head to head · open source
HashiCorp Vault vs UnKey
HashiCorp Vault has 36,260 GitHub stars, 4,759 forks, 1,435 open issues and last shipped yesterday. UnKey has 5,438 stars, 636 forks, 163 open issues and last shipped yesterday. HashiCorp Vault leads on adoption by 567% (36,260 vs 5,438 stars). HashiCorp Vault is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence; UnKey is written in Go under a custom or non-standard licence. HashiCorp Vault has attracted 13% as many forks as stars, UnKey 12%. UnKey was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
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
| HashiCorp Vault | UnKey | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 36K | ★ 5.4K |
| License | Custom / other | Custom / other |
| Written in | Go | Go |
| Last push | 2026-09-17 | 2026-09-17 |
| Forks | ⑂ 4.8K | ⑂ 636 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick HashiCorp Vault if
- You weight community size — 36K stars and counting
- You want the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick UnKey if
- You want the UnKey feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the Custom / other license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and UnKey fits your workflow better
About HashiCorp Vault
Vault is a secrets management tool built in Go, designed to securely store, control access to, and manage sensitive data such as API keys, passwords, certificates, and encryption keys. It operates as a centralized service that abstracts secret access across diverse systems, providing unified APIs and enforcing strict access policies. Vault lives in the HashiCorp ecosystem and integrates with infrastructure tools like Consul for storage backends and Terraform for provisioning workflows.
read the full HashiCorp Vault overview →
About UnKey
Unkey is a developer platform for modern APIs, written in Go and published as a source available repository on GitHub. It brings several pieces of API infrastructure into one place: instant API deployment, globally distributed gateways that route and authenticate traffic, API key issuance and verification, ratelimiting, permissions and role based access control, usage analytics, and audit logs. The project describes itself as unifying infrastructure so that teams can ship faster, and it lives in the security and privacy space, specifically secrets management and API key management, alongside the broader API gatew…
read the full UnKey overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is HashiCorp Vault or UnKey more popular?
HashiCorp Vault has 36,260 GitHub stars and UnKey has 5,438. HashiCorp Vault has the larger community by that measure.
Are HashiCorp Vault and UnKey free?
Neither HashiCorp Vault nor UnKey declares a licence in this registry, so check each project's own repository before relying on either for a commercial use. Both are free to self-host.
What is the difference between HashiCorp Vault and UnKey?
HashiCorp Vault is written in Go and UnKey in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, HashiCorp Vault or UnKey?
Choose HashiCorp Vault if you want the larger community (36,260 stars) or its Custom / other licence terms. Choose UnKey if its feature set, stack or Custom / other licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.