Self-Hosted Alternatives to AWS Secrets Manager

Why Replace AWS Secrets Manager?

AWS Secrets Manager charges $0.40 per secret per month plus $0.05 per 10,000 API calls. At 100 secrets with moderate API usage, you’re paying $40-60/month. At 500 secrets, it’s $200+/month. The cost scales linearly with the number of secrets you manage.

Updated February 2026: Verified with latest Docker images and configurations.

Key concerns:

Issue	Impact
Per-secret pricing	$0.40/secret/month adds up fast as infrastructure grows
API call costs	$0.05 per 10,000 calls — high-frequency apps pay more
AWS lock-in	Tight coupling with AWS IAM, Lambda, RDS — hard to migrate
Multi-cloud impossible	Secrets are bound to AWS; managing GCP/Azure secrets requires separate tools
Compliance	Some regulations require secrets to remain on-premises
Outage risk	AWS regional outages can block secret access across your entire application

Best Alternatives

HashiCorp Vault — Best Overall Replacement

Vault is the industry standard for secrets management. It provides dynamic secrets (auto-generated credentials), secret rotation, encryption as a service, PKI certificate management, and fine-grained access policies. It’s cloud-agnostic and runs on any infrastructure.

Why it wins: Vault covers every AWS Secrets Manager feature and adds dynamic secrets, transit encryption, and multi-cloud support. The open-source version is fully functional for most teams.

Feature	AWS Secrets Manager	HashiCorp Vault
Cost (100 secrets)	~$40/month + API calls	$0 (self-hosted OSS)
Cost (500 secrets)	~$200/month + API calls	$0 (self-hosted OSS)
Secret rotation	Automatic (Lambda-based)	Automatic (built-in + custom)
Dynamic secrets	No	Yes (database, cloud, PKI)
Multi-cloud	AWS only	Any cloud + on-prem
Encryption as a service	No (use KMS separately)	Yes (Transit engine)
Audit logging	CloudTrail	Built-in audit backend
Access control	IAM policies	Policies + namespaces + OIDC

[Read our full guide: How to Self-Host HashiCorp Vault]

Infisical — Best for Application Teams

Infisical is a modern secrets management platform focused on developer experience. It provides environment-specific secrets, native Docker/Kubernetes integrations, CI/CD pipeline injection, and a clean dashboard. It’s simpler to set up than Vault and purpose-built for application secrets.

Why it fits: If you use AWS Secrets Manager primarily for application environment variables and API keys (not infrastructure secrets like database credentials), Infisical provides a better developer workflow with native .env file support, secret versioning, and team collaboration features.

[Read our full guide: How to Self-Host Infisical]

Migration Guide

Exporting from AWS Secrets Manager

Use the AWS CLI to export all secrets:

# List all secret names
aws secretsmanager list-secrets --query 'SecretList[].Name' --output text

# Export each secret to a JSON file
for secret in $(aws secretsmanager list-secrets --query 'SecretList[].Name' --output text); do
  aws secretsmanager get-secret-value --secret-id "$secret" \
    --query '{Name: Name, Value: SecretString}' \
    --output json > "secrets/${secret}.json"
done

Importing into Vault

# Enable the KV secrets engine
vault secrets enable -version=2 kv

# Import each secret
for file in secrets/*.json; do
  name=$(jq -r '.Name' "$file")
  value=$(jq -r '.Value' "$file")
  vault kv put "kv/$name" value="$value"
done

Importing into Infisical

Use the Infisical CLI:

# Log into your Infisical instance
infisical login

# Import secrets from .env format
infisical secrets set --env=production KEY1=value1 KEY2=value2

What transfers: Secret values, secret names. What doesn’t transfer: IAM policies (must recreate as Vault policies), Lambda rotation functions (must implement in Vault), CloudTrail audit logs (historical — Vault starts fresh).

Cost Comparison

	AWS Secrets Manager	Vault (Self-Hosted)	Infisical (Self-Hosted)
50 secrets	~$20/month	$0	$0
100 secrets	~$40/month	$0	$0
500 secrets	~$200/month	$0	$0
1,000 secrets	~$400/month	$0	$0
API calls	$0.05/10K calls	Unlimited	Unlimited
Server cost	Included	~$10-20/month VPS	~$10-20/month VPS
Annual (500 secrets)	~$2,400/year	~$120-240/year	~$120-240/year

What You Give Up

• AWS-native integration — Secrets Manager works seamlessly with RDS, Lambda, ECS, and other AWS services through IAM. Self-hosted solutions require configuring OIDC, sidecar injectors, or init containers
• Managed rotation — AWS handles rotation Lambda functions and RDS credential rotation out of the box. Vault has built-in rotation but you manage the infrastructure
• Zero infrastructure management — AWS Secrets Manager is fully managed. Self-hosted solutions require you to maintain high availability, backup, and disaster recovery
• Cross-region replication — AWS replicates secrets across regions automatically. Vault requires explicit replication setup
• Compliance certifications — AWS carries SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA certifications. Self-hosted infrastructure requires your own compliance validation

Related

• Best Self-Hosted Secrets Management Tools
• HashiCorp Vault vs Infisical
• How to Self-Host HashiCorp Vault
• How to Self-Host Infisical
• Docker Compose Basics