HashiCorp Vault

HashiCorp Vault is the industry standard for secrets management, but HashiCorp's shift to the Business Source License (BSL) in 2023 changed the landscape. The open source edition is now source-available rather than truly open source, and the Enterprise version ($0.03/secret/month) creates costs that scale with infrastructure complexity.

Infisical is a modern, open source secrets management platform built for developer teams. It provides a clean dashboard for managing secrets across environments (development, staging, production), automatic secret rotation, integrations with CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI), and native SDKs for major programming languages. Unlike Vault's general-purpose design, Infisical focuses specifically on application secrets — API keys, database credentials, and environment variables.

The developer experience difference is noticeable. Vault's flexibility comes with complexity — configuring backends, policies, auth methods, and token management requires significant expertise. Infisical provides a more opinionated, streamlined workflow: store secrets in the dashboard, inject them into your applications via CLI or SDK, and manage access through project-based permissions. For teams that need secrets management without becoming Vault administrators, this simplicity is valuable.

Self-hosted Infisical runs as a Docker container with PostgreSQL, requiring minimal infrastructure. It supports end-to-end encryption, audit logs, versioning, and point-in-time secret recovery. For most application development teams, Infisical covers the secrets management use case without Vault's operational overhead.