Rekor
    • Rekor v2 available for self-hosters

Which should you pick?

Choose American Legal Publishing if

  • You need code codification.
  • You also want online publishing.

Choose Sigstore if

  • You need fulcio.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
  • You also want rekor.

Questions people ask

Is American Legal Publishing or Sigstore better?
Neither clearly leads. American Legal Publishing starts at $150/month and Sigstore at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, American Legal Publishing or Sigstore?
Sigstore has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at $150/month for American Legal Publishing and Free for Sigstore.
Does American Legal Publishing or Sigstore run on more platforms?
American Legal Publishing runs on Web. Sigstore runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted.
Can I use Sigstore for free?
Yes. Sigstore has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. American Legal Publishing starts at $150/month.
What is American Legal Publishing best used for?
American Legal Publishing is most often used for citizen services, records management, public safety, civic engagement. Of those, citizen services and records management are not what Sigstore is typically brought in for.
What can American Legal Publishing do that Sigstore cannot?
American Legal Publishing covers Code Codification, Online Publishing, Print Services, Editorial Support. Sigstore covers Fulcio, Rekor, Keyless signing, Multi-language clients.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Sigstore: Is the public instance really free?

Yes, with no contract and no paid tier. That is also the weakness: a 99.5 percent objective with no agreement, no remedy and support through Slack.

Sigstore: Has the public log moved to Rekor v2?

No. Version 2 reached general availability in October 2025 and self-hosters can use it, but the public instance still defaults to version 1 and the project has said it will for the foreseeable future.

Sigstore: Does Sigstore make my dependencies safe?

No, and this is a category error worth avoiding. It tells you who published something. It has no knowledge of what the artifact contains or whether it is vulnerable.

Sigstore: What are the rate limits?

Not published. Only the 100KB cap per attestation upload is documented, so do not design a high-volume pipeline around assumed throughput.

Sigstore: Should we self-host it?

If a public record of every signature is unacceptable, or if a free service with no agreement cannot sit in your build path, then yes. Otherwise the public instance is what most projects use.

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