Softwr

APIs · head to head

Convoy vs Cosign

Convoy logo

Convoy

APIs

Open source webhooks gateway you self-host, handling both sending and receiving

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Cosign logo

Cosign

Cybersecurity

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Convoy the default deployment is self-hosted, so you operate Convoy plus Postgres and Redis and carry the on-call burden for the system that delivers your customers' events.; 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: Convoy covers Inbound and outbound, Cosign covers Keyless signing.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Convoy and Cosign actually diverge.

Attributes where Convoy and Cosign differ
AttributeConvoyCosign
Pricing modelPer month, flat rate regardless of volumeOpen source, no licence fee
PlatformsLinux, Docker, Kubernetes, CloudmacOS, Linux, Windows, Docker
CategoryAPIsCybersecurity

Identical on both: starting price (Free), free tier (Yes), 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 Convoy

  • Inbound and outbound
  • Broker-driven ingestion
  • Payload transformation
  • Portal links
  • Circuit breaking
  • Retry policies
  • OpenTelemetry export
  • Role-based access control

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.

Convoy

  • A fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party SaaS for compliance reasonsnot Cosign
  • A high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licencenot Cosign
  • A team that also receives webhooks from many providers and wants ingestion, verification and deduplication in the same gatewaynot Cosign
  • An engineering group that wants webhook delivery driven directly from an existing Kafka or SQS topicnot Cosign

Cosign

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

Where each one falls short

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

Convoy

  • The default deployment is self-hosted, so you operate Convoy plus Postgres and Redis and carry the on-call burden for the system that delivers your customers' events.
  • Frain Technologies is a small startup, and putting customer-facing delivery infrastructure on it means accepting real vendor continuity risk on a component that is hard to swap out quickly.
  • The premium tier at a flat 999 US dollars a month is poor value below substantial volume, while the community edition omits the portal, transformations and RBAC that most production deployments end up wanting.
  • The hosted cloud trial is capped at one project and 100 events a day, which is too small to properly evaluate the service before committing.
  • Documentation and the third-party ecosystem are thinner than the established webhook services, so unusual configurations often mean reading the Go source.

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

Convoy

Free
  • CommunityFree
    • Self-hosted open source gateway
    • Inbound and outbound webhooks
    • Automatic retries and message broker support
  • Premium$999/month
    • Flat rate irrespective of message volume
    • Portal links and payload transformation
    • RBAC, circuit breaking and white labelling
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • SAML SSO
    • Dedicated support with SLA
    • On-premises deployment assistance
  • Cloud$undefined/month
    • Hosted by Convoy
    • 14 day trial limited to one project and 100 events a day
    • Usage-based tiers above the trial

Cosign

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

Which should you pick?

Choose Convoy if

  • You need inbound and outbound.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud.
  • You also want broker-driven ingestion.
Convoy 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 Convoy or Cosign better?
Neither clearly leads. Convoy starts at Free and Cosign at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Convoy or Cosign?
Convoy starts at Free and Cosign at Free.
Does Convoy or Cosign run on more platforms?
Convoy runs on Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, Cloud. Cosign runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker.
Can I use Convoy for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Convoy best used for?
Convoy is most often used for a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons, a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence, a team that also receives webhooks from many providers and wants ingestion, verification and deduplication in the same gateway, an engineering group that wants webhook delivery driven directly from an existing kafka or sqs topic. Of those, a fintech that cannot route customer webhook traffic through a third-party saas for compliance reasons and a high-volume platform for which per-message webhook pricing costs more than the flat premium licence are not what Cosign is typically brought in for.
What can Convoy do that Cosign cannot?
Convoy covers Inbound and outbound, Broker-driven ingestion, Payload transformation, Portal links. Cosign covers Keyless signing, Key and KMS signing, Registry-native storage, In-toto attestations.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Convoy: Is Convoy really open source?

Yes, the community edition is open source and self-hostable, covering both inbound and outbound webhooks with retries.

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.

Convoy: What does premium cost?

A flat 999 US dollars a month, self-hosted, regardless of message volume.

Cosign: Is signing alone enough?

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

Convoy: Does it receive webhooks as well as send them?

Yes, inbound ingestion with verification and deduplication is a first-class feature, unlike most webhook services.

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.

Convoy: Do I have to self-host?

No, there is a hosted cloud, but the trial is capped at 100 events a day and self-hosting is the primary model.

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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