Vault Alternative
Vault is infrastructure. secr is developer workflow.
HashiCorp Vault is the gold standard for infrastructure secrets — PKI certificates, dynamic database credentials, service mesh tokens. But if all you need is “give my app its DATABASE_URL”, Vault is a freight train where a bicycle will do. secr is the bicycle.
When Vault Is Overkill
Vault was designed for large infrastructure teams managing thousands of services across multiple data centers. It excels at:
- •Dynamic secrets that rotate automatically (database credentials, AWS STS tokens)
- •PKI certificate management and automated TLS
- •Service mesh integration with Consul and Nomad
- •Encryption as a service (Transit secrets engine)
If you need any of those, use Vault. But most development teams need something simpler: store application secrets, share them with the team, inject them into local dev and CI/CD. For that, Vault introduces enormous complexity with minimal payoff.
The Developer Experience Gap
Here is what it takes to store and retrieve a single secret with each tool:
HashiCorp Vault
# 1. Install and start the server
vault server -dev
# 2. Export the address and token
export VAULT_ADDR='http://127.0.0.1:8200'
export VAULT_TOKEN='hvs.xxxxxxxxxxxxx'
# 3. Enable a secrets engine
vault secrets enable -path=secret kv-v2
# 4. Write the secret
vault kv put secret/myapp DATABASE_URL="postgres://..."
# 5. Read the secret
vault kv get -field=DATABASE_URL secret/myapp
secr
# 1. Set the secret
secr set DATABASE_URL "postgres://..."
# 2. Run your app with it
secr run -- npm start
Vault vs secr
| Feature | HashiCorp Vault | secr |
|---|---|---|
| Setup complexity | High (server, unsealing, policies) | npm install + secr init |
| Time to first secret | 30+ minutes | Under 2 minutes |
| Self-hosted | Yes (significant ops burden) | No (cloud-hosted) |
| Encryption | AES-256-GCM (Transit engine) | AES-256-GCM + KMS |
| CLI developer experience | Powerful but verbose | Minimal, purpose-built |
| Secret scanning | Not included | 20+ patterns, pre-commit hook |
| Best for team size | 50+ (with dedicated ops) | 1 to 100 |
| Ops burden | High (HA, unsealing, upgrades) | Low (managed or single container) |
| Dashboard | Enterprise-only UI | Included (open-source) |
| RBAC | ACL policies (HCL) | Built-in roles (owner, admin, dev, viewer) |
| Audit log | Yes (file/syslog backend) | Yes (built-in, queryable) |
| CI/CD integrations | Terraform, K8s, custom | GitHub Actions, Vercel, Netlify |
What Vault Does Better
secr is not a Vault replacement for every use case. Vault is genuinely superior for:
Dynamic secrets
Vault generates short-lived database credentials, AWS tokens, and SSH certificates on demand. secr stores static secrets.
PKI infrastructure
Vault acts as a certificate authority, issuing and rotating TLS certificates automatically. secr does not handle PKI.
Service mesh integration
Vault integrates deeply with Consul, Nomad, and Kubernetes for service-to-service authentication.
Massive enterprise scale
Organizations with 500+ services, multi-region HA requirements, and dedicated platform teams benefit from Vault's depth.
What secr Does Better
For application-level secrets management, secr provides a tighter developer experience:
Zero-config start
npm install, login, init. No server to run, no unsealing ceremony, no HCL policies to write.
Built-in secret scanning
20+ regex patterns detect leaked keys in your codebase. secr guard installs a pre-commit hook in one command.
Modern dashboard
Open-source web UI for managing secrets, viewing audit logs, and configuring webhooks. No enterprise license required.
Simpler CI/CD
First-class GitHub Actions, Vercel, and Netlify integrations. No Terraform provider or sidecar container needed.
Migrating from Vault
If you are currently using Vault for application secrets and want to simplify, you can export your secrets and import them into secr. Pull your key-value pairs into a.env file and use the migration wizard:
# Export from Vault to a .env file
vault kv get -format=json secret/myapp | \
jq -r '.data.data | to_entries[] | "\(.key)=\(.value)"' > .env
# Import into secr
secr migrate .env
# Verify
secr pull
You can continue using Vault for infrastructure secrets (dynamic credentials, PKI) while letting secr handle application-level environment variables.
Application secrets without the ops burden
npm i -g @secr/cli
secr init
secr set DATABASE_URL "postgres://..."
secr run -- npm start