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AWS Secrets Manager vs HashiCorp Vault comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Feb 8, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Secrets Manager
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
3rd
Ranking in Secrets Management Tools
3rd
Average Rating
8.8
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HashiCorp Vault
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
4th
Ranking in Secrets Management Tools
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of AWS Secrets Manager is 16.5%, down from 19.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HashiCorp Vault is 6.8%, down from 12.9% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
AWS Secrets Manager16.5%
HashiCorp Vault6.8%
Other76.7%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Q&A Highlights

NC
Content Manager at PeerSpot
 

Featured Reviews

Mahadev Metre - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at Paydoh
Consistent security and efficiency improvements optimize IT infrastructure with effective management
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and secret replication. Human error occurs when feeding secret values manually, especially with large amounts of secrets to input. Secrets should never be protected only by IAM. They should be protected by multiple layers, such as IAM and one or two KMS keys. Additional security measures could be beneficial if necessary. The rotation policy is crucial because some secrets may become obsolete, require updates, or get compromised. With a weekly rotation policy, if unauthorized access occurs, the exposure is limited to seven days. The rotation policy can be customized according to needs.
Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Centralized secret management has strengthened security and simplified compliance across cloud-native environments
Configuring HashiCorp Vault since we are mainly using it in Kubernetes or OpenShift clusters took some time and effort to align with our deployment. The initial setup can be a little confusing and complex for someone who is newer. However, it is not impossible to achieve, but it will take some time to understand the product. The ACLs within HashiCorp Vault, such as policies and AppRole authentication, were not intuitive at first. However, we slowly became habituated to the product once we began using it. Once we moved past the learning curve of these challenges, HashiCorp Vault becomes a critical security layer of our workloads. The only minor challenge is the initial setup complexity, especially for teams new to HashiCorp Vault's authentication methods and storage backends. Other than that, it works flawlessly.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"AWS Secrets Manager is used for storing secret information that has to be a secret from your customer and your employees."
"The solution is very scalable."
"I would highly recommend AWS Secrets Manager for secret management in AWS."
"The most valuable feature of AWS Secrets Manager is its seamless integration with various AWS services."
"The most valuable feature is the management of credentials."
"It's highly scalable, so I'd rate it a ten out of ten."
"AWS Secrets Manager plays a significant role in optimizing IT infrastructure security and efficiency."
"The API is fine and works well."
"HashiCorp Vault has reduced the workload regarding rotating secrets and securely managing them."
"We were using it because we have compliance requirements around secret management. Having a secure vault and encrypting data was an additional requirement. When we looked at it first, we were just looking for a vault, like a lockbox. The greatest benefit of HashiCorp is its ability to manage encryption on the fly. It provides encryption of data at rest, in use, in transit, on the fly, and linked with applications, which was really attractive."
"For me, the most valuable features include that it's easy to manage and maintain the password API for retrieving passwords and other things."
"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is version control."
"HashiCorp Vault has positively impacted security governance that we have by greatly reducing the risk of a leak and then a bypass, but overall, it's increased the security of our organization."
"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is that it's an open source solution. Second, it's cloud agnostic, so it's very easy to maintain and control, which is why we prefer HashiCorp."
"We use the solution for secret management."
"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is version control."
 

Cons

"If you don't have enterprise support, then you will not be able to get through to them to get the help. It is not only applicable to AWS Secrets Manager. It is also applicable to any service on AWS."
"The sidecar feature has room for improvement."
"There is room for improvement in the pricing model."
"There is room for improvement in terms of integrating with certain other platforms."
"An area for improvement in AWS Secrets Manager could be expanding integration options beyond AWS services."
"The solution's initial setup process is complicated."
"We occasionally have problems with rate limits, although that is a problem more generally with AWS."
"There is a potential improvement in connecting AWS Secrets Manager to Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to automatically reflect changes in production."
"We could use more documentation, primarily to do with integrations."
"I think HashiCorp Vault could improve by being a little bit more accommodating to startup companies for providing access and helping them understand the value of the tools."
"An improvement needed is the ability for auto-initialization."
"The documentation is very general; it should have more examples and more use cases."
"The product needs to improve its customization. It should be also more like easy to plug and play."
"While not a missing feature, I feel that the enterprise license is expensive, especially for some of the smaller use cases."
"I don't think there are any major improvements required—so far, so good. However, I think that having more training materials, such as videos, and documentation available would be helpful. I would prefer to have more videos available either on the official site or on YouTube."
"A drawback for some clients who have to be PCI compliant is that they still need to use and subscribe to an HSM (Hardware Security Module) solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution is expensive."
"We purchase a monthly license for the product."
"The cost is somewhat high."
"I don't believe there is a license cost for the solution."
"We've observed that AWS Secrets Manager pricing is based on a per-secret-per-month model. As a result, we prefer to divide our secrets into individual pieces to increase security and grant specific access permissions to certain secrets, systems, or individuals. However, this approach results in higher costs. Therefore, we have been exploring ways to combine our secrets into groups to reduce expenses and simplify management. Nonetheless, we acknowledge that this issue may not be related to the secret manager's functionality."
"The AWS version is much cheaper than HashiCorp Vault."
"I am using the open-source version of Vault and I would have to buy a license if I want to get support."
"It could do everything we wanted it to do and it is brilliant, but it is super pricey. To be fair to HashiCorp, we drove the price up with our requirements around resiliency. Because of the nature of our company, we don't really operate in the cloud."
"In my case, the open-source version works well. It's advisable for small to medium-scale organizations, but for large-scale organizations, you should go with the enterprise version."
"The solution's cost is reasonable."
"The product is expensive."
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Answers from the Community

NC
Content Manager at PeerSpot
Dec 12, 2021
Dec 12, 2021
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic solution, HashiCorp Vault allows you to be flexible in the cloud infrastructure that you choose to use. It is completely compatible and integratable with a myriad of different platforms. You can determin...
See 2 answers
KK
Works at Zerto
Nov 23, 2021
yet to learn both
DG
Tech blogger
Dec 12, 2021
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic solution, HashiCorp Vault allows you to be flexible in the cloud infrastructure that you choose to use. It is completely compatible and integratable with a myriad of different platforms. You can determine what you want to use and HashiCorp Vault will function without issue, regardless of what you choose. If you are using HashiCorp Vault as a multi-cloud solution, then you have an even greater number of platform options. You will be able to mix and match which cloud platforms you like to use to customize your data protection. The only limits on your customization will end up being your imagination. HashiCorp Vault’s user interface is simple for you to both use and navigate. The UI was designed to be basic enough for users to manage without forcing an organization to spend a great deal of time and resources having to train employees in its use. It might be a little confusing for employees when they start using it. However, once they have used it for a little while they will be proficient in its use. Should an organization choose to invest in training employees in the use of this UI, the required investment will be minimal. AWS Secrets Manager is an extremely user-friendly solution. It is intuitive in its design, which makes it a valuable product. However, AWS Secrets Manager lacks the level of cloud flexibility that HashiCorp Vault offers. Conclusion: While AWS Secrets Manager is a fairly competent product, we found HashiCorp Vault to be superior. HashiCorp Vault‘s greater flexibility and integration capabilities make it the more robust solution.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
Financial Services Firm
18%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Comms Service Provider
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise8
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better - Azure Key Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
Azure Key Vault is a SaaS solution. You can easily store passwords and secrets securely and encrypt them. Azure Key Vault is a great solution to ensure you are compliant with security and governanc...
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What needs improvement with AWS Secrets Manager?
When creating AWS Secrets Manager, it should be automated using tools such as Terraform, Puppet, or Ansible. With Terraform code, you specify the encryption key, secret name, rotation policy, and s...
What do you like most about HashiCorp Vault?
The feature I find most beneficial in HashiCorp Vault is the secret engine. It integrates smoothly with many applications, making it easy to set up and implement quickly. This allows you to test it...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HashiCorp Vault?
The pricing setup cost for HashiCorp Vault is quite expensive, especially if you consider it against native, cloud-native equivalent tooling. So within GCP, I'm thinking about Secret Manager, AWS S...
What needs improvement with HashiCorp Vault?
HashiCorp Vault is quite complex to use for new users and has a steep learning curve; I would consider the tool very good for highly advanced teams who manage huge numbers of credentials, but it's ...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Autodesk, Clevy, Stackery
Adobe, SAP Ariba, Citadel, Spaceflight, Cruise
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Secrets Manager vs. HashiCorp Vault and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
884,873 professionals have used our research since 2012.