PGP Key Viewer

What it's for

OpenPGP keys, signatures and messages (from GnuPG, Proton Mail, Thunderbird, OpenKeychain and others) are blocks of Base64 that say nothing at a glance. This reads one and shows what’s in it: a key’s fingerprint, owners, algorithm, expiry and subkeys; who made a signature and when; who a message is encrypted to.

For example, when someone sends you their public key, paste it here and compare the Fingerprint with the one they read out to you over the phone before you trust it, and check it hasn’t expired or been revoked.

How to use it

Paste an armored block (-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----, PRIVATE KEY BLOCK, SIGNATURE, MESSAGE or a clearsigned SIGNED MESSAGE), or choose a file: .asc and binary .gpg, .pgp, .sig and .key files are both read, and a file can be dropped on the page. Several blocks can be pasted at once.

• Any problems come first: a private key without a passphrase, a revoked or expired key, small RSA keys, deprecated DSA and Elgamal keys, SHA-1 signatures, no usable encryption subkey, a damaged armor checksum.
• For each key: the fingerprint, key ID, algorithm and size or curve, whether it’s public or private, created, expires, uses (certify, sign, encrypt, authenticate), and its user IDs (the primary marked, with how many other keys certified each). Its subkeys follow in a table.
• For a signature: what kind it is, when it was made, by which key (and user ID, if given), and with which hash. A clearsigned message’s text is shown too.
• Packets lists every packet with its size and a summary: the recipients of an encrypted message, the file name and date in literal data, and what’s inside ZIP or ZLIB compression (its text is shown below the signature).

Example

Paste this sample key from the OpenPGP standard (RFC 9580):

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

xjMEU/NfCxYJKwYBBAHaRw8BAQdAPwmJlL3ZFu1AUxl5NOSofIBzOhKA1i+AEJku
Q+47JAY=
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

It’s a version 4 EdDSA (legacy) Ed25519 key created on 19 August 2014, with fingerprint C959 BDBA FA32 A2F8 9A15 3B67 8CFD E121 9796 5A9A and key ID 8CFDE12197965A9A. It has no user ID or self-signature, so it shows no uses or expiry.

Good to know

Nothing is decrypted and no signature is verified: a signature shown here may still be forged, and a key’s user IDs are only what its owner typed. Compare fingerprints through another channel before trusting a key. Expiry and uses come from the newest self-signature, without checking it. BZip2-compressed content isn’t opened, and version 3 keys show no fingerprint. Private keys are read only in your browser, but treat them carefully all the same. There’s no Copy a link here, as keys may be private.