# age encryption tool 49 Hacker News commenters recommended age encryption tool and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 11 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule. **Verdict:** Simple, auditable file encryption that people recommend over GPG, including with SSH keys, though critics say it lacks PGP's key management and smartcard support. ## Why people recommend it - Reuses existing SSH keys (6 comments): "Age encryption allows devs to use the same ssh keys they use to access git repos" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48153105)) "using SSH keys for signatures and age[1] for encryption targeting SSH keys" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405614)) "You can use the age tool to encrypt secrets based on ssh public keys." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46192179)) - Simple, auditable, does one thing (3 comments): "age over GPG. Simpler, auditable, handles multi-recipient natively, no web of trust complexity." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47206838)) "age is so clean precisely because it does only one thing" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45914717)) "It’s open source and has multiple mature implementations by well-regarded cryptographic engineers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488678)) - Seen as GPG replacement (4 comments): "age over GPG. Simpler, auditable, handles multi-recipient natively, no web of trust complexity." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47206838)) "much neater stack that does basically everything I would need to use PGP for" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472418)) "age is the real replacement for pgp in terms of sending encrypted files" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46472333)) - Stable, composable, well-maintained code (3 comments): "age is designed to be composable and very stable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46328197)) "Highly trusted / audited / scrutinised / maintained code." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49844608)) "It’s open source and has multiple mature implementations by well-regarded cryptographic engineers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46488678)) ## What people warn about - Not a full PGP replacement (3 comments): "Age is maybe useful for personal encryption use cases, but it is no way a replacement for all encryption use cases of PGP" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45921676)) "If you need these various features, then age et al. do not fit the bill." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919855)) "it does not even do that thing as well as PGP does in most situations I can think of" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45920027)) - No keyring or key management (2 comments): "there is no keyring and you have to supply people's public key each time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405746)) "Age has Yubikey support with no reasonable long term key discovery, backup, or rotation strategy as far as I can tell." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45919434)) - Not post-quantum secure (2 comments): "Both the choice of symmetric key length AND the choice of public key algorithms independent of each other make this format not PQ." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45930379)) "But this means that the symmetric key is entirely vulnerable to quantum computers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45922092)) - Breakage and past vulnerabilities (3 comments): "discovered multiple vulnerabilities in cryptographic utilities, namely in GnuPG, Sequoia PGP, age, and minisign" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46454543)) "Apart from the fact that it really slowed down my deployments, the thing broke within a year." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46412967)) "the ansible recipe for building and installing age broke within a year" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46434803)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [GnuPG](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gnupg.md): 40 recommend - [PGP](https://hackerapproved.com/p/pgp.md): 38 recommend - [GPG](https://hackerapproved.com/p/gpg.md): 23 recommend - [Cryptomator](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cryptomator.md): 18 recommend - [Sequoia PGP](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sequoia-pgp.md): 12 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "age encryption tool", https://hackerapproved.com/p/age/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).