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Cybersecurity · head to head

Sigstore vs Soketi

Sigstore logo

Sigstore

Cybersecurity

Free public signing and transparency infrastructure for open source artifacts

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Soketi logo

Soketi

Developer Tools

Self-hosted, Pusher-compatible WebSockets server with a stalled maintenance record

From
Free
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: 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.; Soketi maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
  • They diverge on capability: Sigstore covers Fulcio, Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Sigstore and Soketi actually diverge.

Attributes where Sigstore and Soketi differ
AttributeSigstoreSoketi
Pricing modelOpen source, public instance free to useOpen source, no licence fee
PlatformsWeb, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hostedLinux, macOS, Windows
CategoryCybersecurityDeveloper Tools

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 Sigstore

  • Fulcio
  • Rekor
  • Keyless signing
  • Multi-language clients
  • Timestamp authority
  • Neutral governance

Only in Soketi

  • Pusher protocol compatibility
  • Presence and private channels
  • Horizontal scaling
  • App management backends
  • Webhooks
  • Prometheus metrics

What people use each for

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

Sigstore

  • Open source projects signing releases without running a certificate authoritynot Soketi
  • Organisations meeting a signed-artifact requirement without buying a signing productnot Soketi
  • Publishing provenance that a consumer can verify independently of younot Soketi
  • Self-hosting the same components where a public log is unacceptablenot Soketi

Soketi

  • A Laravel application that already uses Echo and wants to stop paying a hosted realtime providernot Sigstore
  • Realtime notifications or presence indicators where data must not leave your own infrastructure for compliance reasonsnot Sigstore
  • A local or CI environment that needs a Pusher-compatible server without hitting a paid accountnot Sigstore
  • A high-connection-count application where hosted per-connection pricing has become the largest line in the infrastructure billnot Sigstore

Where each one falls short

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

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.

Soketi

  • Maintenance has effectively stalled: the maintainer has said time is severely limited, releases are infrequent, and the community has been discussing whether the project is abandoned, which means security fixes may not arrive.
  • Dependency drift on Node and uWebSockets.js will eventually force you to fork or migrate, and that cost is unbudgeted at the point you adopt it.
  • There is no commercial support to buy, so a production incident at three in the morning is entirely your problem with no escalation path.
  • Scaling beyond a single node needs Redis and careful configuration, and getting presence channels correct across nodes is a genuine source of subtle bugs.
  • It implements the Pusher protocol rather than tracking it, so any protocol feature Pusher adds later will not appear, and the compatibility guarantee slowly decays.

Pricing, plan by plan

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

Soketi

Free
  • SoketiFree
    • MIT licensed
    • Unlimited connections subject to your own hardware
    • No vendor billing

Which should you pick?

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.
Sigstore review

Choose Soketi if

  • You need pusher protocol compatibility.
  • You want to start without paying.
  • You work on Linux, macOS, Windows.
  • You also want presence and private channels.
Soketi review

Questions people ask

Is Sigstore or Soketi better?
Neither clearly leads. Sigstore starts at Free and Soketi at Free, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Sigstore or Soketi?
Sigstore starts at Free and Soketi at Free.
Does Sigstore or Soketi run on more platforms?
Sigstore runs on Web, Linux, macOS, Windows, Self-hosted. Soketi runs on Linux, macOS, Windows.
Can I use Sigstore for free?
Both have a free tier, so you can try either at no cost before committing.
What is Sigstore best used for?
Sigstore is most often used for open source projects signing releases without running a certificate authority, organisations meeting a signed-artifact requirement without buying a signing product, publishing provenance that a consumer can verify independently of you, self-hosting the same components where a public log is unacceptable. Of those, open source projects signing releases without running a certificate authority and organisations meeting a signed-artifact requirement without buying a signing product are not what Soketi is typically brought in for.
What can Sigstore do that Soketi cannot?
Sigstore covers Fulcio, Rekor, Keyless signing, Multi-language clients. Soketi covers Pusher protocol compatibility, Presence and private channels, Horizontal scaling, App management backends.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

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.

Soketi: Is Soketi still maintained?

Barely. The maintainer has stated that available time is very limited and releases have been sparse; treat it as community-maintained.

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.

Soketi: Do I need to change my client code?

No. Pusher client SDKs and Laravel Echo work by changing the host, port and credentials.

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.

Soketi: What does it cost?

Nothing in licence fees. It is MIT licensed; you pay for the server it runs on.

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.

Soketi: What are people moving to?

Laravel Reverb for Laravel applications, and Sockudo, a Rust reimplementation, for others.

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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