head to head · open source
Ente vs helm-secrets
Ente has 28,956 GitHub stars, 1,805 forks, 229 open issues and last shipped yesterday. helm-secrets has 2,029 stars, 154 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 8 days ago. Ente leads on adoption by 1,327% (28,956 vs 2,029 stars). Ente is written in Dart under AGPL-3.0; helm-secrets is written in Shell under Apache-2.0. Ente has attracted 6% as many forks as stars, helm-secrets 8%. Ente was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (encryption), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| Ente | helm-secrets | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 29K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Dart | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 1.8K | ⑂ 154 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Ente if
- You weight community size — 29K stars and counting
- You want the AGPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Dart
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick helm-secrets if
- You want the helm-secrets feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Apache-2.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Shell
- You evaluated both and helm-secrets fits your workflow better
About Ente
Ente is a fully open source, end to end encrypted platform for storing photos, documents and credentials in the cloud, packaged as a monorepo of client apps and a server, and intended for people who want the features of Google Photos, Apple Photos and Authy without having to trust the service provider with their data.
About helm-secrets
helm secrets is a Helm plugin that decrypts encrypted Helm value files on the fly, built for teams that keep Kubernetes secrets in Git or a cloud native secret manager and deploy charts with Helm or a GitOps operator such as ArgoCD.
read the full helm-secrets overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is Ente or helm-secrets more popular?
Ente has 28,956 GitHub stars and helm-secrets has 2,029. Ente has the larger community by that measure.
Are Ente and helm-secrets free?
Both are open source. Ente is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and helm-secrets under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Ente and helm-secrets?
Ente is written in Dart and helm-secrets in Shell. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, Ente or helm-secrets?
Choose Ente if you want the larger community (28,956 stars) or its AGPL-3.0 licence terms. Choose helm-secrets if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.