# microsoft/SEAL

Microsoft SEAL is an easy-to-use and powerful homomorphic encryption library.

Repository: https://github.com/microsoft/SEAL
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/microsoft-seal
Homepage: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/group/cryptography-research/
Language: C++
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: encryption, cryptography, homomorphic-encryption
Last push: 2026-08-04T04:34:37+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 97/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 96, release rhythm 96, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 2855, "days_push": 29, "days_rel": 29, "gap_med": 3, "n_releases_24m": 8}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 4016, forks 773 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:32.405376+00:00)

## What it is
Microsoft SEAL is an open-source homomorphic encryption library written in modern C++, with a .NET wrapper, supporting BFV/BGV and CKKS schemes. It allows computation on encrypted data without decryption and runs across many platforms including mobile and WebAssembly.

## Use cases
- perform computations on encrypted data without decrypting it
- build privacy-preserving machine learning inference
- encrypt numbers and do arithmetic on ciphertexts with CKKS
- evaluate encrypted queries on sensitive databases
- experiment with fully homomorphic encryption schemes like BFV and CKKS

## When to choose
- you need a mature, well-documented, MIT-licensed FHE library
- you need cross-platform support including .NET, mobile, and WebAssembly
- you want both exact (BFV/BGV) and approximate (CKKS) homomorphic encryption

## When to avoid
- you need simple conventional encryption like AES or TLS
- your workload cannot tolerate the large performance overhead of homomorphic encryption
- you need a pure managed-language implementation without native dependencies

## Facets
- artifact type: library
- maturity: active
- function: cryptography, security
- domain: security, privacy, developer-tools
- platform: cpp, dotnet, cross-platform, windows, wasm
- tags: homomorphic-encryption, ckks, bfv, privacy-preserving-computation, fhe, linux, macos, android, ios

## Member repositories
- microsoft/SEAL (main) score 97

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:32.405376+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 2026-08-29T18:23:58.729232+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/microsoft/SEAL (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:32.405376+00:00, sha 83dab13338c6)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.