AWS Vault vs IBM Cloud Secrets Manager: Side-by-Side Comparison (2026)

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.