Tomb
the Crypto Undertaker
Tomb is an open-source secrets management project on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 license (strong copyleft), with 1.6k stars. It is built with CPython. Its last push was 11 months ago.
- Stars
- 1.6k
- License
- GPL-3.0
- Activity
- Slowing
Judgement
- What it is
- Developer tool
- What it does
- A command-line tool for Linux that creates, opens and closes encrypted LUKS volumes (tombs) with separate key files.
- Adopt it when
- You want simple encrypted folders on Linux managed from the shell.
- Watch out
- Linux only, needs root, and has no tagged releases.
- Ready for
- Usable
- Runs as
- Command line
- Built with
- Shell, LUKS and GnuPG
- How established
- Established: started 15 years ago, no tagged release yet.
- What the license allows
- Use inside your business is unrestricted, but anything you distribute that includes it must be released under the same license.
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: Tomb → CPython → GCC → LLVM project → runs on a microchip
Open-source alternatives to Tomb
-
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
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
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
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
Secretspec cachix
A declarative interface for every secret provider.
Developer tool Experimental You want one declaration of required secrets that works across developer machines and CI with different backends.
★ 1.6k Apache-2.0 Rust Active, pushed today -
6
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 -
7
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 -
8
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
Commercial secrets managers
-
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
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
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
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
Stars, license and activity come from GitHub and refresh on a rolling hourly schedule. The project's own description is quoted as written.