AgePony vs PGPony
Two ponies, two jobs.
Same developer, same rules, different cryptography. PGPony speaks OpenPGP — the big, capable, decades-old standard with keyservers and email. AgePony speaks age — small, modern, and deliberately minimal. The right answer is whichever matches the job.
the short version
age for simplicity, PGP for reach. Reach for AgePony when you want to seal a file fast to an age or SSH key. Reach for PGPony when you need encrypted email, keyservers, web of trust, smartcards, or GnuPG interop.
At a glance.
| AgePony | PGPony | |
|---|---|---|
| Format | age | OpenPGP (RFC 9580) |
| Best at | Encrypting files, fast | Email, files, the full toolkit |
| Keys | Tiny age / SSH keys | Full OpenPGP keys + subkeys |
| Recipient by GitHub username | Yes | No |
| Encrypted email workflow | No | Yes |
| Keyservers / WKD | No | Yes |
| Web of trust | No | Yes |
| Signing | SSHSIG | OpenPGP signatures |
| Hardware keys | FIDO over NFC (sign) | OpenPGP smartcards (sign + decrypt) |
| Learning curve | Gentle | Steeper — it does more |
| Price | Free | Free |
Honest tradeoffs.
Where PGPony wins
- Email. If you need to send an encrypted message to someone's inbox, that's OpenPGP's home turf. age doesn't do inline encrypted email.
- Discovery. Keyservers and WKD let you find a stranger's key from their email address. age has no such directory.
- GnuPG interop. PGPony round-trips with the GnuPG world that a lot of infrastructure still runs on.
- Smartcard decryption. OpenPGP smartcards can decrypt on-card; FIDO keys in AgePony sign, but don't decrypt.
Where AgePony wins
- Simplicity. No subkeys, no expiry ceremonies, no web of trust. A recipient is one short line.
- SSH keys you already have. Encrypt to an ssh-ed25519 key with no new key material at all.
- The GitHub-username trick. Type a username, AgePony fetches the keys. Nothing in PGP land is that quick.
- Less to get wrong. A smaller surface means fewer footguns for people new to encryption.
The verdict.
- Choose AgePony if you mainly encrypt and sign files, and your recipients use age or SSH keys.
- Choose PGPony if you need encrypted email, keyservers, web of trust, GnuPG compatibility, or on-card decryption.
- Install both if you straddle both worlds. They get along fine, and you'll always have the right tool for the file in front of you.
Try AgePony
Free. No accounts. No tracking. Bit-for-bit compatible with the age command line.