Datasets:

stackscan
/

lets-encrypt

pretty_name: Let's Encrypt Adoption Among 5,000 Large Companies and Organizations
license: cc-by-4.0
tags:
  - cybersecurity
  - web-technologies
  - technographics
  - ssl
  - tls
  - lets-encrypt
  - technology-adoption
  - company-data
  - business
  - websites
task_categories:
  - tabular-classification
  - tabular-regression
language:
  - en
size_categories:
  - 1K<n<10K

Let's Encrypt Adoption Among 5,000 Large Companies and Organizations

Overview

This dataset lists 5,050 large companies and organizations whose websites were found to use SSL/TLS certificates issued by Let's Encrypt. Each row carries firmographic context: industry, employee band, country, locality, founding year and LinkedIn profile.

The file is a sample of large organizations that use Let's Encrypt. It is not a ranking, and it is not the 5,000 largest or most popular organizations in the world.

Collected in August 2026. Certificate choices change, so treat the data as a snapshot of that month rather than a current state.

It is intended for technology research, cybersecurity analysis, technographic research, competitive intelligence, market analysis and data science.

Full Let's Encrypt statistics, including the global heatmap, usage by country and by industry, and the top websites, are published at StackScan.

Dataset Highlights

Collected in August 2026
5,050 organizations, one row each, with no repeated domains
Every organization in the file uses Let's Encrypt, so there is no adoption column. Adoption is the selection criterion
Every organization has 5,001 or more employees
142 industries and 140 countries represented
Not only private companies: 1,120 rows (22%) are government bodies, universities, schools, non-profits and similar institutions

What is Let's Encrypt?

Let's Encrypt is a free, automated, and open Certificate Authority that provides SSL/TLS certificates. It enables websites to deploy HTTPS without purchasing certificates from traditional commercial certificate authorities.

Dataset Fields

The data is in Lets-Encrypt.csv: 5,050 rows, 15 columns. Coverage is the share of rows where the field is populated.

Column	Type	Coverage	Description
`Popularity Rank`	int64	100%	Website popularity rank, lower being more popular. Ranges from 5 to 1,959,064. Rows are stored in ascending rank order
`Domain`	string	100%	Primary website domain. Unique across the file
`Company Name`	string	100%	Company or organization name, lowercased
`Company Size`	string	100%	Employee band. Two values: `5001-10000` (2,245 rows) and `10001+` (2,805 rows)
`Year Founded`	float64	73.4%	Founding year
`Industry`	string	99.7%	Industry label, lowercased. 142 distinct values
`LinkedIn URL`	string	100%	Company LinkedIn profile path
`Locality`	string	85.1%	City or region, where available
`Country`	string	100%	Organization or website country. 140 distinct values
`TLD`	string	100%	Top-level domain. 355 distinct values
`Language`	string	0.6%	Detected site language
`Instagram`	string	0.4%	Instagram handle
`Twitter`	string	0.2%	Twitter handle
`YouTube`	string	0.2%	YouTube channel
`TikTok`	string	0.1%	TikTok handle

The language and social columns are populated for fewer than 1% of rows.

Methodology

Websites were analyzed for technical fingerprints associated with Let's Encrypt. An organization is considered a Let's Encrypt adopter when the relevant certificate or technology footprint is detected on its associated website.

Technology detection represents an observation made in August 2026 and should not be interpreted as confirmation of an organization's complete infrastructure.

Use Cases

This dataset can be used for:

Technographic research
Cybersecurity research
SSL/TLS infrastructure analysis
Market research
Competitive intelligence
Data science and machine learning
Technology adoption analysis
Academic research

Important Notes

Technology detection is based on publicly observable website signals.
A detected Let's Encrypt certificate does not necessarily mean that Let's Encrypt is used across all of an organization's domains or infrastructure.
Website infrastructure can change over time.
Results represent observations made in August 2026.
The dataset should not be interpreted as an official statement from any company regarding its technology stack.
Every row is an adopter, so the file describes what Let's Encrypt adopters look like. Measuring what share of large organizations use Let's Encrypt would require a comparable sample of non-adopters, which is not included here.

Citation

If you use this dataset, please credit StackScan and link to the source page.

Plain text:

StackScan. (2026). Let's Encrypt Adoption Among 5,000 Large Companies and Organizations (data collected August 2026) [Data set]. StackScan. https://www.stackscan.com/technology/lets-encrypt

BibTeX:

@misc{stackscan_lets_encrypt_2026,
  author       = {{StackScan}},
  title        = {Let's Encrypt Adoption Among 5,000 Large Companies and Organizations},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {aug},
  publisher    = {StackScan},
  howpublished = {\url{https://www.stackscan.com/technology/lets-encrypt}},
  note         = {Data collected August 2026. Dataset: \url{https://huggingface.co/datasets/stackscan/lets-encrypt}}
}

Source page: Let's Encrypt usage statistics.

License

Released under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). You are free to share and adapt the data, including commercially, provided you give appropriate credit.

Attribution must name StackScan and link to the source page:

Data from StackScan, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

For academic or published work, use the citation above.