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Government · head to head

CentralSquare Asset Management vs Cosign

CentralSquare Asset Management logo

CentralSquare Asset Management

Government

Public sector enterprise asset management, sold for years as Lucity

From
On request
Free plan
No
Full reviewWebsite
Cosign logo

Cosign

Cybersecurity

Signs and verifies container images and artifacts, with or without managing keys

From
Free
Free plan
Yes
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Cosign has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: CentralSquare Asset Management the Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.; Cosign keyless signing inherits every weakness of the identity provider behind it. Sigstore’s own threat model states that if an identity provider is compromised, Sigstore will issue certificates to those identities, so a compromised account produces perfectly valid signatures.
  • They diverge on capability: CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration, Cosign covers Keyless signing.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which CentralSquare Asset Management and Cosign actually diverge.

Attributes where CentralSquare Asset Management and Cosign differ
AttributeCentralSquare Asset ManagementCosign
Starting priceOn requestFree
Pricing modelquoteOpen source, no licence fee
Free tierNoYes
PlatformsWeb, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premisemacOS, Linux, Windows, Docker
CategoryGovernmentCybersecurity

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 CentralSquare Asset Management

  • Esri ArcGIS integration
  • Public works asset breadth
  • Citizen request intake
  • Condition assessment
  • Inspections
  • Suite integration

Only in Cosign

  • Keyless signing
  • Key and KMS signing
  • Registry-native storage
  • In-toto attestations
  • Offline verification
  • Trusted root and signing config

What people use each for

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

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • A city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheetsnot Cosign
  • A county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programmenot Cosign
  • A public works department wanting citizen-reported potholes and blocked drains to become work orders without manual re-keyingnot Cosign
  • A municipality already running CentralSquare finance that wants asset and work costs to land in the general ledger without an integration projectnot Cosign

Cosign

  • Signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keysnot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • Attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenancenot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • Meeting a customer or regulatory requirement for signed artifactsnot CentralSquare Asset Management
  • Verifying third-party images before they enter an internal registrynot CentralSquare Asset Management

Where each one falls short

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

CentralSquare Asset Management

  • The Lucity name is now only a suffix on a CentralSquare product, so long-standing customers should confirm which capabilities carry forward under the current release rather than assuming continuity from the Lucity they know.
  • CentralSquare is private-equity owned and grew by acquisition, so asset management competes for development attention against public safety and finance products with larger revenue, and its roadmap is not independently controlled.
  • Pricing is unpublished and quoted per municipality, and asset management is often presented alongside other suite modules, so a department must work to get a clean, unbundled number it can defend at council.
  • Esri ArcGIS is effectively a prerequisite for the spatial capability that makes the product worth buying, and that licence is a separate cost the software quote will not include.
  • It is North America focused, aligned to United States municipal practice, funding structures and regulatory programmes, which limits its fit for local authorities elsewhere.

Cosign

  • Keyless signing inherits every weakness of the identity provider behind it. Sigstore’s own threat model states that if an identity provider is compromised, Sigstore will issue certificates to those identities, so a compromised account produces perfectly valid signatures.
  • A signature proves who signed, never whether they should have. The documentation is explicit that Sigstore cannot determine authorisation, so every consumer must write and maintain their own identity and issuer policy or verification means nothing.
  • Nothing is enforced without an admission controller. Signing changes what you can prove, not what runs, and the official policy controller has a small maintainer base for a component sitting in a cluster admission path.
  • Upgrades break pipelines. Version 3 changed defaults, version 4 is announced as removing legacy functionality and roughly half the command line flags, and two official client libraries still lacked support for the new log format as of mid 2026.
  • Signatures do not expire. An artifact signed before a maintainer account was compromised and one signed after are indistinguishable unless somebody is actively monitoring the transparency log, and almost nobody is.

Pricing, plan by plan

CentralSquare Asset Management

On request
  • CentralSquare Asset Management$undefined/year
    • Subscription or on-premise licensing, quoted per municipality
    • Priced on population, module selection and user counts
    • Esri ArcGIS licensing purchased separately

Cosign

Free
  • CosignFree
    • Apache-2.0
    • Public Sigstore infrastructure free to use
    • No usage limits published

Which should you pick?

Choose CentralSquare Asset Management if

  • You need esri arcgis integration.
  • You work on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise.
  • You also want public works asset breadth.
CentralSquare Asset Management review

Choose Cosign if

  • You need keyless signing.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
  • You also want key and kms signing.
Cosign review

Questions people ask

Is CentralSquare Asset Management or Cosign better?
Neither clearly leads. CentralSquare Asset Management starts at On request and Cosign at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, CentralSquare Asset Management or Cosign?
Cosign has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for CentralSquare Asset Management and Free for Cosign.
Does CentralSquare Asset Management or Cosign run on more platforms?
CentralSquare Asset Management runs on Web, iOS, Android, Cloud, On-premise. Cosign runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
Can I use Cosign for free?
Yes. Cosign has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. CentralSquare Asset Management starts at On request.
What is CentralSquare Asset Management best used for?
CentralSquare Asset Management is most often used for a city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheets, a county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programme, a public works department wanting citizen-reported potholes and blocked drains to become work orders without manual re-keying, a municipality already running centralsquare finance that wants asset and work costs to land in the general ledger without an integration project. Of those, a city consolidating streets, water, parks and facilities maintenance into one asset register instead of four departmental spreadsheets and a county needing auditable stormwater and backflow inspection records for a regulatory programme are not what Cosign is typically brought in for.
What can CentralSquare Asset Management do that Cosign cannot?
CentralSquare Asset Management covers Esri ArcGIS integration, Public works asset breadth, Citizen request intake, Condition assessment. Cosign covers Keyless signing, Key and KMS signing, Registry-native storage, In-toto attestations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

CentralSquare Asset Management: Can I still buy Lucity?

Not under that name alone. It is sold as CentralSquare Asset Management powered by Lucity, and quotes and contracts will use the CentralSquare name.

Cosign: Does Cosign tell me if an image is vulnerable?

No. It has no vulnerability knowledge whatsoever. It can carry an SBOM as a signed attestation but never reads it. Pair it with a scanner.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Do I need Esri?

In practice yes. The spatial asset handling that distinguishes the product depends on ArcGIS, licensed separately from Esri.

Cosign: Is signing alone enough?

No. Verification is a command somebody runs. Without an admission controller enforcing it, an unsigned image still runs.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is it cloud only?

No. Both hosted subscription and on-premise deployment are available, which matters for municipalities with data residency or network policy constraints.

Cosign: What does a bare cosign verify actually prove?

Very little. Without a pinned certificate identity and OIDC issuer, it accepts a valid signature from any identity at all.

CentralSquare Asset Management: Is pricing published?

No. It is quoted per municipality based on population, modules and users, usually through a public procurement process.

Cosign: What is the risk of keyless signing?

Your OIDC provider becomes the root of trust. Compromise of that account yields genuine, verifiable signatures, so account security is the control that matters.

Cosign: Should we expect breaking changes?

Yes. Version 4 is announced to remove roughly half the flags, and a post-quantum migration is named as a further breaking change after that.

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