IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Kubernetes Secrets · September 2026 Edition

1 category · Named, not ranked

Kubernetes Secrets

11Judge labels

0First choices

10Negative labels

8 of 12Models named it

1Category

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

7 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Kubernetes Secrets was named 7 times in Secrets, where Doppler led with 33%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business34 of 37

under the label threshold

Mid-market40 of 40

under the label threshold

Enterprise36 of 38

under the label threshold

In secrets · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Kubernetes Secrets 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	0%	40 of 40	86%	7	under 10 labels · led by Doppler at 33%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Kubernetes Secrets 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 Kubernetes Secrets across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

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

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

Direct0 labelsNone

Paraphrase0 labelsNone

Comparative0 labelsNone

Budget-constrained0 labelsNone

Scale-constrained0 labelsNone

Negative11 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative11 labels in all, every segment counted; 0 of the 0 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.

No positive label carried a quote.

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.

“Base64 Encoded Secrets (e.g., Unencrypted Kubernetes Secrets): Why avoid: Base64 is encoding, not encryption.” GLM 4.7 FlashX · Secrets · negative prompt · hard negative

“Avoid for production sensitive data; use External Secrets Operator to sync from Vault/Key Vault instead” Grok 4.1 Fast · Secrets · negative prompt · hard negative

“Kubernetes Secrets are base64-encoded, not encrypted — they are stored in plaintext in etcd by default” DeepSeek V4 Flash · Secrets · negative prompt · hard negative

“Native Kubernetes Secrets (Avoid Using Alone/By Default)... only Base64 encoded, not encrypted.” Gemini 3.5 Flash · Secrets · negative prompt · hard negative

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Kubernetes Secrets, over the 11 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Kubernetes Secrets was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

HashiCorp Vault9 of 110Not in the top three

AWS Secrets Manager8 of 110Not in the top three

Doppler7 of 112Not in the top three

Azure Key Vault6 of 110Not in the top three

Google Secret Manager6 of 110Not in the top three

Infisical5 of 111Not in the top three

SOPS4 of 111Not in the top three

OpenBao4 of 110Not in the top three

1Password3 of 110Not in the top three

External Secrets Operator3 of 110Not 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 Kubernetes Secrets. 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 9 of the 11 answers that named Kubernetes Secrets and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

blog.gitguardian.com7

cheatsheetseries.owasp.org6

doppler.com6

hashicorp.com5

infisical.com5

reddit.com5

cycode.com4

nhimg.org4

akeyless.io3

capy.sc3

Forty-eight of the forty-eight domain citations in answers naming Kubernetes Secrets came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

blog.gitguardian.com/top-secrets-management-tools6

cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/cheatsheets/Secrets_Management_Cheat_Sheet.html6

doppler.com/blog/secrets-management-myths5

cycode.com/blog/best-secrets-management-tools4

capy.sc/blog/best-secrets-management-tools-for-developers-20263

checkmarx.com/learn/secrets-detection/rethinking-secrets-management-tools-why-vaults-alone3

entro.security/blog/pitfalls-and-challenges-in-secrets-management3

envmanager.com/blog/best-secrets-management-tools3

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Names read as Kubernetes Secrets

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

Kubernetes secrets 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 Kubernetes Secrets'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 Kubernetes Secrets, 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 kubernetes.io 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.