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Secrets Manager Pricing: Is Your Team Spending Too Much In 2026?

The Short Version

Secrets manager pricing gets confusing because vendors charge for different things: machines, identities, users, secrets, versions, API calls, operations, clusters, or custom enterprise packages.

SikkerKey keeps the pricing model anchored to the unit that matters most in production: machines. Applications, CI jobs, servers, containers, workers, scripts, and deployment systems are the systems that need to fetch secrets safely.

Outside of the specific plan unlocks listed below, the rest of the SikkerKey platform and features are 100% free.

SikkerKey Pricing

PlanMonthly priceIncluded machinesMain unlocksAdditional machines
Free$0101 month audit log retention, 20 webhook deliveries per day$3 each
Startup$2525Organization and members, unlimited email alerts, 12 months audit log retention, 1,000 webhook deliveries per day$5 each
Enterprise$125150Organization and members, vault role customization, SSO with SAML 2.0, unlimited email alerts, 24 months audit log retention, 5,000 webhook deliveries per day$10 each

That makes the first budgeting step simple: count the machines that need access.

10 machines can run on Free. 25 machines can run on Startup for $25/month. 150 machines can run on Enterprise for $125/month with SSO, custom vault roles, longer audit retention, and higher webhook limits.

Everything outside those plan unlocks remains free.

Scale Comparison: Machines, Identities, And Seats

The biggest pricing difference shows up when a team scales from a few consumers to a real production footprint.

Scale pointSikkerKeyInfisical ProDoppler Team
10 production consumers$0/month for 10 included machines$180/month at $18 per identity$210/month at $21 per user
25 production consumers$25/month for 25 included machines$450/month at $18 per identity$525/month at $21 per user
150 production consumers$125/month for 150 included machines$2,700/month at $18 per identity$3,150/month at $21 per user

This comparison is not about every feature in every plan. It is about the pricing unit. SikkerKey scales by machines. Infisical Pro scales by identities. Doppler Team scales by users.

For teams where production access is the main problem, machine-based pricing is easier to forecast.

Usage Pricing Punishes Good Security

Usage-based pricing looks precise, but it can work against the habits security teams are supposed to encourage.

Good secrets hygiene often means more granular secrets, more environments, more rotation, more service-specific credentials, more audit activity, more replication, and more production reads from real workloads. Under a usage-metered model, those improvements can increase the bill.

A team should not have to choose between cleaner separation and a lower invoice. SikkerKey's machine-based model avoids making the number of secrets, versions, or reads the center of the subscription.

Usage-Metered Comparison: Secrets, Versions, And Operations

Cloud-provider secrets managers usually price by usage meters rather than seats or machines.

VendorPublic meterExample scale effect
AWS Secrets Manager$0.40 per secret/month plus $0.05 per 10,000 API calls500 stored secrets is about $200/month before API calls
Google Secret ManagerFirst 6 active secret versions free, then $0.06 per active version/month; first 10,000 access operations free, then $0.03 per 10,0001,500 active versions is about $89.64/month before access operations
Azure Key VaultStandard operations at $0.03 per 10,000 operations; secret renewal at $1Cost depends on operation volume and renewal behavior

Metered pricing means the bill depends on implementation details: number of secrets, active versions, replicas, read volume, renewal behavior, and cloud architecture.

SikkerKey's model is different. The subscription is based on machine capacity, with clear plan unlocks and published additional-machine pricing.

Pricing Snapshot

VendorPublic managed pricing modelNotes
SikkerKeyFree, $25/month Startup, $125/month Enterprise, priced by machinesMost platform features are free outside the listed unlocks
Infisical CloudFree tier, Pro at $18 per identity/month, Enterprise customCost scales with identities: 3 identities is $54/month, 5 is $90/month, 28 is $504/month
DopplerDeveloper is free for 3 users, then $8/user/month; Team is $21/user/month; add-ons are $9/seat/monthHuman-seat pricing, with optional paid add-ons
AkeylessFree tier with limits; Enterprise is customFree tier includes limits such as 5 clients, 500 static secrets, and 5 dynamic secrets
AWS Secrets Manager$0.40 per secret per month plus $0.05 per 10,000 API callsUsage-based cloud-provider pricing
Google Secret ManagerActive-version and access-operation pricingFirst 6 active versions and first 10,000 access operations are free
Azure Key VaultOperation-based pricingStandard operations are $0.03 per 10,000; secret renewal is $1
HashiCorp Vault managedManaged infrastructure pricingPricing depends on deployment and cluster requirements
CyberArk Conjur / Secrets Manager SaaSQuote-based, request-demo pricingEnterprise sales-led pricing

Infisical Cloud Pricing

Infisical Cloud publishes a Free tier and a Pro plan priced at $18 per identity per month. Enterprise pricing is custom.

The Pro slider shows how that scales: 1 identity is $18/month, 3 identities is $54/month, 5 identities is $90/month, and 28 identities is $504/month.

Infisical's pricing unit is identity-based, so the monthly cost depends on how many identities the team needs to represent users, applications, and systems.

Doppler Pricing

Doppler's Developer plan is free for 3 users, then $8/month per additional user. Its Team plan is $21/month per user. Doppler also lists optional add-ons at $9/seat/month.

The pricing unit is the human user. The monthly cost depends primarily on team size and whether paid add-ons are needed.

Doppler's structural limitation is that the bill scales with seats rather than production machines.

Akeyless Pricing

Akeyless publishes a Free tier and an Enterprise tier. The Free tier includes limits such as 5 clients, 500 static secrets, and 5 dynamic secrets. Enterprise pricing is customized.

Akeyless uses clients as an important pricing and limit concept. Its pricing material defines clients broadly across human users, applications, and servers that initiate sessions.

Akeyless's structural limitation is that teams need to count clients and move into custom enterprise pricing after the free-tier boundary.

AWS Secrets Manager Pricing

AWS Secrets Manager is usage-based. The standard public pricing is $0.40 per secret per month, plus $0.05 per 10,000 API calls.

Storage cost scales directly with the number of secrets. For example, 100 secrets is about $40/month before API calls, 500 secrets is about $200/month, 1,500 secrets is about $600/month, and 10,000 secrets is about $4,000/month.

API call volume, replicas, accounts, and regions can change the final bill.

AWS Secrets Manager's structural limitation is that the bill scales with stored secrets and API calls.

Google Secret Manager Pricing

Google Secret Manager prices active secret versions and access operations. The first 6 active secret versions are free. After that, active secret versions are $0.06 per version per month. The first 10,000 access operations are free, then access operations are $0.03 per 10,000.

Version count matters. After the first 6 free active versions, 100 active versions is about $5.64/month, 500 is about $29.64/month, 1,500 is about $89.64/month, and 10,000 is about $599.64/month before access operations.

Replication choices and access volume affect the final cost.

Google Secret Manager's structural limitation is that the bill scales with active versions and access operations.

Azure Key Vault Pricing

Azure Key Vault standard operations are listed at $0.03 per 10,000 operations. Secret renewal is listed at $1.

The pricing model is usage-based, so the final bill depends on operation volume, renewal behavior, and the surrounding Azure architecture.

Azure Key Vault's structural limitation is that pricing is tied to operations and renewal events rather than a fixed machine-capacity plan.

HashiCorp Vault Managed Pricing

HashiCorp's managed Vault offering is closer to managed infrastructure than a per-secret SaaS subscription. HCP Vault Dedicated pricing depends on deployment shape, cluster requirements, and production needs.

Teams evaluating managed Vault should expect pricing to depend on infrastructure sizing and enterprise requirements rather than a single public per-machine or per-seat table.

HashiCorp Vault managed pricing's structural limitation is that cost planning becomes a cluster and infrastructure sizing exercise.

CyberArk Conjur Pricing

CyberArk Conjur is now positioned through CyberArk Secrets Manager SaaS and related enterprise secrets management products. Public pricing is sales-led rather than a self-serve monthly table.

Teams evaluating CyberArk should expect a demo, sales conversation, and custom pricing process.

CyberArk Conjur's structural limitation is that teams cannot calculate a public monthly price from a standard pricing table.

Bottom Line

SikkerKey is strongest when teams want predictable production-secret access pricing by machine.

At 10 machines, SikkerKey is $0/month.

At 25 machines, SikkerKey is $25/month.

At 150 machines, SikkerKey is $125/month.

Outside of the listed plan unlocks, the rest of the platform and features are free.

That is the core difference: SikkerKey gives teams a clear machine-based price before they have to model identities, users, secrets, versions, API calls, operations, clusters, or custom enterprise quotes.