Cloud & Infrastructure · pricing
Vault pricing
Vault publishes 2 tiers. Below is each one, what it adds over the tier beneath it, and where the ladder stops being worth climbing for most people.
- Entry price
- Free
- Model
- Open-source
- Tiers
- 2
- Free tier
- Yes
Vault plans, side by side
Every published tier in ascending order of price, with the number of features each one lists. An absence here means the record does not itemise it, not that the tier lacks it.
| Plan | Price | Features listed | Step up from the tier below |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Source | Free | 4 | Entry tier |
| Enterprise | Free | 4 | +$0/month, 4 more features |
What each tier adds
The set difference between each tier's feature list and the one beneath it. Where a tier lists nothing new, the vendor has either stopped repeating the inherited list or the tier raises limits rather than adding capability, the record does not distinguish the two, so this page does not either.
Open Source
FreeThe entry tier. It covers secrets management, encryption as a service, identity management, community support.
Enterprise
FreeOver Open Source, this tier adds:
- Advanced features
- Premium support
- Dedicated updates
- Priority support
Where Vault stops being free
Open Source, Free
- Secrets management
- Encryption as a service
- Identity management
- Community support
No paid tier on record
Vault lists a free tier and no priced tier above it in the record we hold.
What the product covers
The full Vault feature record, grouped as the catalogue groups it. This is the product as a whole; the record does not map every feature onto a specific tier.
Core
- Secrets management
- Encryption
- Authentication
- Authorization
- Audit logging
- API access
- High availability
- Replication
Integrations
- Kubernetes
- Terraform
- Ansible
- Docker
- Databases
Security
- Encryption
- TLS
- RBAC
- Audit logging
Deployment
- On-premise deployment
- Cloud deployment
- Hybrid deployment
Platform
- Linux support
- Windows support
- Mac support
- Cloud support
People bring Vault in for centrally storing and rotating secrets, api keys and database credentials, issuing short-lived dynamic credentials to applications instead of static passwords, encryption as a service and pki certificate issuance. If that is not the job you are buying for, the alternatives to Vault are worth a look before you commit to a tier.
How that compares in Cloud & Infrastructure
Too few cloud & infrastructure tools in this directory publish a starting price to quote a meaningful median, so the table below is a like-for-like list rather than a ranking.
| Tool | Entry price | Model | Rated | Head to head |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vault (this page) | Free | open-source | - | |
| DigitalOcean | Free, then $4/month | usage-based | - | vs Vault |
| Chef | Free | open-source | - | vs Vault |
| Alibaba Cloud | Free | usage-based | - | vs Vault |
| Lambda (AWS Serverless) | Free | usage-based | - | vs Vault |
| Contabo | €4.5/month | - | - | vs Vault |
| Akamai | $1000/month | quote | - | vs Vault |
Ratings are aggregated from third-party sources and imported with each catalogue entry, they are not reviews hosted on Softwr. How each figure is used is set out on the Vault badges page.
Before you pay for Vault
Three things this page cannot tell you, and all three change the bill. The record carries a price and a billing period but not the unit - per-seat and flat-rate pricing are indistinguishable in this data, so a five-person team may be looking at five times the figure above. It carries no annual rate, so any discount for paying yearly is not something this page can quote. And it carries no trial length.
What it can tell you is the shape of the ladder: 2 tiers between Free and Free, with the jump itemised above. Because there is a free tier, the cheapest way to answer the rest is to use it before paying anything.
Vault runs on linux, windows, mac, cloud, and is published by HashiCorp of San Francisco, CA. The full record is on the Vault review, and the rest of the category is under best cloud & infrastructure tools.
Vault pricing questions
- How much does Vault cost?
- Vault publishes 2 tiers, from Free for Open Source up to Free for Enterprise. The entry tier costs nothing.
- Does Vault have a free plan?
- Yes. The Open Source tier costs nothing and covers secrets management, encryption as a service, identity management.
- What is the difference between Open Source and Enterprise on Vault?
- Enterprise costs Free against Free, and adds advanced features, premium support, dedicated updates, priority support.
- Which cloud & infrastructure tools can I use without paying?
- 6 of the 8 cloud & infrastructure tools listed alongside Vault have a free tier: DigitalOcean, Chef, Alibaba Cloud, Lambda (AWS Serverless), AWS (Amazon Web Services).
- What am I actually paying for with Vault?
- The record lists 24 features across 5 areas: core, integrations, security, deployment, platform. In practice it is brought in for centrally storing and rotating secrets, api keys and database credentials, issuing short-lived dynamic credentials to applications instead of static passwords, encryption as a service and pki certificate issuance.
- Does Vault charge per user?
- The record carries a price and a billing period for each of its 2 tiers, but not the unit that price is charged in. Per-seat and flat-rate billing look identical in this data, so check the vendor's page before budgeting for a team.
- Are these Vault prices current?
- They are what the catalogue entry holds, refreshed when the entry is. Vendors change pricing without notice and nobody at Softwr re-verifies each tier by hand, so treat this as a structured summary and the vendor's own pricing page as the authority.
- What should I compare Vault against before paying?
- The closest cloud & infrastructure tools in this directory are DigitalOcean, Chef, Alibaba Cloud, Lambda (AWS Serverless). Each has a side-by-side comparison with Vault covering price, platforms and features.