head to head · open source
Zen vs helm-secrets
Zen has 4,225 GitHub stars, 143 forks, 14 open issues and last shipped 2 days ago. helm-secrets has 2,029 stars, 154 forks, 1 open issues and last shipped 9 days ago. Zen leads on adoption by 108% (4,225 vs 2,029 stars). Zen is written in Go under MIT; helm-secrets is written in Shell under Apache-2.0. Zen has attracted 3% as many forks as stars, helm-secrets 8%. Zen 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
| Zen | helm-secrets | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 4.2K | ★ 2.0K |
| License | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Written in | Go | Shell |
| Last push | 2026-09-18 | 2026-09-11 |
| Forks | ⑂ 143 | ⑂ 154 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick Zen if
- You weight community size — 4.2K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- 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 Zen
Zen is an open source desktop application written in Go for Windows, macOS, and Linux under the MIT license. It operates as a system wide ad blocker and privacy guard, so it applies to traffic from applications on the machine rather than only to browser tabs. It lives in the desktop security and privacy ecosystem, where users want filtering without browser extensions.
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 Zen or helm-secrets more popular?
Zen has 4,225 GitHub stars and helm-secrets has 2,029. Zen has the larger community by that measure.
Are Zen and helm-secrets free?
Both are open source. Zen is licensed under MIT and helm-secrets under Apache-2.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between Zen and helm-secrets?
Zen is written in Go 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, Zen or helm-secrets?
Choose Zen if you want the larger community (4,225 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose helm-secrets if its feature set, stack or Apache-2.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.