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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to kiln – Git-native, decentralized secret management using age

Hi HN, I've been building this tool for the past couple of weeks to solve a problem that seems universal across development teams: sharing environment variables securely. You know the drill - someone needs the staging database URL, so it gets shared over chat. Production API keys end up in plaintext files. Or you set up some complex secret management system that becomes a single point of failure during critical deployments. At Zerodha, we're a stock broker with strict regulatory requirements. Our infrastructure needs to be auditable, and our data must stay with us for instant recovery. But…

Kiln is a Git-native secret management tool that encrypts environment variables and credentials using age encryption, allowing development teams to store secrets directly in version control with auditable access.… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

  1. 1

    A simple, modern and secure encryption tool (and Go library) with small explicit keys, no config options, and UNIX-style composability. - Release age v1.0.0 🏁 · FiloSottile/age

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Finally open sourced an internal tool we've been using for managing secrets. It's similar to SOPS, but more opinionated, easier to configure/use correctly, and produces nicer git diffs. It also supports one-way encryption, so you don't have to know the private key to add secrets.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3NA
  4. 4

    Hi! I got tired of setting up tools I can't explain to a team in a few words like sops or git-crypt, just to store few files with environment variables or secrets, so I built lockenv as a simple alternative. It's basically a password-protected vault file you commit to git. No gpg keys, no cloud, just lockenv init, set a password, and lock/unlock the secrets. This tool integrates with OS keyring, so you're not typing passwords constantly. Should work on Mac/Linux/Windows, but I tested it only on linux so far. I am not trying to replace any mature / robust solution, just…

    Dec 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    Develop faster, eliminate complexity, protect your secrets

    2022 · 1password.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    A secret manager backed by Keybase and KBFS. Contribute to kbsecret/kbsecret development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    The fastest way to build APIs for IoT applications

    2017 · losant.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8
    Redential▲116

    A developer credential that proves what you built, NDA safe.

    Jul 2026 · redential.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Hi Hacker News! Shahar and Tal from Keep here. A few months ago, we introduced here at HN (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34806482) Keep as an “open source alerting CLI” and got some interesting feedback - mainly around UI, automation, and supporting more tools. We were VERY early back then, and we understood that although the current DX around creating alerts is not great, it's not that critical and developers don’t need another tool just for that. But we did find something else. While talking to developers and devops, we found that a lot of companies use many tools…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    I'm excited to introduce Zerobox, a cross-platform, single binary process sandboxing CLI written in Rust. It uses the sandboxing crates from the OpenAI Codex repo and adds additional functionalities like secret injection, SDK, etc. Watch the demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZiPm9BOPCg Zerobox follows the same sandboxing policy as Deno which is deny by default. The only operation that the command can run is reading files, all writes and network I/O are blocked by default. No VMs, no Docker, no remote servers. Want to block reads to /etc? zerobox…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11KF

    Unphishable, zero-touch two-factor logins

    2018 · krypt.co · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    Hi HN, We have open-sourced Voiden. Most API tools are built like platforms. They are heavy because they optimize for accounts, sync, and abstraction - not for simple, local API work. Voiden treats API tooling as files. It’s an offline-first, Git-native API tool built on Markdown, where specs, tests, and docs live together as executable Markdown in your repo. Git is the source of truth. No cloud. No syncing. No accounts. No telemetry.Just Markdown, Git, hotkeys, and your damn specs. Voiden is extensible via plugins (including gRPC and WSS). Repo:…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    I noticed there weren't boilerplates for AI projects like there were for web apps, so I built one. Same idea - everything you need to get a project up and running quickly. However, instead of web-framework/CSS/DB, it's tools for AI projects: evals, synthetic data gen, fine-tuning, and more. Kiln is a free, open tool that gives you everything most AI projects need in one integrated package: - Eval system: including LLM-as-judge evals, eval data generation, human baselines - Fine-tuning: proxy to many fine-tuning providers like Fireworks/Together/OpenAI/Unsloth -…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14
  15. 15
    Portal▲92

    Zero-config P2P encrypted folder syncing, not the 2007 game

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16

    Building a native git replacement optimized for AI agent consumption.

    Mar 2026 · justfielding.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17

    A tiny "sandbox" to run untrusted code 🏖️. Contribute to craigmulligan/sandy development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  18. 18
    Gitzero▲105

    Encrypted Git hosting for teams and enterprises.

    2016 · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    encrypted git on s3. Contribute to nathants/git-remote-aws development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Contribute to fmeringdal/covert development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    I don't know Rust. Friday after work I realised that 90% of my IDE time now is just the commit/diff view — and even good IDEs feel heavy for that. So over the weekend I built a dedicated native tool for just that. Kyde is a macOS git commit + diff editor with one goal: be fast, do Git well. I'm curious whether anyone else mostly opens their IDE for git operations these days. It's open source, and there's a signed app in Releases.

    Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    A minimalistic in-memory key value store. Contribute to sdslabs/kiwi development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2020 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Zero-knowledge secret manager for small dev teams

    May 2026 · getvaultlite.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    My name is Nir! I am one of the three co-founders of arnica.io. I’ve worn many hats in cyber security over the years – sys admin, pen-tester, security architect, and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO). What really gets me excited about my work is making security easy and effective for developers and ops teams! In my last role, at one of the top 3 FinTechs, following the attack against Solarwinds, the CEO asked me what we are doing to secure our software supply chain. I met with 15+ vendors, did a few POCs, but unfortunately each solution either increased operational cost or was too…

    2022 · arnica.io · its alternatives →

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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →