mbedTLS VS libsodium

Compare mbedTLS vs libsodium and see what are their differences.

mbedTLS

An open source, portable, easy to use, readable and flexible TLS library, and reference implementation of the PSA Cryptography API. Releases are on a varying cadence, typically around 3 - 6 months between releases. (by Mbed-TLS)

libsodium

A modern, portable, easy to use crypto library. (by jedisct1)
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mbedTLS libsodium
9 30
4,898 11,910
2.2% -
10.0 8.7
6 days ago 12 days ago
C C
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

mbedTLS

Posts with mentions or reviews of mbedTLS. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2022-08-31.
  • OpenWrt 23.05
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Oct 2023
    It's work in progress: https://github.com/Mbed-TLS/mbedtls/blob/development/docs/ar...

    Newer version have okay-ish support, I'd guess the next OpenWRT release will have it again.

  • How can I disable the close_notify message?
    1 project | /r/nginx | 13 Mar 2023
    It's related to this Mbed-TLS issue
  • DIY Physical Backed Tokens (EIP-5791) with ESP32 and BLE
    1 project | /r/ethdev | 2 Feb 2023
    i've used the entropy generator from MbedTLS which uses multiple sources of randomness, and seeding it additionally with the chip's mac address and the free heap size at time of creation. it would take a lot to recreate all that "noise" consistently, but i'm open to suggestions on how to make it more secure
  • Help libraries won’t work on the IDE for esp32
    1 project | /r/arduino | 26 Dec 2022
    However on the github page and assuming I found the right source - and this is a HUGE ASSUMPTION - there is a section on porting the library to other platforms.
  • redbean: a single-file actually portable web server with Lua, HTTPS and SQLite
    4 projects | /r/lua | 31 Aug 2022
    Rebean is a single executable written in ANSI C that embeds Lua 5.4, MbedTLS and SQLite. The crazy thing about this is that it is a C binary that runs on six operating systems without any cross compiling thanks to leveraging Justine Tunney's cosmopolitan.
  • Install mbedTLS on Linux
    2 projects | /r/embedded | 3 Jul 2022
    it looks like the commands are all built under https://github.com/Mbed-TLS/mbedtls/tree/development/programs and the arch mbedtls package does some extra work to rename them and copy them into /usr/local/bin: https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-community/blob/packages/mbedtls/trunk/PKGBUILD#L55
  • Elliptic Curve Cryptography Explained
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 28 May 2021
    If you want to see a real implemention of arbitrary sized integer math, mbedTLS is a great example:

    https://github.com/ARMmbed/mbedtls/blob/development/library/...

    All of the ECC code in that library relies on this code, which can be accelerated by dedicated hardware.

  • C Deep
    80 projects | dev.to | 27 Feb 2021
    mbed TLS - Another crypto implementation. Apache-2.0
  • WireGuard implementation for LwIP stack
    1 project | /r/WireGuard | 22 Feb 2021
    Definitely, FreeRTOS + LwIP + Mbed TLS is a fairly common combo these days, and Mbed TLS has hardware acceleration where possible.

libsodium

Posts with mentions or reviews of libsodium. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-09-14.
  • Libsodium: A modern, portable, easy to use crypto library
    1 project | /r/hackernews | 18 Sep 2023
    1 project | /r/patient_hackernews | 16 Sep 2023
    9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Sep 2023
    Libsodium has been around for a while, so probably the reason it was posted is that version 1.0.19 was just released: https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium/releases/tag/1.0.19-RE...

    Updated NuGet and Swift packages are going to be uploaded soon.

    AEGIS-128X and 256X are not there yet, but if you need them, they are available in libaegis: https://github.com/jedisct1/libaegis

    All the code from libaegis will eventually be merged into libsodium, including the incremental update API which is especially useful for TLS.

  • Libsodium 1.0.19 Released
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 13 Sep 2023
  • FLaNK Stack Weekly for 20 June 2023
    34 projects | dev.to | 20 Jun 2023
  • Libsodium Still Relevant and Maintained?
    1 project | /r/crypto | 21 May 2023
    To version the dependency you can check the current stable tree in git and save the date and git hash.
  • I created an encrypted command line jounal
    2 projects | /r/commandline | 22 Apr 2023
    To address both of these vulnerabilities, you should instead use a library that handles these sharp edges for you. A well received library in the security and cryptography communities is libsodium. It has high level functions that handle password hashing and data encryption for you, reducing the risk that you introduce vulnerabilities in your code, such as you have here.
  • Why can't I burn scam tokens by sending them to 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD?
    1 project | /r/ethereum | 13 Apr 2023
    In general, cryptography is really hard. So for example, an attacker could construct a message that if you signed would leak information, ie it reduces the space of possible keys such that it can be brute forced. I’m not entirely sure if you could do that with a transfer function. But it’s certainly possible. That said, there are a ton of smart devs trying to prevent that as well so I’m not assuming anything here. But prudent practices are likely good to follow. Be very careful calling anything from your cold wallet etc. Use disposable keys for anything a bit risky. I took a sec to google an example and this is the closest I could find. https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium/issues/170
  • Some questions from a noob Rustacean
    1 project | /r/rust | 17 Mar 2023
    Hi everyone! I'm learning Rust while on a break between jobs, and as I'm particularly interested in interfacing Rust with C and in cryptography, I've decided to write a wrapper around libsodium (https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium) in Rust. This is purely a hobby project and I probably won't ever release it as there are already some open-source Rust bindings available for the library.
  • Librandombytes – a public domain library for generating randomness
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Jan 2023
    Can anyone recommend between Librandombytes and libsodium ramdombytes?

    https://github.com/jedisct1/libsodium/tree/master/src/libsod...

What are some alternatives?

When comparing mbedTLS and libsodium you can also consider the following projects:

OpenSSL - TLS/SSL and crypto library

wolfssl - The wolfSSL library is a small, fast, portable implementation of TLS/SSL for embedded devices to the cloud. wolfSSL supports up to TLS 1.3!

Crypto++ - free C++ class library of cryptographic schemes

GnuTLS - GnuTLS

libhydrogen - A lightweight, secure, easy-to-use crypto library suitable for constrained environments.

LibTomCrypt - LibTomCrypt is a fairly comprehensive, modular and portable cryptographic toolkit that provides developers with a vast array of well known published block ciphers, one-way hash functions, chaining modes, pseudo-random number generators, public key cryptography and a plethora of other routines.

Botan - Cryptography Toolkit

LibreSSL - LibreSSL Portable itself. This includes the build scaffold and compatibility layer that builds portable LibreSSL from the OpenBSD source code. Pull requests or patches sent to [email protected] are welcome.

Bcrypt - Modern(-ish) password hashing for your software and your servers

mbedcrypto - a portable, small, easy to use and fast c++14 library for cryptography.