Infisical
Hacker ApprovedRanked 6 of 20 secrets managers by recommenders
Open source secrets manager with self-hosting, a CLI that works in CI, and a UI people find easy. Critics say paid features are priced for enterprise.
Open source secrets manager with self-hosting, a CLI that works in CI, and a UI people find easy. Critics say paid features are priced for enterprise.
22 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 17
- criticize it
- 5
- approval share
- 77%
Recommended in 7 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 17 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 3.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 7 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Open source with self-hosting
“Open source option with self-host”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “1Password pricing increasing 20% in March” “brilliant self-hosted offering, i love their CLI and it works well with CI pipelines”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: OneCLI – OSS credential gateway that keeps secrets out of AI agents” CLI works well in CI
“brilliant self-hosted offering, i love their CLI and it works well with CI pipelines”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: OneCLI – OSS credential gateway that keeps secrets out of AI agents” “There's a solution for this in Infisical! It's called secrets brokering and is built into the Infisical CLI”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Tailscale didn't stop the Hugging Face intrusion” Replaces .env files for local dev
“I recently finally fully moved all my projects away from .env (for local dev) to infisical”
Comment from 1 Aug 2026 in “Tailscale didn't stop the Hugging Face intrusion” “those troubles are now finally solved with Infisical for me”
Comment from 4 Aug 2026 in “Where .env Went Wrong” Good UI and easy setup
“I like the UI of secret management there”
Comment from 23 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Agent Vault – A HTTP credential proxy and vault for AI agents” “it's really easy to get set up with”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “I Spent 5 Years in DevOps. Solutions Engineering Gave Me What I Was Missing”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Upfront charges for projects and identities
“They don't make it clear that they charge you for projects and machine identities upfront”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Surprise Pay $1000” “Last I checked the $/identity extended to machine accounts which absolutely blew my mind.”
Comment from 23 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: OneCLI – OSS credential gateway that keeps secrets out of AI agents” Core features behind enterprise license
“All the core pieces I depended on were moved behind an enterprise license.”
Comment from 12 Oct 2026 in “HashiCorp archives the Boundary open source repo” “Doppler and Infisical lowered that bar but they're still priced for enterprise”
Comment from 24 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: enveil – hide your .env secrets from prAIng eyes”
Other secrets managers people recommend
The four most recommended other secrets managers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| OneCLI | 39 | 8 | 83% | 6 | — | Approved |
| SOPS | 28 | 5 | 85% | 10 | — | Approved |
| HashiCorp Vault | 26 | 10 | 72% | 10 | — | Approved |
| fnox | 20 | 4 | 83% | 9 | — | Approved |
| InfisicalThis page | 17 | 5 | 77% | 7 | — | Approved |
What people said
21 of the 24 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“If you are looking to just store secrets you can just use infisical.”
“All the core pieces I depended on were moved behind an enterprise license.”
“You can use Infisical for both secrets, certs, and PAM”
“I think something like infiscial ai proxy could be useful here.”
“Those two look like perfectly reasonable if the llm is just careless”
“Infisical ditched zero-trust earlier on citing complexity and UX concerns”
“those troubles are now finally solved with Infisical for me”
“There's a solution for this in Infisical! It's called secrets brokering and is built into the Infisical CLI”
“I recently finally fully moved all my projects away from .env (for local dev) to infisical”
“Last I checked the $/identity extended to machine accounts which absolutely blew my mind.”
“brilliant self-hosted offering, i love their CLI and it works well with CI pipelines”
“They don't make it clear that they charge you for projects and machine identities upfront”
“Very handy for small teams.”
“easy to plug in whatever secret manager”
“we definitely would like to give Agent Vault first-class support for Infisical as a storage for credentials”
“infisical is great so excited to see this”
“I like the UI of secret management there”
“Open source option with self-host”
“are excellent but require setup, maintenance, and infra”
“Doppler and Infisical lowered that bar but they're still priced for enterprise”
“it's really easy to get set up with”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.