Cerakey
Cerakey manufactures ceramic keycap sets and full ceramic mechanical keyboards for the custom keyboard market.
Founded
2020Cerakey manufactures ceramic keycap sets and full ceramic mechanical keyboards for the custom keyboard market.
Cerakey sells fired alumina ceramic keycaps as its core line, with full 114-key ANSI sets in glossy, matte, crazed, ice-crystal, lacquered, and two-tone glazes plus partial lettered kits and single novelty caps. Product development has moved along two axes: cap engineering, where the 2022 ceramic stem gave way to a moulded plastic stem, UV-coated crazed glaze, resized spacebars, and separately sold homing keys; and system completeness, where the company now ships whole boards.
The keyboard line runs from ZEN75, a 75 percent low-profile board with an aluminium top case and ceramic caps, to Peak60 HE and Maris 60, 60 percent boards using self-developed Hall-effect switches at 8000 Hz polling with 0.01 mm rapid trigger. Cerakey also sells a kiln-fired ceramic replacement case for existing GH60-standard magnetic PCBs, plus glass mouse pads and a ceramic wrist rest, and provides a browser-based web driver for configuring its magnetic boards.
Material choice is the moat. Alumina ceramic is harder and more wear resistant than ABS or PBT, does not develop the shine that sweat causes in plastic caps, and transmits backlight differently, which reviewers singled out as the strongest visual argument for the product. The crazed glaze, which forms as each cap cools in the kiln, produces a pattern that printing on plastic cannot reproduce.
Cerakey controls more of its stack than a typical keycap vendor. Its Kickstarter copy claims self-developed magnetic switches, the ZEN75 page lists Kailh co-developed low-profile Firefly switches, the company publishes ZEN75 QMK source on GitHub, it runs a browser configuration driver on its own subdomain, and it sells direct through its own Shopify store with worldwide shipping.
Ceramic is hard to make behave. Community reviews have described crooked hand-fitted stems, sets arriving warped or uneven, legends that are hard to read under backlight, and a slippery surface in cold rooms, while one widely shared thread recommended the caps to no one at their price. Cerakey's own product page narrows its warranty exposure by stating that black spots, unevenness, and rough edges are not defects and by excluding boards with north-facing LEDs from fitment cover, which transfers compatibility risk to the buyer.
Weight is the structural constraint. A letter key near three grams and a spacebar far heavier than plastic force higher switch actuation and can cause repeated inputs on light or silent switches, so the caps suit typing more than fast gaming. The company also sells a single product family into a narrow enthusiast market, has no LinkedIn company page or published headcount, and relies on crowdfunding and direct sales rather than retail distribution, which limits how far it can scale beyond the custom keyboard community.
Cerakey prices above plastic keycap sets but below custom group-buy pricing. Full sets list from 140 to 255 US dollars depending on glaze and key count, with the flagship V2 set flat at 140 US dollars across its colourways and blank and legends options costing the same. Partial lettered kits run 5 to 105 US dollars, novelty and single-cap items 13 to 108 US dollars, and accessories such as a ceramic wrist rest and glass mouse pads 35 to 95 US dollars.
Complete keyboards sit at 139 US dollars for ZEN75 against a 159 dollar regular price and 279 US dollars for Peak60 HE against 299, while the standalone ceramic case launched near 107 to 134 US dollars during a ten percent discount window. Campaign pricing was lower still, with the first set offered near 1,090 Hong Kong dollars on Indiegogo, and the storefront runs recurring seasonal discounts with influencer codes, so list prices act as an anchor above frequent sale prices.