Every category where a model named HashiCorp Vault for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Secrets management	Identity and access	30%	2 of 40	33%	66	criticized challenger
Privileged access management	Identity and access	0%	15 of 74	18%	11	accepted challenger
Business password managers	Identity and access	0%	21 of 35	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Bitwarden at 49%
Container and Kubernetes security	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	50 of 78	0%	1	under 10 labels · led by Aqua Security at 18%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for HashiCorp Vault yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated HashiCorp Vault across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	First choice	Alternative	Mention	Negative	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	0	3	2	6
GPT-5.4 mini	4	0	1	1	6
Gemini 3.5 Flash	0	2	0	5	7
Perplexity Sonar	1	1	2	2	6
Grok 4.1 Fast	2	1	1	2	6
Mistral Small	1	2	1	1	5
DeepSeek V4 Flash	3	1	1	3	8
Llama 4 Maverick	1	0	3	1	5
Qwen 3.7 Flash	1	3	0	4	8
Kimi K2	3	3	0	2	8
GLM 4.7 FlashX	4	0	2	1	7
MiniMax M2.5	4	1	2	0	7

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct39 labels14

Paraphrase36 labels21

Comparative43 labels19not counted in share

Budget-constrained37 labels9

Scale-constrained30 labels6

Negative46 labels2not counted in share

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative231 labels in all, every segment counted; 50 of the 71 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“If you're multi-cloud, hybrid, or on-prem + cloud ... → invest in HashiCorp Vault. It's the only option that governs secrets across every environment from one control plane” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Secrets · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Vault is arguably the most popular standalone solution... If you are an Enterprise with mixed environments: You likely need HashiCorp Vault or CyberArk.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · Secrets · comparative prompt · first choice

“I'd recommend starting with HashiCorp Vault—ideally the open-source Community Edition (free) self-hosted, or their managed HCP Vault” Grok 4.1 Fast · Secrets · paraphrase prompt · first choice

“Differentiator: The most flexible and feature-rich, ideal for organizations needing secrets management across diverse environments” Mistral Small · Secrets · comparative prompt · first choice

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

“the massive operational overhead required to deploy, patch, and scale a self-hosted Vault cluster make it a poor recommendation for mid-sized companies” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Secrets · paraphrase prompt · hard negative

“Vault is notoriously difficult to configure, maintain, and scale... the operational "Vault tax" is rarely worth it for a mid-market company” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Secrets · direct prompt · hard negative

“Avoid for general-purpose IT administration.” Qwen 3.7 Flash · PAM · negative prompt · hard negative

“HashiCorp explicitly says Vault Kubernetes Key Management is a beta feature and "strongly discourage[s] using beta features in production deployments of Vault."” GPT-5.4 mini · Secrets · negative prompt · soft negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as HashiCorp Vault, over the 224 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and HashiCorp Vault was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

AWS Secrets Manager160 of 2243Not in the top three

Doppler148 of 22455Compare →

Azure Key Vault118 of 2242Not in the top three

Infisical116 of 22430Compare →

Google Secret Manager92 of 2241Not in the top three

1Password91 of 22413Not in the top three

Akeyless69 of 2245Not in the top three

CyberArk Conjur52 of 2240Not in the top three

Bitwarden Secrets Manager49 of 2245Not in the top three

CyberArk45 of 2248Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named HashiCorp Vault. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 173 of the 224 answers that named HashiCorp Vault and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

blog.gitguardian.com113

startwithidentity.com88

envmanager.com87

safeguard.sh61

doppler.com56

infisical.com55

guideflow.com46

cybervendorguide.com45

cycode.com45

akeyless.io41

637 of the 637 domain citations in answers naming HashiCorp Vault came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

blog.gitguardian.com/top-secrets-management-tools113

envmanager.com/blog/best-secrets-management-tools86

startwithidentity.com/rankings/best-secrets-management-tools66

guideflow.com/blog/secrets-management-software46

cycode.com/blog/best-secrets-management-tools45

safeguard.sh/resources/blog/best-secrets-management-and-vaulting-solutions39

geekflare.com/cybersecurity/best-secret-management37

worldmetrics.org/best/secrets-management-software33

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as HashiCorp Vault

What the judge wrote, as written, with how often. The vendor table decides that these count as HashiCorp Vault; a claim can dispute any of them.

HashiCorp Vault (Community Edition) 5Vault 2HCP Vault 1HashiCorp Vault (Community Edition / Self-Hosted) 1HashiCorp Vault (Open Source) 1HashiCorp Vault / HCP Vault 1HashiCorp Vault Community Edition 1HashiCorp Vault OSS 1HashiCorp Vault/Boundary 1

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when HashiCorp Vault's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as HashiCorp Vault, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at hashicorp.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.