AWS Vault vs CipherStash Stash: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)
Features, pricing, ratings, and pros & cons — compared head-to-head.
AWS Vault is a free key management tool. CipherStash Stash is a commercial key management tool by CipherStash. Compare features, ratings, integrations, and community reviews side by side to find the best key management fit for your security stack.
CST VerdictBased on our analysis of NIST CSF 2.0 coverage, core features, integrations, company size fit, here is our conclusion:
Developers and security teams managing multiple AWS accounts locally should reach for AWS Vault first; it's the only free tool that keeps IAM credentials out of plaintext config files by leveraging your OS keystore, eliminating the most common path to credential exposure in development environments. With 8,960 GitHub stars and active maintenance, it's proven reliable enough that most AWS-native shops have already standardized on it. Skip this if your team doesn't use local development workflows or needs centralized credential rotation and audit logging; AWS Vault is a developer tool, not a secrets manager for applications in production.
Startups and SMBs managing TypeScript services need CipherStash Stash because its zero-knowledge architecture means the vendor literally cannot access your secrets, plaintext, or decryption keys, even under compulsion. The cryptographic audit trail creates immutable proof of every access event, addressing both PR.AA and PR.DS in NIST CSF 2.0 simultaneously. Skip this if your team runs primarily Python or Go; the SDK strength is decidedly TypeScript-first, and retrofitting other languages adds friction that larger, language-agnostic competitors don't impose.
