Infisical vs OpenBao
A side-by-side comparison of two self-hosted password managers options — licensing, setup difficulty, resource needs, and what each one replaces.
Infisical
Open-source secrets management platform for developers
VS
OpenBao
Open-source secrets management forked from Vault
| Feature | Infisical | OpenBao |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy effort | Under-an-hour setup | Under-an-hour setup |
| Health score | 98 · Excellent | 91 · Excellent |
| Category | Password Managers | Password Managers |
| License | MIT | MPL-2.0 |
| Language | TypeScript | Go |
| Setup difficulty | Medium | Hard |
| Min. RAM | 512 MB | 256 MB |
| Deployment | docker, kubernetes, helm | docker, kubernetes, binary |
| GitHub stars | ★ 29,401 | ★ 7,472 |
| First released | 2022 | 2024 |
| Replaces | AWS Secrets Manager, Doppler, HashiCorp Vault | AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault |
What are Infisical and OpenBao?
Infisical
Infisical is an open-source platform for managing and syncing secrets across teams and infrastructure. It offers a friendly dashboard, secret versioning, automatic rotation and integrations with CI/CD tools.
- Centralized secrets dashboard
- Secret versioning and rotation
- Native CI/CD and Kubernetes integrations
- Point-in-time secret recovery
OpenBao
OpenBao is a community-driven, open-source fork of HashiCorp Vault maintained under the Linux Foundation. It manages, stores and tightly controls access to secrets such as tokens, passwords and certificates.
- Truly open-source Vault alternative
- Dynamic secrets generation
- Encryption as a service
- Community governed under Linux Foundation
Infisical vs OpenBao: key differences
Infisical is written in TypeScript, while OpenBao is built with Go. Licensing differs — MIT for Infisical versus MPL-2.0 for OpenBao. OpenBao is the lighter option, starting around 256 MB of RAM against 512 MB for Infisical. Infisical is the more established project (first released 2022), while OpenBao arrived in 2024. Infisical has the considerably larger community, at 29,401 GitHub stars versus 7,472.
Why pick each one
Choose Infisical if…
- Excellent developer UX
- Broad integration catalog
Watch out for
- Some enterprise features gated
Choose OpenBao if…
- MPL-2.0 licensed
- Compatible with Vault tooling
Watch out for
- Young fork still stabilizing
Frequently asked questions
Is Infisical or OpenBao better?
Infisical is the stronger all-round pick: it has both the larger community and the simpler medium setup. Consider OpenBao if its specific feature set fits your needs better.
Are Infisical and OpenBao free and open-source?
Yes. Infisical is licensed under MIT and OpenBao under MPL-2.0. Both can be self-hosted at no software cost.
Can I run Infisical and OpenBao with Docker?
Infisical: yes. OpenBao: yes.
Which is lighter on resources, Infisical or OpenBao?
OpenBao has the smaller minimum footprint at 256 MB of RAM, compared to about 512 MB for Infisical. Real-world usage depends on library size, user count, and enabled features.