Softwr

Cybersecurity · head to head

Cosign vs Delinea

Cosign logo

Cosign

Cybersecurity

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Delinea logo

Delinea

Cybersecurity

Privileged access management from the merged Thycotic and Centrify

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Only Cosign has a free tier, so it costs nothing to try first.
  • Each has a real cost: 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.; Delinea the Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • They diverge on capability: Cosign covers Keyless signing, Delinea covers Secret Server.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 1 September 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cosign and Delinea actually diverge.

Attributes where Cosign and Delinea differ
AttributeCosignDelinea
Starting priceFreeOn request
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feequote
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsmacOS, Linux, Windows, DockerWeb, Windows, Linux, macOS

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

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 Cosign

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

Only in Delinea

  • Secret Server
  • Privileged session recording
  • Privilege Manager
  • Server PAM
  • Discovery
  • DevOps secrets
  • Behaviour analytics

What people use each for

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

Cosign

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

Delinea

  • An organisation whose cyber insurer now requires privileged credentials to be vaulted and rotatednot Cosign
  • A mid-market IT team that abandoned a heavier PAM rollout and needs a vault that can be in production in weeksnot Cosign
  • A company removing local administrator rights from every workstation after a ransomware incidentnot Cosign
  • An audit finding that shared service account passwords are stored in a spreadsheet and used by contractorsnot Cosign

Where each one falls short

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

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.

Delinea

  • The Thycotic and Centrify lineages are integrated unevenly, so buying the full portfolio means running consoles and agents that do not share one administrative model as cleanly as the marketing suggests.
  • Modules are licensed separately by different units, per privileged user for the vault and per endpoint for privilege management, which makes total cost hard to model and easy to underestimate at scale.
  • Delinea does not publish rates, so buyers benchmark against third party and public sector listings; expect list prices to be negotiable by a wide margin, which means the first quote is not the price.
  • Thoma Bravo ownership since 2021 has coincided with firmer renewal pricing, and buyers with a single-vendor PAM estate have little leverage once credentials are inside the vault.
  • Migrating out of a privileged access vault is a genuinely hard project because every automated process that fetches a secret has to be repointed, so the switching cost is real and the vendor knows it.

Pricing, plan by plan

Cosign

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

Delinea

On request
  • Secret Server$undefined/year
    • Priced per privileged user, tiered by edition
    • Cloud or on premises deployment
    • Session recording in higher editions
  • Privilege Manager$undefined/year
    • Priced per endpoint
    • Local admin rights removal and application elevation
    • Licensed separately from Secret Server
  • Server PAM$undefined/year
    • Priced per managed server or per privileged user
    • Just-in-time server access
    • Licensed separately

Which should you pick?

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

Choose Delinea if

  • You need secret server.
  • You work on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
  • You also want privileged session recording.
Delinea review

Questions people ask

Is Cosign or Delinea better?
Neither clearly leads. Cosign starts at Free and Delinea at On request, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cosign or Delinea?
Cosign has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Cosign and On request for Delinea.
Does Cosign or Delinea run on more platforms?
Cosign runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Delinea runs on Web, Windows, Linux, macOS.
Can I use Cosign for free?
Yes. Cosign has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Delinea starts at On request.
What is Cosign best used for?
Cosign is most often used for signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keys, attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenance, meeting a customer or regulatory requirement for signed artifacts, verifying third-party images before they enter an internal registry. Of those, signing container images in a build pipeline without managing long-lived private keys and attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenance are not what Delinea is typically brought in for.
What can Cosign do that Delinea cannot?
Cosign covers Keyless signing, Key and KMS signing, Registry-native storage, In-toto attestations. Delinea covers Secret Server, Privileged session recording, Privilege Manager, Server PAM.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

Delinea: Is Delinea the same as Thycotic?

Delinea is the merged company formed from Thycotic and Centrify in 2021. Secret Server is the former Thycotic product; the server access products come from Centrify.

Cosign: Is signing alone enough?

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

Delinea: Is pricing published?

Not by Delinea. Public sector frameworks have listed Secret Server Cloud around 348 GBP per user per year, which is a reference point, not a quote.

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.

Delinea: Does one licence cover endpoints and servers?

No. Secret Server, Privilege Manager and Server PAM are separately licensed on different units. Scope all three if your requirement spans them.

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.

Share

Related pages

More on Cosign

More on Delinea

Keep looking

Other head to heads