openssl/openssl

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

30694 stars · 11410 forks observed · 2026-08-28

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

OpenSSL is a full-featured open-source toolkit implementing TLS, DTLS, and QUIC protocols on top of a general-purpose cryptographic library (libcrypto), plus the libssl protocol library and a command-line tool. It includes an FIPS-validated cryptographic module and is the de facto standard crypto library used across the industry.

Use cases

• generate x.509 certificates and CSRs
• encrypt and decrypt files from the command line
• add TLS to a C application
• test a TLS or QUIC server handshake
• compute message digests and hashes
• create self-signed certificates for local development
• implement FIPS-compliant cryptography
• debug ssl certificate issues

When to choose

• you need battle-tested TLS/DTLS/QUIC protocol support in C or any language binding
• you need a general-purpose crypto library with FIPS validation
• you need a CLI swiss-army knife for certificates, keys, and encryption
• you need maximum platform portability and industry-wide audit history

When to avoid

• you want a modern, memory-safe language crypto library (e.g. RustCrypto, libsodium) for a new project
• you only need high-level authenticated encryption and a simpler API
• you need post-quantum-only or specialized crypto not covered by OpenSSL
• your platform ships a different system TLS stack (e.g. Secure Transport, Schannel) and you prefer native APIs

Facets

library · maturity stable

cryptography security http-server cli networking security developer-tools networking privacy windows bsd cross-platform cli c tls ssl x509 quic fips encryption certificates libcrypto libssl linux macos

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