SOPS vs HashiCorp Vault: 2026 Comparison
SOPS is a free key management tool. HashiCorp Vault is a commercial key management tool by HashiCorp. 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, company size fit, deployment model, here is our conclusion:
DevOps and platform teams managing secrets across multi-cloud deployments should pick SOPS because it treats encryption as infrastructure code rather than a separate workflow, letting you version-control encrypted files alongside application config. With 21,184 GitHub stars and native integrations to AWS KMS, GCP KMS, and Azure Key Vault, it's the de facto standard for teams already committed to declarative infrastructure. Skip this if your organization needs centralized secrets management with access controls and audit logs; SOPS is a file-level encryption tool, not a secrets vault.
