Secretspec

Judgement

What it is

Developer tool

What it does

A tool where a project declares which secrets it needs in one file and each environment resolves them from its own provider, such as a keyring, 1Password or dotenv.

Adopt it when

You want one declaration of required secrets that works across developer machines and CI with different backends.

Watch out

Created in 2025 and still pre-1.0.

Ready for

Experimental

Runs as

Command line and library

Built with

Rust

How established

Young: started 16 months ago, latest release v0.21.1.

What the license allows

You can build it into a product you sell, as long as you keep its copyright notice.

Judged on 2026-11-03 from the project's README and GitHub data. The license and age lines are worked out directly.

Built from

Follow it down: Secretspec → Rust → runs on a microchip

How compilers were built, back to punched paper tape

Open-source alternatives to Secretspec

1. 1
   SOPS getsops

   Simple and flexible tool for managing secrets

   Developer tool Production-ready You keep infrastructure config in Git and want secrets encrypted alongside it, often with Flux or Helm.

   ★ 24k MPL-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
2. 2
   OpenBao openbao

   OpenBao is a software solution to manage, store, and distribute sensitive data including secrets, certificates, and keys.

   Complete system Production-ready You need Vault-style secrets management but want to avoid HashiCorp's BSL license.

   ★ 8.8k MPL-2.0 Go Active, pushed today
3. 3
   Dotenvx dotenvx

   a secure dotenv—from the creator of `dotenv`

   Developer tool Production-ready Your team shares .env files and wants them encrypted in the repo without adopting a secrets server.

   ★ 5.9k BSD-3-Clause JavaScript Active, pushed 3 days ago
4. 4
   Git-secret sobolevn

   :busts_in_silhouette: A bash-tool to store your private data inside a git repository.

   Developer tool Usable A small team wants a few secret files in Git and already uses GPG.

   ★ 4.1k MIT Shell Active, pushed 35 days ago
5. 5
   Pwd.sh drduh

   Manage secrets with Bash and GnuPG symmetric encryption

   Developer tool Usable You want a tiny, auditable shell-based secret store that can be decrypted with plain GnuPG.

   ★ 1.6k MIT Shell Active, pushed 15 days ago
6. 6
   WrongSecrets OWASP

   Vulnerable app with examples showing how to not use secrets

   List, course or other material Production-ready You run security training or want developers to learn secrets-management mistakes hands-on.

   ★ 1.5k AGPL-3.0 HTML Active, pushed today
7. 7
   Berglas GoogleCloudPlatform

   A tool for managing secrets on Google Cloud

   Developer tool Production-ready You run workloads on Google Cloud and want a simple way to load secrets into Cloud Run or GKE apps.

   ★ 1.3k Apache-2.0 Go Active, pushed 12 days ago
8. 8
   FreeIPA freeipa

   Mirror of FreeIPA, an integrated security information management solution

   Complete system Production-ready You manage many Linux servers and need centralised logins, sudo rules and certificates, often alongside Active Directory.

   ★ 1.3k GPL-3.0 Python Active, pushed today

Commercial secrets managers

1. 1
   HashiCorp Vault Enterprise HashiCorp

   Building block Production-ready A large organisation needs central secrets management across many teams and clouds, with compliance features.

   Commercial
2. 2
   AWS Secrets Manager Amazon Web Services

   AWS Secrets Manager allows you to rotate, manage, and retrieve database credentials, API keys, and other secrets through their lifecycle.

   Building block Production-ready Your workloads run on AWS and you want secrets managed with IAM rather than another vendor.

   Commercial
3. 3
   1Password Secrets Automation AgileBits

   Securely store, manage, automate, and share secrets for your applications and infrastructure where and when you need them. 1Password secrets management has you covered.

   Developer tool Production-ready Your company already uses 1Password and wants infrastructure secrets in the same place as staff passwords.

   Commercial
4. 4
   Doppler Doppler

   Doppler's secrets management platform helps teams secure, sync, and automate secrets across cloud and on-prem environments with security and developer-friendly workflows.

   Developer tool Production-ready A development team wants to stop passing .env files around and sync secrets to many platforms easily.

   Commercial