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cert-manager

Automated TLS certificate management for Kubernetes

Reverse Proxy & Gateways ★ 14.1k stars Medium setup Apache-2.0

cert-manager is an open-source CNCF project that automates the issuance and renewal of TLS certificates in Kubernetes. It integrates with Let's Encrypt and other issuers for self-hosted clusters.

Official siteSource code

Key features

  • Automatic certificate renewal
  • ACME and CA issuers
  • Kubernetes native
  • DNS and HTTP challenges

Pros & cons

Strengths

  • Hands-off certificate renewal
  • CNCF graduated project
  • Many issuer integrations

Trade-offs

  • Kubernetes only
  • Debugging issuance can be tricky

Is cert-manager secure?

No known vulnerabilities affect cert-manager's latest release (v1.21.2). OSV.dev lists 3 past advisories for the project; none of them applies to this release. No known vulnerabilities is not proof of security: it means none have been publicly catalogued.

  • Most recent fixed advisory CVE-2026-62290, published 2026-07-16 (90 days ago), fixed in 1.19.6, 1.20.3

Source: OSV.dev, checked 2026-10-14. How this is measured.

cert-manager replaces

Self-hosted Certbot alternatives

Health badge

Maintain cert-manager? Add its health score to your README. The badge links back to this page.

SelfHostIndex: 95 · excellent

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   :alt: SelfHostIndex health score for cert-manager
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The score is recomputed on every nightly rebuild from public repository data — see how it is calculated.

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