# cloudflare/cfssl

CFSSL: Cloudflare's PKI and TLS toolkit

Repository: https://github.com/cloudflare/cfssl
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/cfssl
Homepage: https://cfssl.org/
Language: Go
License: BSD-2-Clause
License Family: permissive
Last push: 2026-04-24T00:37:10+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 58/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 78, release rhythm 8, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4440, "days_push": 132, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 9462, forks 1148 (observed 2026-08-28T04:10:31.250599+00:00)

## What it is
CFSSL is Cloudflare's PKI/TLS toolkit for signing, verifying, and bundling TLS certificates, available as both a command line tool and an HTTP API server. It also includes packages for building custom PKI tools, a multi-root certificate authority server, and utilities for generating keys, CSRs, and certificate bundles.

## Use cases
- generate private keys and certificate signing requests
- run a lightweight internal certificate authority
- sign and verify TLS certificates
- build certificate chain bundles for HTTPS sites
- serve a JSON API for certificate issuance
- create self-signed certificates for development

## When to choose
- you need to operate your own internal CA or sign certificates programmatically
- you want a CLI and HTTP API for certificate generation and bundling
- you need Go packages to build custom PKI tooling

## When to avoid
- you only need to obtain certificates from a public CA like Let's Encrypt (use certbot or acme clients)
- you need a full-featured enterprise PKI with revocation infrastructure like CRL/OCSP at scale
- you need a GUI-based certificate manager

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: stable
- function: cryptography, security, http-server, cli, sdk
- domain: security, developer-tools, networking
- platform: go, windows, cross-platform, cli
- tags: pki, tls, certificate-authority, x509, certificate-bundling, csr, json-api, command-line, linux, macos, web-server

## Member repositories
- cloudflare/cfssl (main) score 58

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:31.250599+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T17:22:06.123198+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/cloudflare/cfssl (fetched 2026-08-28T04:10:31.250599+00:00, sha 72352626b48f)
  - homepage: https://cfssl.org/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:00.565200+00:00, sha 6dd8b19db266)
  - site_page: https://blog.cloudflare.com/tag/developer-documentation (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:00.568711+00:00, sha 12bb2ca0cd87)
  - site_page: https://www.cloudflare.com/about (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:00.570596+00:00, sha 966c42a9a06f)
  - site_page: https://developers.cloudflare.com/ (fetched 2026-08-29T08:22:00.572546+00:00, sha 1b8430a97c92)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.