FreeIPA vs OpenBao
FreeIPA and OpenBao are both secrets management software. FreeIPA is open source under GPL-3.0, with 1.3k GitHub stars. OpenBao is open source under MPL-2.0, with 8.8k GitHub stars.
Which to pick
- Pick FreeIPA when
- You manage many Linux servers and need centralised logins, sudo rules and certificates, often alongside Active Directory.
- Pick OpenBao when
- You need Vault-style secrets management but want to avoid HashiCorp's BSL license.
Side by side
An integrated identity system for Linux environments combining LDAP, Kerberos, DNS, a certificate authority and host-based access control, with AD trust support.
A community fork of HashiCorp Vault under the Linux Foundation that stores and issues secrets, certificates and encryption keys with fine-grained access policies.
Tied to the Red Hat and Fedora ecosystem and complex to run; GitHub is only a mirror.
Running a secrets server well (unsealing, HA, backups) takes real operational care.
Production-ready (both)
Self-hosted server
Self-hosted server and command line
Python, C, 389 Directory Server, Kerberos and Dogtag
Go and PostgreSQL
Open source, GPL-3.0 (strong copyleft)
Open source, MPL-2.0 (weak copyleft)
Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
You can use it inside a product you sell; changes you make to its own files must be shared.
1.3k GitHub stars
8.8k GitHub stars
Established: started 14 years ago, no tagged release yet.
Established: started 3 years ago, latest release v2.7.2.
Other comparisons
More secrets managers
Both sides were judged on 2026-11-03 from each project's README and GitHub data. License, age and popularity lines are worked out directly.