a question about keyservers

[Andrew Gallagher]

On 9 Oct 2026, at 19:02, void via Gnupg-users <gnupg-users at gnupg.org> wrote:
> 
> It seems keys.openpgp.org and hockeypuck servers like keyserver.ubuntu.com
> don't synch. What other keyservers synch or don't synch?

There are many public keyservers (or keyserver systems), but the biggest ones are, in rough order of traffic:

keys.openpgp.org
keyserver.ubuntu.com
the SKS network
the.earth.li

…plus there are many smaller and/or unmaintained servers, but they generally serve a limited or stale set of keys.

(I’m defining a “public keyserver” as one that accepts keys from users in any email domain and using any software. There are other keyservers such as the proton keyserver that only serve keys for addresses in domains that they manage, and there are also some keyservers such as the mailvelope keyserver and the flowcrypt attester that serve keys for users of specific applications.)

You can see the current SKS network, which includes most public hockeypuck servers but not (for now) keysever.ubuntu.com, at https://spider.pgpkeys.eu/sks-peers - anything not in this list is not in full sync with the network.

But…

> If you're going to publish your key, what servers do you publish to?

I would recommend publishing primarily to the SKS network, because there is a bridge configured on several of the SKS nodes that forwards new or updated keys to keys.openpgp.org, keyserver.ubuntu.com and the.earth.li — to the best of my knowledge none of those are (yet) configured to send updates back to SKS but that may change soon.

I would also recommend publishing each key directly to keys.openpgp.org at least once, because it will not serve your key in response to an email lookup until you have responded to its verification email. This only needs to be done once, as subsequent updates should be picked up automatically.

Note also that the.earth.li operates an unusual antispam system where it only serves keys in the strong set, i.e. those that have third-party certifications over them made by keys already in its database. You don’t have to submit directly to it though.

A