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Alex Spinov
Alex Spinov

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HashiCorp Vault Has a Free Secrets Manager for API Keys and Passwords

HashiCorp Vault secures, stores, and controls access to tokens, passwords, certificates, and API keys. Used by Goldman Sachs, Adobe, and Shopify.

What You Get for Free

  • Secret storage — encrypted key-value store
  • Dynamic secrets — generate database credentials on demand
  • Encryption as a service — encrypt data without storing it
  • PKI — issue TLS certificates
  • Auth methods — LDAP, OIDC, GitHub, Kubernetes
  • Audit logging — every access logged

Quick Start

vault server -dev
export VAULT_ADDR='http://127.0.0.1:8200'
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Store and Read Secrets

vault kv put secret/my-app api_key=abc123 db_password=s3cret
vault kv get secret/my-app
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Dynamic Database Credentials

vault read database/creds/my-role
# Returns: username=v-token-my-role-abc, password=xyz (auto-expires)
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Vault vs AWS Secrets Manager

Feature Vault AWS SM
Price Free (OSS) $0.40/secret/mo
Multi-cloud Yes AWS only
Dynamic secrets Yes Limited
Self-hosted Yes No

Need secrets management? Check my work on GitHub or email spinov001@gmail.com for consulting.

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