The most affordable private CAs of 2026

How Much Does a Private CA Cost? The Most Affordable CAs of 2026

Keytos Team Keytos Team |
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Overview - How Much Will a Private CA Cost Me To Build and Maintain?

If you’ve been asked to issue certificates and build out your own private CA, the first question you probably have is “How much is this going to cost me?”. Between “Book a Demo” buttons and endless sales call, it can take weeks or months to get a clear answer to that question.

In this blog, we break down the real costs of a private CA, including the hidden costs that nobody talks about, and compare the most affordable options on the market in 2026. By the end, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about which private CA is the best fit for your organization, and how much you can expect to spend on it in the long run.

Do You Actually Need a Private CA?

Before we start breaking down the costs involved in a private CA, let’s start by checking if you actually need one. A private CA is a powerful tool for managing and issuing certificates for IoT deployments, authentication to Wi-Fi & VPN zero-trust networks, securing internal applications and websites with SSL/TLS, and enabling secure communication between devices and services. While most organizations can benefit from a private CA in some way, not every use case requires one, and in some cases a public CA or other certificate management solution might be a better fit. Let’s take a look at some common use cases and whether a private CA is necessary for them.

Public CAs for Internal Websites - A Free Option for Some Use Cases

If you’re looking for website SSL certificates, even for internal line-of-business applications, you might actually be totally fine with a free, public CA such as Let’s Encrypt or a built-in CA within your cloud hosting platform such as Azure App Service. There’s no PKI or certificate authorities to maintain, and you can get certificates for free in minutes.

However, it’s important to know the side effects of using a public CA for internal applications. Certificate Transparency Logs publicly log all certificates issued by public CAs, which means that if you use a public CA for internal applications, your internal domain names and certificate details will be publicly visible. If you’re gearing up for a new product launch or want to keep your internal infrastructure details private, this might not be the best option for you and a private CA would be a better fit.

Client Certificates for Authentication - A Private CA is Often the Only Option

If you’re looking to use client certificates for authentication, a private CA is often the only option. Public CAs are ending their support for client authentication EKUs in 2027, which means you either need to move to a dedicated public CA that still supports client authentication (if still supported at all), or switch to a private CA.

For most organizations, a private CA provides the most control and flexibility for managing client certificates, and as we’ll explore more below, it can actually be the most affordable option even compared to public CAs.

CA Costs vs. Certificate Costs - Where Scaling Becomes Expensive

A lot of the complexity that comes with pricing out a private CA option is that no two private CA providers have the same pricing model. Some charge per-certificate, some charge per user, some charge for the certificate authority itself, and many charge for all of the above. Trying to understand the true cost of a private CA means understanding both your current usage and your future growth, and how that will interact with the pricing model of the CA provider you’re considering.

The Hidden Costs of Private PKI Nobody Puts in Their Comparison Sheet

One of the biggest costs that is often left out of private CA comparisons is the cost of implementation and migration, the cost of scaling as your business grows, and the cost of potential security breaches. These costs can be significant and can quickly add up, especially if you’re not prepared for them.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when considering the total cost of a private CA:

  • Does the solution integrate natively with your identity and device management systems, or will you need set up sync jobs and advanced configurations to get it working with your existing infrastructure?
  • Does the solution have up-to-date documentation, troubleshooting guides, and support resources, or will you be on your own when you run into issues?
  • Are you going to be hosting any of the CA infrastructure yourself or in your own Azure/cloud subscription? VM, storage, and network costs can add up quickly.
  • Do you need to migrate to a new SKU or license plan if you grow beyond a certain number of certificates or users? What happens if you have a sudden spike in certificate demand and need to scale up quickly?
  • Does the solution provide detailed audit logs and monitoring tools to help you detect and respond to potential security breaches, or will you be flying blind until it’s too late?
  • How often are you renewing your certificates? For CAs that charge per certificate, you’re looking at recurring costs every time you need to renew your certificates, which for many organizations might be multiple times per year.

Picking the most affordable private CA isn’t just about the price tag of the monthly cloud subscription or license fee. It’s about understanding the total cost of ownership over many years, and knowing what might pop up on your bill when you’re not expecting it.

There are a lot of private CA options on the market in 2026, and the pricing models can vary widely. Solutions like AD CS and EJBCA allow you to run your own CA infrastructure using licenses and hardware you already have, but they come with hidden costs of implementation, maintenance, and security that can add up quickly. Cloud-hosted solutions like EZCA, AWS Private CA, and SCEPMan offer more affordable subscription models, but you need to be careful with the billing models and hidden costs of certificate issuance, infrastructure, and scaling as your organization grows. What seems like a cheap option at first can quickly become expensive if you don’t understand the full picture of costs involved.

Let’s dig into some of the most popular private CA options on the market in 2026 and break down what they might realistically cost you over time.

Run Your Own CA with Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS)

If you’re already in the Microsoft ecosystem, you might be considering running your own CA with Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS). While AD CS itself is free to use if you have the necessary Windows Server licenses, that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to costs. To match the reliability and security of a managed CA service, you’ll need to factor in the following:

  • The cost of a highly-available (HA) infrastructure to host your CA service. This could be on-premises servers in your own datacenter or VMs in Azure. Either way, you’re looking at tens-of-thousands of dollars per year in infrastructure costs alone. (and that’s being conservative with RAM prices being what they are in 2026)
  • Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) to protect your CA’s private keys, so they’re not sitting on a vulnerable server. HSMs can cost thousands of dollars or more just for the hardware, and then there’s the ongoing maintenance and support costs to consider.
  • The cost of managing and maintaining the CA infrastructure, including patching, monitoring, and troubleshooting. This can easily require a full-time employee or team, which adds up to tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in highly-skilled labor costs.

Not many organizations have the resources to build and maintain a secure, reliable PKI and CA infrastructure on their own, which is why many turn to managed CA services instead.

Use an Open-Source CA Like EJBCA

Another alternative is to use an open-source CA solution like EJBCA. While EJBCA itself is free to use, the same cost considerations as AD CS apply when it comes to hosting and maintaining the CA infrastructure. You’ll still need to set up a highly-available infrastructure, use HSMs to protect your keys, and manage the ongoing maintenance and security of the CA environment. By the time you factor in all of those costs, you’re likely looking at a similar total cost of ownership as running your own CA with AD CS.

Move to the Cloud with AWS Private CA

Many cloud-first organizations go straight to public cloud offerings when they’re looking for security and infrastructure solutions. For PKI and private CAs, AWS Private CA is a popular option, especially if you’re already using AWS for other parts of your infrastructure.

AWS Private CA allows you to create cloud-hosted HSM-backed private CAs without the investment and maintenance costs of operating an on-premises CA. CAs can be deployed just like any other AWS service, and you can deploy a CA in a matter of minutes.

However, the cost model of AWS Private CA is based on both the CA itself as well as the certificates you issue. Each private CA costs $400 per month, and each certificate issued costs $0.75 per month for the first 1,000, with the price per certificate decreasing as you issue more. So even before you issue your first certificate, you’re already looking at $9,600 per year just for a standard 2-tier CA hierarchy, and then you have to start calculating the cost of the certificates you issue and renew on top of that.

Plus, while AWS Private CA has rich support in its APIs and CLI, it doesn’t integrate natively with many MDM platforms like Microsoft Intune or Jamf. A Private CA is more than just a certificate issuing service, it also needs to support a lot of the protocols and platforms that your organization is already using. For most use cases, you’ll need to layer on an additional service or tool to sync certificates from AWS Private CA to your existing infrastructure, which adds additional costs and complexity.

While the other options leverage a mix of user-based billing, certificate-based billing, and sometimes require you to host and pay for your own infrastructure, EZCA from Keytos is a cloud PKI and private CA solution that offers unlimited certificates and users for a low, flat monthly fee without any of the hidden costs or complexities of the other options on the market.

With EZCA you can deploy your private CAs in just a few clicks, add them to your existing Intune and ACME workflows, and you can issue as many certificates as you need without worrying about hitting a limit, exploding your costs, or having to track user licenses or limits. For just $200 per CA per month, you can get a fully-featured HSM-backed private CA without the hidden costs and complexities of the other options on the market, and you don’t have to sacrifice features or security to get an affordable price.

As your business grows and you need to issue more certificates, there’s no change to your monthly fee, and you don’t have to worry about hitting a limit or having to switch to a different license tier. You can just keep issuing certificates as you need them, and your cost remains predictable and affordable. Plus, there’s no infrastructure to manage or maintain, and you get a 99.9% uptime SLA with detailed audit logs and monitoring tools to help you maintain the security of your PKI environment without having to do any of the heavy lifting yourself.

Deploy a Purpose-Built CA for SCEP with SCEPMan

If you’re looking specifically for a Simple Certificate Enrollment Protocol (SCEP) CA, SCEPMan is a popular option that integrates with Microsoft Intune and other MDM platforms. SCEPMan is a purpose-built CA that focuses on providing a seamless SCEP experience for device certificate enrollment, which is a common use case for organizations using client certificates for authentication.

While SCEPMan has a Community Edition that is free, it does not provide any support or SLAs, and does not include many of the features that you likely need in a real, production environment. Plus, you have to run the SCEPMan infrastructure yourself in your own Azure subscription. This includes the App Services, Key Vaults, and other resources that SCEPMan relies on to operate. So while the license for SCEPMan Community Edition might be free, you’re still looking at the costs of running the infrastructure to support it, which can add up quickly.

SCEPMan Enterprise Edition charges per user, with different tiers based on the number of users you have. While you can pay for additional users beyond the size of each tier, licenses are configured manually and do not auto-scale, which means that if your organization grows over time you’ll either need to manually add each new user to your SCEPMan license or risk having unlicensed users that you overpay for. Plus, when your business grows into a new tier that could save you money, you’ll have to manually switch your license to the new tier once your current license period ends. And don’t forget that you still have to pay for the backing infrastructure to run SCEPMan, which is not included in the license cost. For HA deployments of SCEPMan Enterprise Edition, you’re looking at thousands of dollars per year in addition to the license costs.

Comparing the Total Cost of Ownership of Private CAs in 2026

We’ve covered a lot of ground and nuance so far, comparing billing models, hidden costs, and the tradeoffs of different private CA options. To make it easier to digest, let’s take a look at an example scenario and compare the total cost of ownership of the different private CA options we’ve discussed.

Let’s say you have the following requirements:

  • Dedicated Root and Issuing CAs in a 2-tier hierarchy
  • HSM-backed private keys for both CAs
  • 5,000 users in your organization that need certificates for client authentication to your Wi-Fi, VPN, etc.
  • Each user has at least a laptop and mobile device.
  • You want to issue certificates with a 90-day validity period and 80% lifetime renewal, which means you’ll be renewing certificates 5 times per year
  • You want a highly-available CA infrastructure with at least a 99.9% uptime SLA.

In total, you’re looking at 50,000 certificates issued/renewed per year. Let’s break down the total one-year cost of ownership for each of the private CA options we’ve discussed:

Private CA Solution Subscription Certificates Infrastructure Implementation Total One-Year
AD CS Free with Windows Server licenses Free $50,000+ (HA infrastructure + HSMs) $80,000+ (4+ months multiple full-time staff) $130,000+
EJBCA Community Edition Free Free $50,000+ (HA infrastructure + HSMs) $80,000+ (4+ months multiple full-time staff) $130,000+
AWS Private CA $400/month per CA ($9,600/year) $0.75/certificate (first 1,000)
$0.35/certificate (1,001-10,000)
$0.001/certificate (10,001+)
($3,940/year)		 Free (cloud-hosted) $10,000 (1-2 weeks to set up CA and additional tooling to sync with existing infrastructure) $23,540
SCEPMan Enterprise Edition $15,300/year (with annual commitment) Free $1,300+/year (hosted in your Azure subscription) $5,000 (1 week to deploy infrastructure, configure CAs, and integrate with existing systems) $21,600
EZCA $200/month per CA ($4,800/year) Free Free (cloud-hosted) $2,000 (2 days to set up CA and integrate with existing infrastructure) $6,800

As you can see from the table above, while self-hosted CAs might seem like a more affordable option at first glance, when you factor in the hidden costs of infrastructure, implementation, and maintenance, they can quickly become the most expensive option in the long run. AWS Private CA and SCEPMan Enterprise Edition offer more affordable subscription costs, but their certificate-based billing and infrastructure costs can add up quickly as your organization grows. EZCA offers a simple, flat monthly fee with unlimited certificates and users, making it the most affordable and predictable option for organizations of all sizes.

Why EZCA is the Most Affordable Private CA in 2026

You might be asking yourself: “What’s the catch? Why is EZCA so affordable compared to the other options on the market? Am I sacrificing features or security to get that low price?”.

To start with the second question, there are no sacrifices with EZCA. You get a fully-featured, HSM-backed private CA that integrates natively with Microsoft Intune and other MDM platforms, supports all the protocols you need for certificate enrollment and management, and provides detailed audit logs and monitoring tools to help you maintain the security of your PKI environment. When it comes to features and security, EZCA leads the pack. But how can it be so affordable?

The main reason is that EZCA was built by ex-Microsoft PKI engineers who have deep experience in building and maintaining large-scale cloud services and PKI environments. EZCA was built from the ground up to be a cloud-native PKI solution that leverages the best parts of a multi-tenant cloud service while also ensuring absolute security, compliance, and isolation between customers. When you create your first private CA with EZCA, there aren’t any environments to provision or infrastructure we need to set up for you. You get your own HSM-backed CA in just a few clicks, and you can start issuing certificates right away. This allows us to offer a much more affordable price point without sacrificing any of the features or security that you need in a private CA.

Talk With a Keytos Identity Expert to Learn How EZCA Can Help You Get a Private CA for Your Organization at an Affordable Price

If you’re interested in learning more about how EZCA can help you get a private CA for your organization at an affordable price, we encourage you to deploy a free trial of EZCA, no sales call required. But if you do want to talk to a real Keytos engineer to review your requirements and see how EZCA can fit into your existing infrastructure, you can book a demo with our team and we’ll be happy to walk you through it.