crt.sh vs GlobalSign ACME: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros and cons, compared head to head.
crt.sh is a free external attack surface management tool. GlobalSign ACME is a commercial certificate lifecycle management tool by GlobalSign. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best external attack surface management fit for your security stack. Independent and vendor-neutral: our scores and rankings are earned, never bought — sponsored placement is always labeled.
CST VerdictShort answer
Security teams doing threat intelligence or domain monitoring should use crt.sh as a free, fast way to spot certificate issuance anomalies that signal domain takeover or phishing campaigns before they scale. Certificate Transparency logs index roughly 15 billion certificates, giving you real-time visibility into what's been legitimately issued against your domains and competitors' infrastructure. Skip this if you need automated alerting or integration into your SIEM; crt.sh is a lookup tool, not a monitoring platform, and catching malicious certificates requires manual checks or custom scripting. DevOps and infrastructure teams managing high-volume certificate lifecycles will get the most from GlobalSign ACME because its ACME protocol automation eliminates manual renewal windows and scales across CI/CD pipelines without vendor lock-in. The agent-agnostic framework integrates with existing tooling, and IntranetSSL handles internal PKI without domain validation overhead. Skip this if you need a single vendor managing both public and private certificate issuance with deep integrations into your identity platform; GlobalSign ACME is protocol-first, not ecosystem-first.
