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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

PC

24 alternatives to PubKey – Communicate Privately in Anonymous Public Spaces

A little while back I remember seeing a user on a certain anonymous imageboard asking for an invite to a selective email host. Only after a few minutes did the guy realize the perplexity of the situation. How do you insure against a race condition in a public forum with no way to direct message? Luckily, he nabbed the invite code, but it got me thinking about using PGP to provide a solution. This is meant to be a rough PoC and the UX is definitely not ready for the average Joe, but the functionality I'd like to think is there. What catbox.moe is to dropbox is what I'd like this to eventually…

PubKey is a tool for sending encrypted messages in anonymous public spaces without direct messaging capability. It uses PGP encryption to allow users to securely communicate and share information like invite codes on… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. PubKey – Communicate Privately in Anonymous Public Spaces launched in 2022; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1RW

    Hi, creator here. This is a demo of our recent work presented at Oakland (IEEE S&P): https://eprint.iacr.org/2022/368. The server and client code are written in Rust and available here: https://github.com/menonsamir/spiral-rs. The general aim of our work is to show that homomorphic encryption is practical today for real-world applications. The server we use to serve this costs $35/month! A quick overview: the client uses homomorphic encryption to encrypt the article number that they would like to retrieve. The server processes the query and…

    2022 · spiralwiki.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2SC

    Hi HN, I wrote a custom SSH server in Go, give it a try. It uses your terminal user and SSH keys to authenticate implicitly. Instead of getting a shell, you get an IRC-style chatroom with everyone else. $ ssh chat.shazow.net If you're getting "Permission denied (publickey)", please use ssh-keygen to create a keypair. Instructions here: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys/ SSH is a really cool protocol; it's a lot like HTTP2. This is a demo of one thing you can do with it, but I plan to factor out the code into libraries that will let you build all…

    2014 · its alternatives →

  3. 3

    A free, light and easy to use client-side PGP tool 🔐

    2020 · aliceandbob.io · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Anonymous messaging, chat in incognito mode, encryption

    2023 · its alternatives →

  5. 5KS

    Hi HN! I built KeyPub.sh to solve the problem of user verification for CLI applications. It's essentially OAuth for the terminal, but using SSH keys that developers and users already have. - No installation needed - works with existing SSH setup - Privacy-focused: users control what email info is shared - Simple email verification process - Free public service - Perfect for CLI app developers who don't want to build user verification Try it with: `$ ssh keypub.sh about` Source code: https://github.com/skariel/keypub

    2024 · keypub.sh · its alternatives →

  6. 6
    Keychat▲108

    Start a free secure chat with anyone without signing up

    2020 · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Briefing - Start a secure anonymous video chat

    2020 · brie.fi · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    a distributed PGP keyserver project based on the dat protocol - tdjsnelling/dat-keyserver

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Latchkey▲122

    Hi HN, At Imbue, we’ve been following the rapid developments in the agent landscape and noticed that the way agents interact with third-party services on users’ behalf often leaves a lot to be desired. Integrations are ad hoc, complicated, context-heavy, and either unfriendly to non-technical users or tied to a lock-in of some sort. We‘re experimenting with a command-line tool, Latchkey, that could be used by local agents targeted at non-technical users while avoiding remote intermediaries. As far as we know, this is the only existing approach at the intersection of these two goals. Core…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Ethereum address book and private chat for all 👦🏻👩🏼🧑🏾👵🏻

    2018 · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    A tiny app to quickly send encrypted messages with a hotkey

    2025 · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    One-time end-to-end encrypted anonymous chats

    2025 · yaps.chat · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Use Touch ID / Secure Enclave for SSH Authentication! - sekey/sekey

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    The fastest way to create and share cool stuff when you chat

    2016 · hyperkey.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15ES

    Using Slack video blocks to share PGP encrypted messages inside the Slack client

    Jun 2026 · v1c.rocks · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    This project has been kicking around in my head since I first heard about the webauthn PRF extension in early 2024. I've slowly chipped away at it since, and finally got things to a shareable state over the summer thanks to a very fun parental leave. Headed back to work tomorrow, so I figure there's no time like the present. tldr: A client-held encryption key derived during passkey authentication encrypts all sensitive user data prior to persistence so that only the user is able to decrypt and reuse that data on their device. This allows short-lived, privacy-preserving age proofs to be…

    Aug 2026 · loginwithone.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    One-time end-to-end encrypted anonymous chats

    2025 · yaps.chat · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    This is a project I made to learn more about crypto. I've also written a [post](https://vaktibabat.github.io/posts/ecurvechat/) that explains all the crypto concepts and algorithms used in the project, and how I implemented them. I'd be very glad for any feedback about both the code and the post :)

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19
    GPTKey▲101

    Write with AI in any app using the ChatGPT keyboard for iOS

    2022 · apps.apple.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Request & share passwords securely and with 0 errors

    2021 · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    Integrate ChatGPT onto your device across all applications

    2023 · quickkey.carrd.co · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    I wanted a voice-to-text app but didn't trust any of the proprietary ones with my privacy. So I decided to see if I could vibe code it with 0 macOS app & Swift experience. It uses a local binary of whisper.cpp (a fast implementation of OpenAI's Whisper voice-to-text model in C++). Github: https://github.com/richardwu/openwhisper I also decided to take this as an opportunity to compare 3 agentic coding harnesses: Cursor w/ Opus 4.6: - Best one-shot UI by far - Didn't get permissioning correct - Had issues making the "Cancel recording" hotkey being turned on all the…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    This is a community forum for people who use, build, and run things on Nostr. Whether you are taking your first steps with keys and zaps, ship relays and clien…

    23d ago · nostr-proto.org · its alternatives →

  24. 24F1

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →