Keygen
Software licensing and distribution API.
Description from awesome-selfhosted (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Still maintained? Yes: 17 commits in the last 90 days, latest release v1.7.0 (Jun 2026).
Comparisons in Miscellaneous: ChatGPT alternatives, DeepL alternatives.
At a glance
Keygen quick facts
- Health score
- 68/100 SLOWING
- Stars
- 1,620
- Last commit
- 3 days ago (Oct 2026)
- Latest release
- v1.7.0, Jun 2026
- Licence
- ⊘ Proprietary
Top alternatives to Keygen
In its own words
The project's README opens: "Keygen is a fair source software licensing and distribution API, built for developers, by developers. Use Keygen to add license key validation, entitlements, and device activation to your business's desktop apps, server applications, on-premise software, and other products."
Why it ranks here
Health score explained
Keygen scores 68/100, #52 of 77 in Miscellaneous: 17 commits in the last 90 days earn 19.8 of 35 points, the latest release (v1.7.0, 4 months ago) earns 25.0 of 25, 1,620 stars add 12.8 of 20, an active, unarchived repository keeps 10 and no advertised Docker image leaves the final 10 unclaimed. That places it in the slowing band (40 to 69). The biggest shortfall is commit activity, worth 15.2 more points.
Recomputed nightly from the GitHub API. How the score is calculated.
- Commit activity biggest shortfall 19.8 / 35
17 commits in 90 days (30+ scores full marks)
- Release recency 25.0 / 25
v1.7.0 released 4 months ago
- Stars 12.8 / 20
1.6k stars on GitHub (logarithmic)
- Not archived 10.0 / 10
Repository is active
- Docker support 0.0 / 10
No Docker support advertised
Commit activity
- 17
- Last 90 days
- 401
- Last 12 months
- 3 days ago
- Last push
Ranked #52 of 77 tools in Miscellaneous by health , between Digiread (#51) and ClipCascade (#53) .
Details
| Licence | ⊘ Proprietary |
| Platforms | Ruby |
| Latest release | v1.7.0 · 4 months ago |
| Stars | 1,620 |
| Open issues | 197 |
| Docker | Not advertised |
| Repository | keygen-sh/keygen-api ↗ |
Keygen vs its top 5 alternatives
Active tools that share a category with Keygen (Miscellaneous), scored on the same five terms.
| Tool | Health | Stars | Licence | Last commit |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| penpot | 99 | 62k | MPL-2.0 | today |
| Reactive Resume | 99 | 45k | MIT | today |
| Anubis | 98 | 24k | MIT | yesterday |
| Infisical Community Edition | 98 | 30k | MIT | today |
| ConvertX | 97 | 19k | AGPL-3.0 | 2 days ago |
| Keygen (this tool) | 68 | 1.6k | ⊘ Proprietary | 3 days ago |
Keygen: common questions
Is Keygen still maintained?
Keygen had 17 commits in the last 90 days and its last push was 3 days ago; the latest tagged release, v1.7.0, is from 4 months ago. Repoly recomputes this nightly.