Developer Tools · head to head
Cortex vs Sigstore
Cortex
Developer Tools
Internal developer portal that scores service ownership and maturity rather than just cataloguing services
- From
- On request
- Free plan
- No
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: Cortex pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.; 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: Cortex covers Service catalogue, Sigstore covers Fulcio.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Cortex and Sigstore actually diverge.
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 Cortex
- Service catalogue
- Scorecards
- Initiatives
- Self-service templates
- Query language
- Eng intelligence
- Integrations layer
- On-call and ownership mapping
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.
Cortex
- A platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a Kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of servicesnot Sigstore
- An organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitionsnot Sigstore
- Enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident reviewnot Sigstore
- Replacing a self-hosted Backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgradednot Sigstore
Sigstore
- Open source projects signing releases without running a certificate authoritynot Cortex
- Organisations meeting a signed-artifact requirement without buying a signing productnot Cortex
- Publishing provenance that a consumer can verify independently of younot Cortex
- Self-hosting the same components where a public log is unacceptablenot Cortex
Where each one falls short
Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.
Cortex
- Pricing is quote only, so a platform team cannot build a business case or compare against the true cost of self-hosted Backstage without entering a sales cycle first.
- The catalogue is only as accurate as the metadata you supply, so an organisation with inconsistent repository conventions spends its first quarter cleaning data before any scorecard means anything.
- Scorecards create political friction: publishing a per-team grade turns an engineering standard into a performance metric, and teams will game the rules rather than fix the underlying issue.
- It is closed source and hosted, so organisations with strict data residency or air-gap requirements have limited options compared with running Backstage themselves.
- Value scales with organisation size, so a company with fifty engineers and thirty services will find the catalogue tells them nothing they did not already know while still paying an enterprise contract.
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
Cortex
On request- Cortex$undefined/year
- Service catalogue and ownership mapping
- Scorecards and initiatives
- Self-service templates
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 Cortex if
- You need service catalogue.
- You work on Web, API.
- You also want scorecards.
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 Cortex or Sigstore better?
- Neither clearly leads. Cortex starts at On request and Sigstore at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Cortex or Sigstore?
- Sigstore has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at On request for Cortex and Free for Sigstore.
- Does Cortex or Sigstore run on more platforms?
- Cortex runs on Web, API. 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. Cortex starts at On request.
- What is Cortex best used for?
- Cortex is most often used for a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services, an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions, enforcing production readiness standards on new services at creation time rather than at incident review, replacing a self-hosted backstage that is consuming a full-time engineer or two just to stay upgraded. Of those, a platform team that needs to prove to leadership how far a kubernetes or framework migration has actually progressed across hundreds of services and an organisation where ownership of production services is genuinely unknown after reorganisations or acquisitions are not what Sigstore is typically brought in for.
- What can Cortex do that Sigstore cannot?
- Cortex covers Service catalogue, Scorecards, Initiatives, Self-service templates. Sigstore covers Fulcio, Rekor, Keyless signing, Multi-language clients.
Answered from the vendors’ own pages
Cortex: How is Cortex different from Backstage?
Backstage is an open source framework you build and staff. Cortex is a hosted product with scorecards and initiatives out of the box and no platform team required to keep it running.
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.
Cortex: Is pricing published?
No. Cortex requires a sales conversation and prepares a custom proposal.
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.
Cortex: Can it self-host?
It is offered as a hosted product; on-premise arrangements are handled through sales rather than published.
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.
Cortex: What is the main adoption risk?
Bad or missing service metadata. The catalogue and every scorecard on top of it inherit whatever quality your repositories already have.
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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- Sigstore vs OWASP ZAP
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- Sigstore vs Sysdig
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