Ross ROSS = Recommend OSS · open-source software intelligence for agents

letsencrypt/boulder

An ACME-based certificate authority, written in Go. observed · 2026-08-28

github.com/letsencrypt/boulder · Go · MPL-2.0 (copyleft) observed · 2026-08-28

Health v2 · maintenance only

95/100

  • Activity 99
  • Release rhythm 87
  • Longevity 100
How is this computed?

round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10) — computed 2026-09-03. Adoption (stars, forks) is never an input.

  • gap_med: 7
  • age_days: 4274
  • days_rel: 8
  • days_push: 7
  • n_releases_24m: 102

Full methodology

Adoption not part of the score

5742 stars · 646 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Boulder is the Go implementation of an ACME-based certificate authority that powers Let's Encrypt. It automates domain validation and issuance/revocation of TLS certificates via the RFC 8555 ACME protocol, structured as separate gRPC-connected components.

Use cases

  • run a private ACME certificate authority
  • issue TLS certificates automatically via ACME
  • self-host a Let's Encrypt-like CA
  • test ACME client implementations against a real CA
  • automate certificate issuance and revocation for internal domains

When to choose

  • you need to operate your own ACME-compliant CA at scale
  • you want a battle-tested, production-proven ACME server implementation
  • you need automated domain validation and certificate lifecycle management

When to avoid

  • you just need TLS certificates for your own servers - use Let's Encrypt directly with an ACME client like Certbot
  • you need a simple internal PKI without ACME - tools like step-ca or smallstep may be simpler
  • you are not prepared to run a complex multi-component distributed service

Facets

service · maturity active

security http-server rpc api-framework security backend apis developer-tools go self-hosted acme certificate-authority pki tls rfc8555 lets-encrypt x509 linux docker

1 source

Member repositories

RepositoryRoleHealth v2
letsencrypt/bouldermain95

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="letsencrypt/boulder")

Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00 · Report a problem