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Dev tools · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to Phase – open-source encryption and key management for developers

Hello HN! We are developers and security researchers making tools for developers to encrypt data at an application level while maintaining sole control of their keys. We believe that data should always be encrypted unless it is part of an active computation. Encryption is relatively easy, but key management is challenging. There are plenty of encryption tools and SDKs that are out there (Hashicorp Vault, AWS KMS etc.) but we are focusing on ease and speed of implementation, developer experience and self custody of keys. A few months ago, we quit our jobs and started full time on Phase. So…

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Phase – open-source encryption and key management for developers launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1
    Phase▲383

    Open source platform for teams and AI agents to securely access, manage and deploy application secrets — from development to production.

    2024 · phase.dev · its alternatives →

  2. 2

    Hi HN, we’re the founders of Infisical, the open source secret management platform – it provides an end-to-end set of tools to manage your secrets across your team and infrastructure (https://infisical.com/). Excited to show you all the progress that we’ve made in the past few months after our Launch HN in February (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34955699) and Show HN in December (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34055132). During the previous Show HN and Launch HN, we received a ton of feedback which helped us improve Infisical. We’ve…

    2023 · infisical.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3E2

    Hey HN, I'm so happy to finally show you all this release after years of hard work. I posted the first version of EnvKey to HN back in 2017 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15330757), then went through YC in W18 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16569534). EnvKey is an end-to-end encrypted configuration and secrets manager. It protects your organization's API keys, encryption keys, credentials, and other secrets, and makes it easy to run servers, scripts, tests, and everything else with the latest config. It also helps you avoid duplication in your…

    2022 · v2.envkey.com · its alternatives →

  4. 4

    Hi HN — I’m a heavy OpenClaw user and, like many others, I’ve been thinking about how to give these new “unleashed” agents secure access to my accounts. Agents need API access to be useful. But API keys are long-lived secrets. And agents are not secure environments. So I built something for myself that quickly turned into a product: keychains.dev. The idea is simple: agents never see raw credentials. With Keychains.dev: • Agents make API calls via a drop-in replacement for curl or JavaScript’s fetch() • They use template variable names instead of embedding credentials • The request is…

    Feb 2026 · keychains.dev · its alternatives →

  5. 5

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

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    Hello. I made this project as an experiment in using key cryptography for user identity in a client server model, and for some future peer to peer projects that I am working on. I am looking for feedback, please let me know what you think. Also, Merry Christmas to HN! :-)

    2022 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7OS

    Hey HN, we're Evis and Nick from Neosync (https://www.github.com/nucleuscloud/neosync). Since we last introduced Neosync on HN 4 months ago, we’ve made a lot of progress and we’re excited to be launching several new features. As a reminder, Neosync is an open source platform that helps developers anonymize production data, generate synthetic data, subset it and sync it across their environments for better testing, debugging and developer experience. We do all of this while handling referential integrity. Whether you have primary keys, foreign keys, unique constraints,…

    2024 · docs.neosync.dev · its alternatives →

  8. 8KF

    Unphishable, zero-touch two-factor logins

    2018 · krypt.co · its alternatives →

  9. 9
    Nen▲12

    End-to-end encrypted APIs for modern web.

    Jun 2026 · withnen.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    Hi HN, I built AxKeyStore, an open-source CLI tool for managing secrets that uses your own private GitHub repository as encrypted storage. The idea is simple: → All encryption happens locally. → Secrets are stored as encrypted blobs in your private repo. → GitHub is treated as untrusted storage. → No plaintext secrets ever leave your machine. → No plaintext secrets are stored on disk. Most secret managers either require a hosted backend, a self-hosted server, or trusting a SaaS provider. I wanted something that: → Requires zero infrastructure → Uses tooling developers already have → Keeps…

    Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    Encrypted storage with built-in key management facilities - starekrow/lockbox

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    This is a community forum for people who use, build, and run things on Nostr. Whether you are taking your first steps with keys and zaps, ship relays and clien…

    22d ago · nostr-proto.org · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Hi HN, I built KeyEnv because I was tired of the "can you Slack me the Stripe key?" workflow. The problem: My team's secrets lived in a mix of Slack DMs, shared Google Docs, and .env files that definitely weren't in .gitignore at some point. Enterprise tools like Vault required more DevOps time than we had. Doppler was close but felt heavier than we needed. What KeyEnv does: keyenv init # link project keyenv pull # sync secrets to local .env keyenv run -- npm start # inject secrets, run command That's basically it. Secrets are encrypted client-side (AES-256-GCM) before leaving your machine.…

    Jan 2026 · keyenv.dev · its alternatives →

  14. 14DO

    I’ve developed a new public-key encryption scheme (DIAC) that uses multidimensional, high-precision complex keyspaces and a modular trapdoor function for ultra-high entropy and quantum resistance. The code, benchmarks, and research paper (PDF) are all open-source: https://osf.io/mvkcq/ Would love feedback, questions, or cryptanalysis!

    2025 · osf.io · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    Hey HN, we're Evis and Nick, we're excited to be launching Neosync on HN! Neosync is an open source data replication and anonymization project that helps developers create safe, anonymized test data and sync it across all environments for high-quality local, stage and CI testing. This is how it works: 1. You select a job type. Today we support data sync jobs (these sync data between two databases and run on a schedule you define) and a data generation job (this generates synthetic data from scratch and sends it to a destination). 2. Next you define your source database and a destination(s)…

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

  16. 16SC
  17. 17

    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…

    2025 · kiln.sh · its alternatives →

  18. 18

    Hi HN, I'm Dan Draper, founder of CipherStash. We've spent 5 years building per-value searchable encryption tech. We realized that encryption like this is incredibly powerful but the engineering required is generally not worth the effort. So we built a platform and opensource SDK to take the cry out of cryptography :) CipherStash Stack is: * A searchable encryption SDK for TS and Postgres * Fast, key management with Zerokms (backed by HSM) * A transparent SQL proxy * Auth library and OIDC federation service * Skills for data security Integrations include Prisma Next, Drizzle, Auth0, Clerk…

    May 2026 · cipherstash.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19

    Hi everyone! We started working on this project last year because a password manager that we used was being sold to another company and stopped offering their service. We were not happy with the alternatives that were available so we decided to give it a shot and build our own. We are now at a point where we have a working Beta and are looking for some feedback from the community. The main idea is to have data synchronization without a central server (single point of failure). When you create a Vault (inside which you can store your credentials and other sensitive data), you can "Link" it to…

    2023 · cryptex-vault.com · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Blockchain-powered password manager. Contribute to BlockProject/b-lock development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2018 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21JR

    Hello Hacker News! We’re Willem, Roeland, Felix and Madeline from Aikido Security (https://aikido.dev/) We’re building a “no BS’ application security platform. It’s the platform we wish existed, but couldn’t find. Willem, our CTO had to manage (application) security at many of his previous startups, and honestly, hated it. Most security tools we had to use made us feel dumb. They were super complex and riddled with false positives. Their platform was behind the book a demo button. They had intransparent pricing models and honestly charged us way too much. We think most of…

    2024 · its alternatives →

  22. 22

    Hey everyone, English is not my native language. This post was polished with AI, but the content is mine. I run a small dev agency in Germany. Every week someone shares database credentials, API keys, or a .env file via Slack or email. Not because they don’t care: because there’s no frictionless alternative. Vault setups are heavy. Enterprise tools are expensive. I just needed: upload → share link → done. But encrypted before leaving the browser. So I built SecretDrop.dev. What it does Files encrypted client-side (AES-256-GCM, PBKDF2 600k iterations) Built entirely on WebCrypto No…

    Feb 2026 · secretdrop.dev · its alternatives →

  23. 23

    Unleash security, embrace simplicity

    2024 · keyshade.io · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    Keycloak Hosting | Support | Migration | Customization

    2024 · phasetwo.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 →