Infisical vs. HashiCorp Vault
Looking for a HashiCorp Vault alternative? Infisical automates secrets, certificates, and encryption out of the box. Your whole team can use it from a dashboard, without engineers who specialize in Vault.
The Vault way
Building blocks you need to assemble into a product.
- Create ACL policy
- laptop
- Read access to prod database secrets: Waiting on the Vault team
- vault-0
- Secrets Sync: Available in Vault Enterprise. Each synced secret counts as a client.
- Issuer is invalid after Kubernetes upgrade
- vault-2: Sealed
- vault-0
- vault-1: disk 100% full: No audit device can log, so Vault is refusing requests.
- Vault upgrade window: One node at a time, active node last
- Sam, backend team: Where's the prod DB password? Searching the UI finds nothing.
The Infisical way
A secrets manager with rotation, access, and syncs out of the box.
What's the difference between Infisical and HashiCorp Vault?
Vault gives you building blocks you need to assemble, maintain, and operate, which takes engineers who specialize in it. Infisical works out of the box and automates workflows like access requests, rotation, syncs, and more from day one.
Evaluate
Infisical- Try the free tier from the dashboard, with nothing to set up
- Self-host the MIT-licensed open-source version
HashiCorp Vault- Learn engines, auth methods, and Vault's own policy language before a real test
- Source-available, not open source
Deploy/integrate
Infisical- Use managed cloud, or self-host on Docker, Kubernetes, Linux, AWS ECS, or Google GKE
- Back with PostgreSQL and Redis your team already knows how to run
HashiCorp Vault- Run Vault's integrated Raft storage, with its own quorum, snapshots, and recovery
- Set up auto-unseal with a cloud KMS, an HSM, or a second Vault cluster, or define a key ceremony
Migrate/onboard
Infisical- Move secrets, Kubernetes auth, and policies with the built-in Vault migration
- Sync secrets back into Vault so apps move one at a time
HashiCorp Vault- Lay out mounts and paths for every team
- Write policies in Vault's own language and set up a ticket queue
Control access
Infisical- Sign in with any SSO
- Access requests, RBAC, and ABAC
HashiCorp Vault- SAML needs Enterprise or HCP. OIDC works in Community
- Access changes go through tickets and policy edits
Operate
Infisical- Edit secrets and values in the dashboard
- Find secrets with search across environments, folders, and more
- Run apps locally with secrets injected by the CLI
HashiCorp Vault- Hunt for secrets across mounts, without search
- Debug "permission denied" errors from policy paths
- Unseal nodes after restarts, unless you've set up auto-unseal
Automate
Infisical- Automatically rotate database, cloud, and other credentials
- Issue dynamic secrets on demand for 30+ targets out of the box
- Sync secrets to 49+ destinations
HashiCorp Vault- Build custom logic for rotations beyond databases, LDAP, and some cloud accounts
- Enable and configure an engine for each dynamic secret
- Sync to 5 destinations on Enterprise, script the rest
Audit
Infisical- Search audit logs in the dashboard or stream them to a SIEM
HashiCorp Vault- Keep an audit device writing, or Vault stops answering requests
Scale
Infisical- Add certificate management, privileged access, AI agent security, and KMS in the same platform
HashiCorp Vault- Buy separate products for privileged access (Boundary) and secret scanning (Vault Radar)
- Hire more Vault engineers to keep up with maintenance
Infisical vs. HashiCorp Vault at a glance
Infisical gives you out of the box what Vault makes you build.
| Feature |  | HashiCorp Vault |
|---|---|---|
| Open sourceWhether the source code is public and auditable for your team. | MIT-licensed core, 29,000+ GitHub stars | Business Source License |
| Self-hostingRunning the product in your dedicated cloud or on-premises infrastructure. | Standard app on PostgreSQL and Redis | Cluster on Vault's own Raft storage |
| Managed cloudA version the vendor hosts and operates for you. | US and EU regions | Hosted, but you configure engines and policies |
| Expertise to runWhat you need to deploy and operate the tool. | Any engineer, via dashboard or CLI | Specialized Vault engineers |
| Product scopeWhat Infisical and HashiCorp Vault cover beyond secrets management. | Secrets, certificates, privileged access, AI agents, and KMS | Limited beyond secrets management |
| Secret structureHow secrets are organized. | Projects, environments, and folders | Mounts and paths you design |
| DashboardA visual UI interface to see and change everything. | Search, tags, and comments across environments | One mount at a time, no search |
| Secret rotationRevoking the old credential and issuing a new, valid one (on a schedule or on demand). | 30+ types out of the box | Databases, LDAP, and some cloud accounts. Otherwise custom code |
| Dynamic secretsShort-lived credentials created on demand and revoked automatically when they expire. | ||
| Syncs and integrationsPushing secrets wherever apps run e.g. cloud secret stores and CI/CD. | 49+ destinations | 5 destinations, Enterprise only |
| KubernetesDelivering secrets into workloads running on Kubernetes. | Operator, sidecar, or CSI mount | Operator, sidecar, or CSI provider |
| TerraformReading secrets into Terraform runs and managing the product's own resources as code. | Provider, plus Terraform Cloud syncs | Provider |
| SDKsClient libraries for reading secrets from your own code. | 9 languages | Go and Ruby |
| Access controlRules for who can see things or make changes. | Tightly-scoped RBAC and ABAC | Policies in a proprietary language |
| Approval workflowsRequiring sign-off for sensitive changes or access. | Change and access approvals, wherever you work | Ticket queue-style workflow |
| Access requestsRequesting and approving access. | Self-serve and time-boxed | Tickets and policy edits |
| SAML SSOSigning in through an identity provider like Okta or Microsoft Entra ID. | Enterprise only. OIDC in Community | |
| SCIMCreating and removing user accounts via your identity provider. | Enterprise only | |
| Audit log retentionHow long audit logs are kept and where. | Searchable, streams to any SIEM | File, syslog, or socket you manage |
| Certificate productWhether certificate management is a product of its own, or part of something else. | Full lifecycle management, from any CA | Issuance engine, no discovery or inventory |
| CAs and enrollmentWhich CAs issue certificates, and how servers, devices, and apps request them. | Certificates from any CA, over ACME, EST, SCEP, or API | Its own CAs over ACME or API. Public ACME CAs, EST, SCEP, and CMPv2 on Enterprise |
| Discovery and inventoryFinding valid certificates from any CA on your infrastructure and keeping an inventory. | Discover every certificate on your infrastructure | No discovery, lists its own by serial number |
| Renewal, alerts, and syncsAlerting when certificates will expire, renewing them automatically, and installing them where they're used. | Automatic, with alerts and 13+ sync destinations | Client-driven, no alerts, delivery scripted |
| Encryption APIEncrypting and decrypting data through an API so apps don't handle raw keys. | ||
| KMIPA standard protocol for databases, storage arrays, and backup tools to fetch encryption keys from a key manager. | Enterprise only | |
| External KMS and HSMKeeping root keys in a cloud KMS or a hardware security module. | AWS KMS, GCP KMS, and PKCS#11 HSMs | HSM and Key Management engine on Enterprise only |
| Agent security productWhether the vendor has a dedicated product built to secure AI agents. | Agent Vault, plus agent access in PAM | Agentic IAM in Vault Enterprise: agent identities and per-request policy |
| Credentials kept from the agentWhether an agent holds plaintext credentials or not. | Brokered, so the agent never holds them | Agents hold the secrets they read from Vault |
| Agent access to infrastructureHow agents reach sensitive infrastructure. | Databases, servers, and clusters, with approvals and session recording | Boundary's MCP server, in preview, for SSH and RDP |
Frequently asked questions
Everything you need to know. Can't find an answer? Talk to our team.
Yes. Infisical covers what teams use Vault for (secrets, dynamic credentials, certificates, and encryption) and works out of the box: a dashboard, access requests, rotation, and automations. Vault has similar capabilities, but requires specialized engineers (and often a dedicated team).
Vault PKI is an engine inside Vault that can manage certificates, but not a full-scale certificate management product: it issues certificates, but doesn't handle discovery, renewal, alerts, and delivery without custom logic and workarounds. Since Vault 2.0, Enterprise can also request certificates from public CAs over ACME, but CAs that don't speak ACME, like AD CS or AWS Private CA, stay out of reach, so it can't be the single source of truth for all your certificates without significant overhead. Infisical Certificate Management covers the full lifecycle, from any CA.
It used to be, but no longer is. Vault moved to the Business Source License in August 2023, which restricts competing use. Infisical's core is open source under the MIT license.
IBM closed its acquisition of HashiCorp in February 2025. Vault now ships on IBM's support cycles, and IBM has since retired the lower-priced product HCP Vault Secrets and HCP Vault Dedicated's Starter tier, leaving the limited Development tier as the cheapest option. Roadmap, packaging, and pricing now follow IBM. In practice, some users complain about price increases, slowing development, and slower support after the IBM acquisition.
Vault Enterprise is quote-based, and HCP Vault Dedicated charges per client plus cluster hours, where every synced secret and ACME certificate identifier counts as a client. Infisical prices per identity, with no charge per secret or certificate, and has a free tier. Vault's real cost is often not in the license though, but in the operating expenses, specialized engineers, and infrastructure costs. Estimate your Vault cost of ownership
Vault takes specialist knowledge to run, often a dedicated team. Teams design and operate the cluster and its storage, handle unsealing, write policies in Vault's own language for every app, and build the rotation, syncs, and certificate monitoring Vault leaves to plugins and scripts. Infisical runs as one app with a dashboard the whole team uses, or Infisical Cloud runs it for you.
Infisical has an official, built-in migration from Vault, documented step by step. Connect Vault once with a read-only policy, then import secrets, Kubernetes auth roles, Kubernetes secrets engine roles, and policies from inside Infisical, or bulk-import every mount at once. Move one application at a time, and sync secrets back into Vault for apps that haven't moved yet. Read the Vault migration guide
Vault Enterprise has Agentic IAM, which gives agents an identity and checks each request against policy. An agent still holds the secrets it reads from Vault and could leak them. Infisical Agent Vault uses a credential brokering approach to give agents access to services without holding credentials. For databases, servers, and clusters, Infisical PAM gives agents the same roles, approvals, and session recording as people.
How to migrate from HashiCorp Vault to Infisical
Infisical has a documented migration from Vault: Connect the apps, then move one application at a time.
- 01
Connect Vault
Create a policy in Vault and an app connection in Infisical.
- 02
Import one application
Import a first, non-critical application's secrets into its project from the Infisical dashboard.
- 03
Move its access
Turn its Vault policies into project roles and give its workloads machine identities.
- 04
Switch it over
Point the application at Infisical with the CLI, an SDK, or the Kubernetes Operator. A sync back into Vault keeps everything else working.
- 05
Repeat, then retire Vault
Move the remaining applications the same way, or bulk-import the rest at once. Then decommission Vault.
Our team can help you plan and run the migration.
Start managing secrets, then add certificates, privileged access, KMS, or agent access.
Add products when you need them, on the platform you already run.
- OpenAI: API, Codex
- Let's Encrypt
- Vercel
- Gemini CLI
- Apache Airflow
- Spring Boot
- OpenCode
- DigiCert
- Jenkins
- Terraform: Terraform, Terraform Cloud
- Render
- Azure: Key Vault, App Configuration, DevOps, Entra ID, CLI
- NetScaler
- Databricks
- KMIP
- GoDaddy
- Pulumi
- Okta
- Ansible
- Cloudflare: Workers, Pages, Custom certificates
- Sectigo
- Laravel
- Hermes
- SAP HANA
- ClickHouse
- OpenRouter
- Supabase
- Docker
- Snowflake
- Venafi
- Rails
- Humanitec
- Tailscale
- 1Password
- OpenClaw
- Cassandra
- Northflank
- Redis
- Datadog
- Google Cloud: Secret Manager, Certificate Manager, IAM, KMS
- Dell PowerEdge
- Bitbucket
- Claude Code
- Railway
- dbt Cloud
- Windows Server
- Chef
- .NET
- PostgreSQL
- AWS: Secrets Manager, Parameter Store, Certificate Manager, Elastic Load Balancing, Private CA, IAM, KMS, CloudHSM, ECS, Amplify
- Linux servers
- Auth0
- Oracle: Oracle Database, OCI Vault
- Octopus Deploy
- Fly.io
- MySQL
- F5 BIG-IP
- LDAP
- TeamCity
- Qovery
- Nutanix Prism Central
- Microsoft: Active Directory, AD CS
- Windmill
- LiteLLM
- Netlify
- RabbitMQ
- Spacelift
- Kubernetes
- CircleCI
- GitLab
- SQL Server
- Stripe
- DigitalOcean
- GitHub: GitHub, GitHub Actions
- Couchbase
- MongoDB: MongoDB, MongoDB Atlas
- Heroku
- SSH
- Salesforce
- HashiCorp Vault
- Travis CI
- Kemp LoadMaster
- Next.js
- Django
- Sigstore Cosign
- Elasticsearch
- Secrets ManagementToday
- Certificate ManagementWhen you need it
- Privileged Access ManagementWhen you need it
- KMSWhen you need it
- Agent VaultWhen you need it
Talk to our team
Starting with Infisical is simple, fast, and free.
- Secures 10 billion secrets every day
- SOC 2, HIPAA, and FIPS 140-3 compliant
- Open source, in our cloud or yours
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