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Cybersecurity · head to head

Cosign vs Very Good Security

Cosign logo

Cosign

Cybersecurity

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

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Very Good Security logo

Very Good Security

Cybersecurity

Tokenisation proxy that keeps card and personal data out of your own systems and out of PCI scope

From
$1000/month
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.; Very Good Security vGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • They diverge on capability: Cosign covers Keyless signing, Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Cosign and Very Good Security actually diverge.

Attributes where Cosign and Very Good Security differ
AttributeCosignVery Good Security
Starting priceFree$1000/month
Pricing modelOpen source, no licence feePer month
Free tierYesNo
PlatformsmacOS, Linux, Windows, DockerWeb, API

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 Very Good Security

  • Aliasing proxy
  • PCI scope reduction
  • Network tokenisation
  • Processor optionality
  • Card issuing data
  • Vault and access controls
  • Data residency options
  • Compliance artefacts

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 Very Good Security
  • Attaching a signed bill of materials to a release so consumers can verify its provenancenot Very Good Security
  • Meeting a customer or regulatory requirement for signed artifactsnot Very Good Security
  • Verifying third-party images before they enter an internal registrynot Very Good Security

Very Good Security

  • A marketplace facing its first PCI DSS Level 1 assessment that wants to keep card data off its own estate rather than harden a dozen servicesnot Cosign
  • A merchant negotiating with a second acquirer that needs card credentials portable so the negotiation is real rather than theoreticalnot Cosign
  • A fintech collecting bank account and identity documents that wants sensitive fields absent from logs, backups and analytics warehouses by constructionnot Cosign
  • A card issuer that must display a full PAN in its own mobile app without the app or its backend touching cardholder datanot 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.

Very Good Security

  • VGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • Token portability is the whole selling point yet leaving VGS means migrating tokens back out, a project the vendor has no incentive to streamline, so the lock-in you removed from your acquirer partly moves to VGS.
  • Entry pricing at around one thousand US dollars a month is real money for a pre-revenue fintech, and it buys volume-limited throughput, so cost scales with exactly the growth that made you buy it.
  • Scope reduction is not scope elimination: your QSA still assesses how you integrate, and teams regularly discover that a support tool or an internal admin screen pulled plaintext back in and dragged systems into scope again.
  • Proxy-based interception constrains how you design request flows, and non-standard payloads, streaming uploads or binary formats often need custom routing rules that make debugging production issues noticeably harder.

Pricing, plan by plan

Cosign

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

Very Good Security

$1000/month
  • Starter$1000/month
    • Aliasing proxy
    • Vault storage
    • PCI scope reduction
  • Growth$undefined/month
    • Network tokenisation
    • Multiple processors
    • Data residency options
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom vault architecture
    • Dedicated support and SLA
    • Contractual compliance coverage

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 Very Good Security if

  • You need aliasing proxy.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want pci scope reduction.
Very Good Security review

Questions people ask

Is Cosign or Very Good Security better?
Neither clearly leads. Cosign starts at Free and Very Good Security at $1000/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Cosign or Very Good Security?
Cosign has a free tier; the other does not. Paid plans start at Free for Cosign and $1000/month for Very Good Security.
Does Cosign or Very Good Security run on more platforms?
Cosign runs on macOS, Linux, Windows, Docker. Very Good Security runs on Web, API.
Can I use Cosign for free?
Yes. Cosign has a free tier, so you can try it without paying. Very Good Security starts at $1000/month.
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 Very Good Security is typically brought in for.
What can Cosign do that Very Good Security cannot?
Cosign covers Keyless signing, Key and KMS signing, Registry-native storage, In-toto attestations. Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy, PCI scope reduction, Network tokenisation, Processor optionality.

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.

Very Good Security: Does VGS make me PCI compliant?

No. It removes cardholder data from your systems so your assessment covers a far smaller boundary, but you still complete an assessment and your integration is part of it.

Cosign: Is signing alone enough?

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

Very Good Security: Can I move to another processor without re-collecting cards?

Yes, that is a core reason people buy it. The vault reveals stored credentials to whichever processor you route to.

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.

Very Good Security: What does it cost?

Published entry pricing is about one thousand US dollars per month; growth and enterprise tiers are quoted.

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.

Very Good Security: Is it only for card data?

No. The proxy handles any sensitive field, including bank details, national identifiers and documents, though payments is where the product is now focused.

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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