Cybersecurity · head to head
Cosign vs Earthly
Cosign
Cybersecurity
Signs and verifies container images and artifacts, with or without managing keys
- From
- Free
- Free plan
- Yes
The short version
- 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.; Earthly pricing model not published; requires sales contact
- They diverge on capability: Cosign covers Keyless signing, Earthly covers Policy as code.
- Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.
Where they differ
Only the attributes on which Cosign and Earthly actually diverge.
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 Cosign
- Keyless signing
- Key and KMS signing
- Registry-native storage
- In-toto attestations
- Offline verification
- Trusted root and signing config
Only in Earthly
- Policy as code
- Multi-stage enforcement
- AI agent governance
- Repository-wide policies
- Incident response automation
- Compliance management
- Earthfiles build tool
- Satellites
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 Earthly
- Attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenancenot Earthly
- Meeting a customer or regulatory requirement for signed artifactsnot Earthly
- Verifying third-party images before they enter an internal registrynot Earthly
Earthly
- Enforcing engineering standards across AI and human developersnot Cosign
- Automating incident response procedures across all repositoriesnot Cosign
- Embedding compliance requirements into development workflowsnot Cosign
- Standardizing build processes with Earthfilesnot 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.
Earthly
- Pricing model not published; requires sales contact
- Earthly Lunar is a recent launch (2025) with limited track record
- Primarily GitHub-focused; limited integration with other platforms
- No public documentation on pricing or feature tiers
Pricing, plan by plan
Cosign
Free- CosignFree
- Apache-2.0
- Public Sigstore infrastructure free to use
- No usage limits published
Earthly
FreeNo published plan breakdown. See the Earthly review.
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.
Choose Earthly if
- You need policy as code.
- You want to start without paying.
- You work on Web, CLI.
- You also want multi-stage enforcement.
Questions people ask
- Is Cosign or Earthly better?
- Neither clearly leads. Cosign starts at Free and Earthly at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
- Which is cheaper, Cosign or Earthly?
- Cosign starts at Free and Earthly at Free.
- Does Cosign or Earthly run on more platforms?
- Cosign runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Earthly runs on Web, CLI.
- Can I use Cosign for free?
- Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
- 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 Earthly is typically brought in for.
- What can Cosign do that Earthly cannot?
- Cosign covers Keyless signing, Key and KMS signing, Registry-native storage, In-toto attestations. Earthly covers Policy as code, Multi-stage enforcement, AI agent governance, Repository-wide policies.
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.
Earthly: What is the difference between Earthfiles and Earthly Lunar?
Earthfiles is an open-source build tool that reached 12,000 GitHub stars and is used by companies like NVIDIA, Intel, and Databricks. Earthly Lunar is a separate governance platform launched in 2025 for enforcing standards across development workflows.
SourceCosign: Is signing alone enough?
No. Verification is a command somebody runs. Without an admission controller enforcing it, an unsigned image still runs.
Earthly: How does Earthly Lunar enforce standards?
Lunar converts engineering standards, compliance requirements, and processes documented in AGENTS.md files, wikis, and incident postmortems into enforceable guardrails that apply consistently across repositories and development stages.
SourceCosign: 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.
Earthly: What is the pricing for Earthly Lunar?
Pricing is not published on the website. Interested customers should contact Earthly's sales team for current pricing and feature tiers.
SourceCosign: 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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