IT AI Index
September 2026 Edition · The permanent record of this edition. The unqualified address always carries the latest edition.
Index › Identity and access › Secrets › Enterprise › September 2026 Edition

Secrets management for enterprise buyers

Asked as “secrets management tool”, and as “secrets vault for applications and infrastructure”, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. 40 first choices recorded across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, twelve models each.
Standing
HashiCorp Vault
Clear leader
75% of first choices, clear leader.
ShowinginAll 67 categories in the September 2026 Edition →

By buyer segment

The same question asked on behalf of a different buyer. Each standing is computed within its segment; they sit side by side and are never added together.
Small businessDoppler46%Clear leaderStanding →Mid-marketDoppler33%ContestedStanding →EnterpriseHashiCorp Vault75%Clear leaderThis page

01The standing

Share is the count of first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts, over all twelve models, for an enterprise B2B company. Ordered by share.
ProductFirst-choice shareNegative rateLabelsQuadrant
01HashiCorp Vault75%16%68endorsed leader
02Akeyless10%11%38accepted challenger
03Doppler5%27%41criticized challenger
041Password5%33%21criticized challenger
05AWS Secrets Manager2%31%52criticized challenger
06Infisical2%23%30accepted challenger
Show the three products at 0%, ordered by negative rate
09Google Secret Manager0%39%36criticized challenger
08Azure Key Vault0%31%49criticized challenger
07CyberArk Conjur0%15%34accepted challenger
Bars are the share of first choices, 0 to 100Every product with at least 10 labels here. Every product name links to its vendor page.
Head to head
Doppler vs HashiCorp VaultDoppler vs InfisicalHashiCorp Vault vs Infisical

One product takes 75% of first choices here, so the chart would put eight markers in one corner and one at the far edge. The two measurements it plots are columns in the standing above: share, and the negative label rate. Five products carry a negative rate above 25% in this category. Jump to the standing

02What they warned about

Eleven of twelve models held their first choice under the paraphrase. Claude Haiku 4.5 changed. A high negative share on a product with few labels is a warning. A low share on a product with many labels is salience, not sentiment.
AWS Secrets Manager
31%
16 of 52 labels negative · 10 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“**Avoid AWS Secrets Manager** for your use case \u2014 the per-secret pricing ($0.40/month) becomes prohibitively expensive” Kimi K2, budget prompt
Azure Key Vault
31%
15 of 49 labels negative · 10 of 12 models
“Azure Key Vault also has operation-based pricing. That makes cost scale with workload and user activity, which is less predictable at large scale.” GPT-5.4 mini, budget prompt
Google Secret Manager
39%
14 of 36 labels negative · 10 of 12 models
“such as AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, and GCP Secret Manager as the *primary* store in a **multi-cloud or hybrid enterprise**” Perplexity Sonar, negative prompt
Doppler
27%
11 of 41 labels negative · 8 of 12 models · 1 hard negative
“Tools like Doppler ($21/user/month) ... become extremely costly at scale” MiniMax M2.5, budget prompt

03What they cite

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list: twelve of the twelve in this edition, and all six flagship models on the expanded tier.

Sites the answers cite

64 of 72 answers in this category came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models: citations where the model returns them, or the search results it consulted. 5 of those lists are Google grounding redirects that name no site and are left out of the counts. 862 links across 202 sites, every framing counted. Ranked by the number of answers carrying the site or page.

blog.gitguardian.com
vendor site · GitGuardian47 answers · 51 citations · 10 models
envmanager.com
vendor site · EnvManager32 answers · 41 citations · 10 models
cycode.com
vendor site · Cycode28 answers · 30 citations · 9 models
doppler.com
vendor site · Doppler26 answers · 45 citations · 9 models
akeyless.io
vendor site · Akeyless26 answers · 44 citations · 8 models
startwithidentity.com
26 answers · 32 citations · 8 models
safeguard.sh
vendor site · Safeguard25 answers · 28 citations · 8 models
guideflow.com
vendor site · Guideflow25 answers · 26 citations · 10 models
infisical.com
vendor site · Infisical19 answers · 30 citations · 8 models
hashicorp.com
vendor site · HashiCorp15 answers · 22 citations · 8 models
cybervendorguide.com
13 answers · 16 citations · 6 models
costbench.com
13 answers · 14 citations · 8 models

Pages the answers cite

The ten pages named in the most answers, by full address. A page here is one the models returned with a recommendation, not one the index endorses.

blog.gitguardian.com/top-secrets-management-tools
46 answers · 10 models
envmanager.com/blog/best-secrets-management-tools
32 answers · 10 models
cycode.com/blog/best-secrets-management-tools
28 answers · 9 models
guideflow.com/blog/secrets-management-software
25 answers · 10 models
startwithidentity.com/rankings/best-secrets-management-tools
22 answers · 8 models
safeguard.sh/resources/blog/best-secrets-management-and-vaulting-solutions
18 answers · 7 models
costbench.com/best/secrets-management-for-enterprise
13 answers · 8 models
cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Secrets_Management_Cheat_Sheet.html
12 answers · 9 models
doppler.com/blog/secrets-management-tools-2025
12 answers · 8 models
akeyless.io/blog/best-secret-management-tools
11 answers · 6 models

04How they answered

Six framings of the same buying question, each sent to every model in a fresh session with search on. One row per model, so a row shows whether it held its answer under rewording, what it named when cost was the constraint, and what it argued against. Computed from the raw judge labels.
ModelDirect“What is the best secrets management tool for an enterprise B2B company?”Paraphrase“Which secrets vault for applications and infrastructure would you recommend to a large B2B company with thousands of employees?”Comparative“What are the top enterprise-grade secrets management tools and how do they differ?”Budget-constrained“What is the best secrets management tool for a large company that needs predictable total cost across thousands of users?”Scale-constrained“We are a 5,000 person company with SSO, SOC 2 and procurement review requirements evaluating a secrets management tool. What should we look at?”Negative“Which secrets management tools should a large enterprise avoid or be cautious about?”
Claude Haiku 4.5Akeyless, HashiCorp Vault
One alternativeCyberArk Conjur
HashiCorp VaultChanged
Two alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault
HashiCorp Vault
Six alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Doppler, Infisical
AWS Secrets Manager
Two alternativesGoogle Secret Manager, Infisical
no first choicenothing named
GPT-5.4 miniHashiCorp Vault
Two alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, CyberArk Conjur
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Three alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager
HashiCorp Vault
Four alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Google Secret Manager
HashiCorp Vaultagainst: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Managerno first choicenothing named
Gemini 3.5 FlashAkeyless
Three alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Infisical, OpenBao
against: HashiCorp VaultAkeylessHeld
Two alternativesHashiCorp Vault, Infisical
against: CyberArk ConjurHashiCorp Vault
Eight alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Doppler, Google Secret Manager, Infisical, OpenBao
Akeyless
One alternativeInfisical
against: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Doppler, Google Secret Manager, HashiCorp Vaultno first choiceagainst: 1Password, AWS Secrets Manager, Ansible Vault, Azure Key Vault, Bitwarden Secrets Manager, Dashlane, Google Secret Manager, HashiCorp Vault, Infisical, LastPass, OpenBao, SOPS, blackbox, git-crypt, git-secret
Perplexity SonarHashiCorp Vault
Six alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk, Doppler, Infisical
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Seven alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Doppler, Google Secret Manager, Infisical
HashiCorp Vault
Seven alternatives1Password, AWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur / CyberArk secrets offerings, Doppler, Google Secret Manager
Doppler
One alternativeHashiCorp Vault
against: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Managerno first choiceagainst: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager, Kubernetes Secrets
Grok 4.1 FastHashiCorp Vault
Four alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Delinea Secret Server
against: AkeylessHashiCorp VaultHeld
Three alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager
HashiCorp Vault
Five alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Google Secret Manager
against: Doppler, Infisical1Password
One alternativeHashiCorp Vault
against: AWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Doppler, Google Secret Manager, InfisicalHashiCorp Vault
Two alternatives1Password, Doppler
against: 1Password, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Doppler, Google Secret Manager, HashiCorp Vault, Infisical
Mistral SmallHashiCorp Vault
Four alternatives1Password, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Two alternatives1Password, Doppler
HashiCorp Vault
Four alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur
HashiCorp Vaultagainst: 1Password, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Doppler, Google Secret Managerno first choiceagainst: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager
DeepSeek V4 FlashHashiCorp Vault
Four alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, CyberArk Conjur, Doppler, Infisical
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Two alternativesAkeyless, CyberArk Conjur
against: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key VaultHashiCorp Vault
Seven alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk, Doppler, Google Secret Manager, Infisical
HashiCorp Vault
One alternativeEnvManager
against: 1Password, AWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, Doppler, Google Secret Manager, HashiCorp Vault, InfisicalHashiCorp Vault
Four alternatives1Password, Akeyless, CyberArk Conjur, Doppler
against: AWS/Azure/GCP native managersagainst: 1Password, Bitwarden Secrets Manager, CyberArk, Delinea Secret Server, HashiCorp Vault, LastPass
Llama 4 MaverickHashiCorp Vault
One alternativeGitGuardian
HashiCorp VaultHeldno first choiceHashiCorp Vault
Two alternativesDoppler, Infisical
no first choiceagainst: CyberArk Conjur, Doppler, HashiCorp Vault
Qwen 3.7 FlashHashiCorp Vault
Two alternativesAkeyless, Doppler
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Three alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk
against: DopplerHashiCorp Vault
Five alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk, Delinea Secret Server
1Password
Two alternativesBitwarden Secrets Manager, Keeper
against: HashiCorp Vault, Latticeno first choice
Two alternativesCyberArk Conjur, HashiCorp Vault
against: 1Password, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Boomi, CyberArk, CyberArk Conjur, Dashlane, Delinea Secret Server, Google Secret Manager, HashiCorp Vault, LastPass, NordPass, git-crypt, kube-secrets-operator
Kimi K2HashiCorp Vault
Three alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Three alternatives1Password, Akeyless, CyberArk Conjur
HashiCorp Vault
Five alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Google Secret Manager
Doppler, HashiCorp Vault
One alternativeAzure Key Vault
against: AWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, CyberArk Conjurno first choice
Four alternatives1Password, CyberArk Conjur / Privilege Cloud, Doppler, HashiCorp Vault
against: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manageragainst: Doppler, HashiCorp Vault, LastPass, SOPS
GLM 4.7 FlashXHashiCorp Vault
Five alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Doppler, Infisical
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Three alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur
HashiCorp Vault
Five alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur, Google Secret Manager
no first choiceno first choiceagainst: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager, HashiCorp Vault, Infisical, Kubernetes Secrets
MiniMax M2.5HashiCorp Vault
Four alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Azure Key Vault, Google Secret Manager
HashiCorp VaultHeld
Three alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, CyberArk Conjur
HashiCorp Vault
Four alternativesAWS Secrets Manager, Akeyless, Doppler, Infisical
HashiCorp Vault, Infisical
Three alternativesCyberArk, Delinea Secret Server, EnvManager
against: 1Password, Doppler, Keeperno first choiceagainst: AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, Doppler, EnvManager, Google Secret Manager, Infisical
Bold is the first choiceAlternatives are counted; the count opens them.What the answer argued against

05The record

One row per call: the version string exactly as returned, whether the model searched, sources cited, and latency. Full answer text is in the free responses file. Download the record
Seventy-two rows: every prompt, every model, every answer.
PromptModelVersion stringTime (UTC)SearchedSourcesLatency
Direct recommendationClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 12:21yes99 s
Direct recommendationGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:38yes45 s
Direct recommendationGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:52yes1324 s
Direct recommendationPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 11:59yes204 s
Direct recommendationGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:45yes3515 s
Direct recommendationMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:52yes2027 s
Direct recommendationDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:28yes813 s
Direct recommendationLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 11:40yes53 s
Direct recommendationQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:22yes532 s
Direct recommendationKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:10yes933 s
Direct recommendationGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:41yes1553 s
Direct recommendationMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:56yes515 s
ParaphraseClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 09:48no07 s
ParaphraseGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:08yes48 s
ParaphraseGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 12:50yes1832 s
ParaphrasePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:47yes206 s
ParaphraseGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:50yes2311 s
ParaphraseMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 14:11yes54 s
ParaphraseDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:14yes1822 s
ParaphraseLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:32yes53 s
ParaphraseQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 10:03yes545 s
ParaphraseKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:39yes1020 s
ParaphraseGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 10:20yes2947 s
ParaphraseMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 11:14yes533 s
ComparativeClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:40yes910 s
ComparativeGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 09:25yes711 s
ComparativeGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 13:08yes1436 s
ComparativePerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 10:38yes2010 s
ComparativeGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 09:37yes2413 s
ComparativeMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:11yes109 s
ComparativeDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via deepinfra2026-09-17 13:27yes2047 s
ComparativeLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:45yes52 s
ComparativeQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 13:26no040 s
ComparativeKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:35yes1032 s
ComparativeGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:38yes958 s
ComparativeMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 09:56yes823 s
Budget constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:08yes169 s
Budget constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 11:07yes35 s
Budget constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:36yes2032 s
Budget constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 09:52yes206 s
Budget constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 12:26yes4417 s
Budget constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:41yes55 s
Budget constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 12:10yes2631 s
Budget constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 09:59yes53 s
Budget constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 09:59no044 s
Budget constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 09:56yes2840 s
Budget constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 11:57yes22248 s
Budget constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:34yes1780 s
Scale constrainedClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 10:14yes1914 s
Scale constrainedGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 12:34no011 s
Scale constrainedGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 09:56no017 s
Scale constrainedPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 12:51yes208 s
Scale constrainedGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 11:05yes1314 s
Scale constrainedMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 10:20no08 s
Scale constrainedDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 11:08yes2028 s
Scale constrainedLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 10:18yes54 s
Scale constrainedQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 11:39no036 s
Scale constrainedKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 13:44yes1058 s
Scale constrainedGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 13:17yes26101 s
Scale constrainedMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 12:59yes1940 s
Negative framingClaude Haiku 4.5claude-haiku-4-5-202510012026-09-17 11:14yes168 s
Negative framingGPT-5.4 minigpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-172026-09-17 13:06yes36 s
Negative framingGemini 3.5 Flashgemini-3.5-flash2026-09-17 14:12yes2339 s
Negative framingPerplexity Sonarsonar2026-09-17 13:17yes205 s
Negative framingGrok 4.1 Fastspacexai/grok-4.1-fast-non-reasoning via vertex2026-09-17 10:08yes2013 s
Negative framingMistral Smallmistral/mistral-small via mistral2026-09-17 11:03yes57 s
Negative framingDeepSeek V4 Flashdeepseek/deepseek-v4-flash via fireworks2026-09-17 09:35yes2528 s
Negative framingLlama 4 Maverickmeta/llama-4-maverick via bedrock2026-09-17 12:03yes54 s
Negative framingQwen 3.7 Flashalibaba/qwen3.7-flash via alibaba2026-09-17 12:36no038 s
Negative framingKimi K2moonshotai/kimi-k2 via novita2026-09-17 10:24yes2055 s
Negative framingGLM 4.7 FlashXzai/glm-4.7-flashx via zai2026-09-17 12:28yes2864 s
Negative framingMiniMax M2.5minimax/minimax-m2.5 via minimax2026-09-17 10:44yes2177 s

Normalization in this category

Every judgment call made between the raw labels and the numbers above, listed so it is visible and reversible.

Category-scoped readings
Bitwarden read as Bitwarden Secrets Manager
Bitwarden (Business) read as Bitwarden Secrets Manager
Bitwarden Enterprise read as Bitwarden Secrets Manager
Delinea read as Delinea Secret Server
Delinea (Centrify) read as Delinea Secret Server
Delinea (formerly Thycotic) read as Delinea Secret Server
Thycotic read as Delinea Secret Server
Unresolved, counted raw
Ansible Vault
CyberArk Conjur / CyberArk secrets offerings
CyberArk Conjur / Privilege Cloud
CyberArk Vault
Genuit
HashiCorp Consul Connect
Lattice
kube-secrets-operator
Discontinued, still offered
No shut-down product was recommended here.

Also in identity and access

The other categories of this function, with the leader in each.
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