Cert-Manager

cert-manager is a powerful and extensible X.509 certificate controller for Kubernetes and OpenShift workloads. It obtains certificates from a variety of issuers, including Let's Encrypt, HashiCorp Vault, and Venafi, and ensures certificates are valid and up-to-date, attempting to renew them before expiry. It supports certificate issuance for Ingress, Gateway API, and arbitrary workloads via Certificate resources.

Cert-Manager is listed with 6 APIs on the APIs.io network. Tagged areas include Certificates, Cloud-Native, Graduated, Kubernetes, and Security.

The Cert-Manager catalog on APIs.io includes 1 JSON-LD context and 1 Spectral governance ruleset.

Cert-Manager’s developer surface includes documentation, getting-started guide, changelog, and 17 more developer resources.

🌐 Visit website 📡 Profile data on GitHub

33.1/100 thin ▬ flat Agent 1/100 human only Front door AI 1/6 silent Heartbeat 100/100 alive self hosted · Apache-2.0 Full breakdown ↓
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0 · Show this score on your site →

AccessFreemium

6 APIs

Certificates Cloud-Native Graduated Kubernetes Security TLS

Kin Score

Kin Score How this is scored →
scored 2026-11-06 · rubric v0.27.0

Composite quality — 33.1/100 · thin

Contract Quality 4.3 / 19

Developer Ergonomics 4.7 / 15

Access Clarity 1.2 / 15

Operational Transparency 3.6 / 10

Contract Governance 0.9 / 9

Discoverability 5.2 / 8

Regulatory Posture 1.6 / 15

Open Source Surface 10.0 / 10

Agent readiness — 1/100 · human only

Machine-Readable Contract 0 / 18

Agentic Access Contract 0 / 10

Documented Reversibility 0 / 6

MCP Server 0 / 12

Machine-Readable Auth 0 / 10

Idempotency 0 / 9

Stable Error Semantics 0 / 8

Request/Response Examples 0 / 7

Rate-Limit Signaling 7 / 7

Typed Event Surface 0 / 6

Agent Skills 0 / 5

Well-Known Catalog 0 / 4

Consent & Bot Identity 0 / 3

A2A Agent Card 0 / 8

Dry-Run / Simulate Mode 0 / 4

Delegated User Identity 0 / 6

Protected Resource Metadata 0 / 5

Registration Without a Human 0 / 6

Agentic Commerce Well-Known Document 0 / 5

Pagination 5 / 5

Distinct Operations 3 / 3

MCP Tool Quality 6 / 6

Regulatory Posture applies to this provider. Its tags matched the Horizontal (data, software, accessibility, platform) regime, so Regulatory Posture carries 15 points of the composite. If this regime is wrong for your business, say so on your provider repo — the applicability map is public and we will correct it.

Open Source Surface applies to this provider. This product is open source and we read its repository directly, so Open Source Surface carries 10 points of the composite. It is scored from what the repository actually publishes — a security policy, a contribution guide, a release history, a code of conduct — read live from the provider rather than inferred from our own catalog pointers. This facet adds; nothing was taken away to make room for it. An open-source project is not excused from the commercial facets, because exemption would strip it of the points it does earn. If we have the wrong repository, or this product is not open source, say so on your provider repo and we will drop the facet rather than have you publish against it.

Create-or-Update Ergonomics could not be measured. We hold no machine-readable contract for this provider to read, so there is nothing to measure a write surface against. Excluded rather than scored zero: never-measured and measured-empty are different facts. Publishing an OpenAPI is what makes this facet — and several others — scorable at all.

The six quality facets above are damped to 75 points between them, because both conditional facets apply and carry 25 points together. That is why each facet's contribution is shown against a damped maximum: raising a quality facet moves the composite by 75% of its nominal weight, not 100%. The full arithmetic is at apis.io/rating/.

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Agent readiness — checks not met, largest first (exact, from this profile):

Machine-Readable Contract +18 pts — api_specs includes an OpenAPI document
MCP Server +12 pts — deployment.mode + probe verdict on the mcp/ manifest, not the pointer; an unprobed slug falls back to authorship
Agentic Access Contract +10 pts — agentic_access artifact present (x-agentic-access), graded by author
Machine-Readable Auth +10 pts — a served openid-configuration/oauth-authorization-server carrying `issuer` (served), else the securitySchemes class in the provider OpenAPIs — bound (mutualTLS, DPoP, Signature) > negotiable (oauth2 authorizationCode/clientCredentials, openIdConnect) > bearer (http bearer, apiKey)
Idempotency +9 pts — OpenAPI mutating operations declare an idempotency key — a header, a request-body property, or a named de-duplication token whose own description says so (verified); else common[].type matches /idempoten/i (documented)
Stable Error Semantics +8 pts — OpenAPI $refs a shared error schema across 4xx/5xx responses (verified), else common[].type includes ErrorCatalog / ErrorCodes / DeclineCodes

12 more unmet checks in the Agent Readiness table above.

Kin Score — facets with the most composite points still available (weight × headroom):

Contract Quality scores 22.7 — up to +19.3 composite points
Access Clarity scores 7.9 — up to +18.4 composite points
Developer Ergonomics scores 31.0 — up to +13.8 composite points

Each check links to what satisfies it. Publish the artifact, or tell us where it already lives, and the score moves on the next scoring run.

Improve this rating by publishing the missing artifacts — every area above can be raised, and the full rubric is at apis.io/rating/. Every facet and dimension name above is a link: it opens that measurement's own page — what it means, the exact checks that feed it, how the whole catalog distributes on it, and the providers at the top of it. This rating is computed from the provider profile at artifacts.apis.io/cert-manager/apis.yml: open an issue on github.com/api-evangelist/cert-manager to ask a question or point us at an artifact you publish. Submit an artifact on GitHub — free → Manage your own listing — the Influence plan, $499/mo →

Markets this provider is in provisional

The Kin Score Market layer reads a provider inside its market: its position, and how deep its integrations go. Depth is only comparable within a position. Provisional and unweighted: not part of the Kin Score or agent readiness.

Market	Position	Depth	Registered MCP server	Declares compatibility
PKI and Encryption (certificate authorities, key management)	standard	58.1	-	-
OpenSSF Best Practices Badge Holders	standard	58.1	-	-
Artifact Hub Cloud-Native Packages	standard	58.1	-	-

Registered MCP server and declares compatibility are report only — not weighted. Undeclared means we found nothing we can read, so there is no number: we never infer integrations.

APIs 6

Individual APIs this provider publishes, each with its own machine-readable definition.

cert-manager Kubernetes API

The cert-manager API extends the Kubernetes API with custom resources including Certificate, Issuer, ClusterIssuer, CertificateRequest, and Order. These resources allow declarat...

cert-manager CLI (cmctl)

cmctl is the command-line tool for managing cert-manager resources. It provides commands for checking certificate status, manually triggering renewals, approving or denying cert...

trust-manager

trust-manager is a cert-manager companion project for managing TLS trust bundles in Kubernetes and OpenShift clusters. It distributes CA bundles via a Bundle custom resource to ...

cert-manager approver-policy

approver-policy is a cert-manager policy plugin that automatically approves or denies CertificateRequest resources based on defined CertificateRequestPolicy custom resources. It...

cert-manager csi-driver

csi-driver is a Kubernetes Container Storage Interface plugin that works alongside cert-manager to seamlessly request and mount certificate key pairs as ephemeral volumes direct...

cert-manager csi-driver-spiffe

csi-driver-spiffe is a Kubernetes CSI plugin that works alongside cert-manager to transparently deliver SPIFFE SVIDs as X.509 certificate key pairs to mounted pods using ephemer...

Cert-Manager API pricing

Not yet checked against Cert-Manager's own pricing page. Compiled by API Evangelist on 2026-05-04; confirm before you rely on a figure. A free plan or tier is listed.

Plan	Price
Free freemium	Free
Professional paid	Free
Enterprise enterprise	—

Plan details, limits and sources →

Rate limits

Free Tier Default: 10 requests per minute
Free Tier Monthly Quota: 1000 requests per month
Professional Tier Default: 100 requests per minute

Compiled by API Evangelist, not yet checked against Cert-Manager's documentation. All 5 limits →

Pricing Plans 1

Published pricing tiers and plan structures.

Cert Manager Plans Pricing

3 plans

PLANS

Rate Limits 1

Documented rate limits and quota policies.

Cert Manager Rate Limits

5 limits

RATE LIMITS

FinOps 1

Cost, billing, and metering signals for API financial operations.

Cert Manager Finops

FINOPS

Semantic Vocabularies 1

JSON-LD contexts and semantic vocabularies used across these APIs.

Cert Manager Context

0 classes · 12 properties

JSON-LD

Spectral Rules 1

Spectral governance rulesets for linting and validating these APIs.

Cert-Manager — jsonschema rules

6 rules · 4 warnings 2 info

SPECTRAL

JSON Schema 2

Standalone JSON Schema definitions for this provider's data models.

cert-manager Certificate

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

cert-manager Issuer and ClusterIssuer

5 properties

JSON SCHEMA

Security Posture 1

Authentication, domain security, vulnerability disclosure, and trust-center signals.

Cert Manager Domain Security

TLSv1.3 · HSTS

SECURITY

Resources

Get Started 1

Portal, sign-up, and the first successful call

GettingStarted

GettingStarted

Documentation 5

Reference material describing how the API behaves

ContributionGuide

Documentation

Reference

JSONSchema

JSONSchema

Design & Contract 1

Pagination, idempotency, versioning, errors, and events

JSONLD

JSONLD

Build 3

SDKs, sample code, and the tooling you integrate with

CodeOfConduct

CodeOfConduct

GitHubOrganization

GitHubOrganization

GitHubRepository

GitHubRepository

Access & Security 2

Authentication, authorization, and security posture

SecurityPolicy

SecurityPolicy

DomainSecurity

DomainSecurity

Operate 4

Status, limits, changes, and where to get help

RateLimits

IssueTracker

Community

ChangeLog

Commercial 3

Pricing, plans, and the legal terms of use

Plans

Plans

FinOps

FinOps

License

License

Company 1

The organization behind the API

Website

Website

Source (apis.yml)

aid: cert-manager
name: Cert-Manager
description: cert-manager is a powerful and extensible X.509 certificate controller for Kubernetes and OpenShift workloads.
  It obtains certificates from a variety of issuers, including Let's Encrypt, HashiCorp Vault, and Venafi, and ensures certificates
  are valid and up-to-date, attempting to renew them before expiry. It supports certificate issuance for Ingress, Gateway
  API, and arbitrary workloads via Certificate resources.
url: https://cert-manager.io
deliveryModel:
  model: self-hosted
  license: Apache-2.0
  open_source: true
  commercial: false
  callable_host: false
  label: Self-hosted open source · you run it yourself
  confidence: high
  source:
  - license
  generated: '2026-08-28'
  method: derived
accessModel:
  pricing: freemium
  onboarding: unknown
  trial: false
  try_now: false
  public: false
  label: Freemium
  confidence: low
  source:
  - plans
  - security
  generated: '2026-11-06'
  method: derived
image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/icons/cert-manager.png
tags:
- Certificates
- Cloud-Native
- Graduated
- Kubernetes
- Security
- TLS
tags_raw:
- Certificates
- Cloud Native
- Graduated
- Kubernetes
- Security
- TLS
created: '2026-03-16'
modified: '2026-04-23'
specificationVersion: '0.23'
type: Index
apis:
- aid: cert-manager:cert-manager-api
  name: cert-manager Kubernetes API
  description: The cert-manager API extends the Kubernetes API with custom resources including Certificate, Issuer, ClusterIssuer,
    CertificateRequest, and Order. These resources allow declarative management of TLS certificates, automatic renewal, and
    integration with ACME and other certificate authorities directly through kubectl and Kubernetes manifests.
  humanURL: https://cert-manager.io/docs/
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/
  - type: Reference
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/reference/api-docs/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/getting-started/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/cert-manager-certificate-schema.json
  - type: JSONSchema
    url: json-schema/cert-manager-issuer-schema.json
  tags:
  - Certificates
  - Kubernetes API
  - TLS
- aid: cert-manager:cmctl-cli
  name: cert-manager CLI (cmctl)
  description: cmctl is the command-line tool for managing cert-manager resources. It provides commands for checking certificate
    status, manually triggering renewals, approving or denying certificate requests, and converting cert-manager resources
    between API versions.
  humanURL: https://cert-manager.io/docs/reference/cmctl/
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/reference/cmctl/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cmctl
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cmctl/releases
  tags:
  - Certificate Management
  - CLI
- aid: cert-manager:trust-manager
  name: trust-manager
  description: trust-manager is a cert-manager companion project for managing TLS trust bundles in Kubernetes and OpenShift
    clusters. It distributes CA bundles via a Bundle custom resource to namespaces and workloads, ensuring that applications
    have access to an up-to-date set of trusted CA certificates without manual maintenance.
  humanURL: https://cert-manager.io/docs/trust/trust-manager/
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/trust/trust-manager/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/trust/trust-manager/installation/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/trust-manager
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/trust-manager/releases
  tags:
  - Kubernetes
  - TLS
  - Trust Bundles
- aid: cert-manager:approver-policy
  name: cert-manager approver-policy
  description: approver-policy is a cert-manager policy plugin that automatically approves or denies CertificateRequest resources
    based on defined CertificateRequestPolicy custom resources. It provides fine-grained control over which certificate requests
    are permitted, including constraints on allowed DNS names, key usages, and issuers.
  humanURL: https://cert-manager.io/docs/policy/approval/approver-policy/
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/policy/approval/approver-policy/
  - type: GitHubRepository
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/approver-policy
  - type: ChangeLog
    url: https://github.com/cert-manager/approver-policy/releases
  tags:
  - Certificate Approval
  - Policy
  - Security
- aid: cert-manager:csi-driver
  name: cert-manager csi-driver
  description: csi-driver is a Kubernetes Container Storage Interface plugin that works alongside cert-manager to seamlessly
    request and mount certificate key pairs as ephemeral volumes directly into pods. It enables workloads to automatically
    obtain short-lived certificates at pod startup without requiring manual secret management.
  humanURL: https://cert-manager.io/docs/usage/csi-driver/
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/usage/csi-driver/
  tags:
  - Certificate Management
  - CSI
  - Kubernetes
- aid: cert-manager:csi-driver-spiffe
  name: cert-manager csi-driver-spiffe
  description: csi-driver-spiffe is a Kubernetes CSI plugin that works alongside cert-manager to transparently deliver SPIFFE
    SVIDs as X.509 certificate key pairs to mounted pods using ephemeral volumes. It allows all pods running in a Kubernetes
    cluster to automatically receive SPIFFE identity documents from a configured Trust Domain.
  humanURL: https://cert-manager.io/docs/usage/csi-driver-spiffe/
  image: https://kinlane-images.s3.amazonaws.com/shared/apis-json/apis-json-logo.jpg
  properties:
  - type: Documentation
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/usage/csi-driver-spiffe/
  - type: GettingStarted
    url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/usage/csi-driver-spiffe/installation/
  tags:
  - CSI
  - Identity
  - Kubernetes
  - SPIFFE
common:
- type: Plans
  url: plans/cert-manager-plans-pricing.yml
- type: RateLimits
  url: rate-limits/cert-manager-rate-limits.yml
- type: FinOps
  url: finops/cert-manager-finops.yml
- type: IssueTracker
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/issues
- type: SecurityPolicy
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/blob/master/SECURITY.md
- type: CodeOfConduct
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/blob/master/CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
- type: ContributionGuide
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md
- type: License
  name: Apache-2.0
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/blob/master/LICENSE
- type: DomainSecurity
  url: security/cert-manager-domain-security.yml
- type: Website
  url: https://cert-manager.io
- type: Documentation
  url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/
- type: GettingStarted
  url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/getting-started/
- type: Reference
  url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/reference/
- type: Community
  url: https://cert-manager.io/docs/contributing/
- type: GitHubOrganization
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager
- type: GitHubRepository
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager
- type: ChangeLog
  url: https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/cert-manager-certificate-schema.json
- type: JSONSchema
  url: json-schema/cert-manager-issuer-schema.json
- type: JSONLD
  url: json-ld/cert-manager-context.jsonld
maintainers:
- FN: Kin Lane
  email: kin@apievangelist.com

Cert-Manager API — frequently asked questions

Does Cert-Manager have an API?

Yes. APIs.io lists 6 APIs from Cert-Manager, including cert-manager Kubernetes API, cert-manager CLI (cmctl) and trust-manager, and 3 more.

How much does the Cert-Manager API cost?

APIs.io lists 3 pricing plans for Cert-Manager, with each plan's price, limits and inclusions under Pricing on this page.

Is the Cert-Manager API ready for AI agents?

Cert-Manager has a Kin Score of 33.1 out of 100 (thin) and an Agent Readiness score of 0.6 (human-only), scored by API Evangelist on 2026-11-06.

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Tools for providers

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get_provider_toolsEvery MCP tool they ship, with the operation each wraps.
get_provider_evidenceHow each part of their score was established. Free — the basis for a claim should not sit behind it.
get_provider_ratingPRO — composite, band, trend and facet scores.
apis_io_searchSTART HERE — APIs, providers and tags for one query, each with its total.
resolveTurn a domain, URL or GitHub org into the provider it belongs to.
find_cohortsEvery scored population of providers in the catalog.

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