Akeyless vs AWS Secrets Manager

Key Takeaways

• The choice between Akeyless and AWS Secrets Manager comes down to scope: AWS Secrets Manager is built for teams that live entirely inside AWS, while Akeyless is built for multi-cloud and hybrid estates.
• 87% of organizations now run a multi-cloud strategy, averaging 2.6 public cloud providers (Flexera State of the Cloud Report), which is exactly the environment a single-cloud native tool was not built to govern.
• On G2, Akeyless holds a 4.6/5 rating from 82 reviews versus AWS Secrets Manager’s 4.5/5 from 18 reviews, with Akeyless scoring higher specifically on ease of use and multi-factor authentication.
• Akeyless’s zero-knowledge architecture means Akeyless itself never holds the means to decrypt customer secrets, a structurally different trust model from a standard cloud-native vault, regardless of either provider’s actual disclosure history.

Answer Capsule: What Is the Core Difference Between Akeyless and AWS Secrets Manager?

AWS Secrets Manager is a native AWS service for storing, rotating, and retrieving secrets inside the AWS ecosystem. Akeyless is a SaaS-delivered secrets management platform built to work across AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and on-prem from one control plane, with a zero-knowledge architecture (Distributed Fragments Cryptography) that keeps even Akeyless from being able to decrypt customer secrets. AWS Secrets Manager is the simpler, cheaper choice for AWS-only workloads. Akeyless is built for teams governing secrets across more than one environment.

• AWS Secrets Manager: native to AWS, billed per secret and per API call.
• Akeyless: multi-cloud from the start, zero-knowledge encryption, consumption-based pricing.
• The right pick depends on your cloud footprint, not a feature checklist.

The secrets manager an organization picks shapes its security posture for years, since migrating credentials, certificates, and access policies to a different platform later is rarely a quick project. This guide compares Akeyless and AWS Secrets Manager across the criteria that actually matter for that decision: security architecture, multi-cloud reach, authentication options, rotation coverage, pricing, and real user ratings. A side-by-side comparison table appears in each section below for quick scanning.

What Is AWS Secrets Manager?

AWS Secrets Manager is Amazon’s native service for storing, retrieving, and automatically rotating secrets such as database credentials, API keys, and other sensitive strings used by applications running in AWS. It integrates directly with AWS IAM for access control, supports versioning for stored secrets, and provides a managed Lambda function for rotating credentials tied to RDS, Redshift, and DocumentDB out of the box. For workloads and teams already standardized on AWS, it removes the need to run any separate secrets infrastructure.

What Is Akeyless?

Akeyless is a SaaS-delivered secrets management platform built to secure credentials, certificates, encryption keys, and privileged access across hybrid and multi-cloud environments from a single control plane. Its architecture is built on Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC), a patented zero-knowledge model that splits cryptographic operations across independent fragments rather than assembling a complete key anywhere, including on Akeyless’s own infrastructure. Akeyless automates secrets management across CI/CD pipelines and supports dynamic, short-lived credentials in addition to static ones, giving organizations a centralized way to govern secrets no matter which cloud or on-prem system they sit in.

These architectural differences, a single-cloud native service versus a multi-cloud, zero-knowledge platform, are what the rest of this comparison breaks down in detail.

Zero-Knowledge Security Model

Akeyless’s Distributed Fragments Cryptography underpins its zero-knowledge model: cryptographic key material is never assembled in one place, which means Akeyless itself has no technical ability to decrypt customer secrets, even under a legal compulsion request. AWS Secrets Manager, like most cloud-native services, uses a standard managed-encryption model: AWS retains the technical capability to access customer data when required, subject to its own stated legal and operational safeguards.

Question	AWS Secrets Manager	Akeyless
Can the provider technically decrypt customer secrets?	Yes, under AWS’s standard architecture	No, keys are never assembled in one place under DFC
Zero-knowledge by design?	No	Yes
Reported CLOUD Act content disclosures (outside U.S., since 2020)	Zero, per AWS’s own compliance page	Not applicable; architecture prevents disclosure regardless of legal request

It’s worth being precise about what the CLOUD Act actually does here, since this point is easy to overstate. The law lets U.S. authorities compel U.S. companies to produce data under a lawful order regardless of where it’s stored, and AWS itself confirms it complies with valid legal process. What AWS also states directly is that it has disclosed zero enterprise or government customer content stored outside the U.S. to the U.S. government since it began reporting the statistic in 2020, and that it cannot act on a request for data it does not have the technical means to access. The real differentiator isn’t a claim that AWS is likely to hand over secrets without notice. It’s architectural: a zero-knowledge design makes the question moot, since there’s nothing for any party, including the vendor, to hand over even if compelled.

Multi-Cloud, Hybrid & Integrations

Cloud-native secrets services are built to run inside their own ecosystem, which creates friction for teams operating across more than one cloud, self-managed CI/CD tooling, or unmanaged Kubernetes clusters. This is not a niche problem: 87% of organizations now run a multi-cloud strategy, using an average of 2.6 public cloud providers, per Flexera’s State of the Cloud Report, which is exactly the environment a single-cloud tool was never designed to govern centrally.

Akeyless supports all major cloud platforms plus on-premises systems from one platform. Its Multi-Vault Governance governs secrets already stored in AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, and Google Secret Manager from a single interface, without requiring teams to migrate or duplicate those secrets first. A team standardizing its DevOps workflow across AWS and GCP, for instance, can apply one consistent access policy and audit trail across both, instead of reconciling two separate native tools.

Dynamic Secrets & Just-in-Time Access

Dynamic secrets, credentials generated on demand and expired automatically after use, meaningfully reduce the risk of a stolen or leaked credential compared to a static one that works indefinitely. AWS Secrets Manager supports dynamic secrets, but its native rotation and generation capabilities are scoped mainly to AWS’s own database services (RDS, Redshift, DocumentDB); other secret types typically require a custom Lambda function.

Akeyless extends dynamic secrets and just-in-time access across a broader range of targets out of the box, including databases, cloud IAM roles, and infrastructure automation tools, without custom coding for each one. A credential exists only for the window a task actually needs it, which shrinks the value of a leaked credential to whoever might find it.

Authentication Options

AWS Secrets Manager authenticates primarily through AWS IAM, with support for standard identity protocols like SAML 2.0 and OAuth 2.0 for broader integrations. Akeyless supports a wider range of methods designed for mixed human and machine access: Kubernetes Auth, SSH Auth, certificate-based authentication, LDAP/S credentials, AWS IAM, Azure AD, GCP, SAML, OIDC, and its own Universal Identity method for workload authentication.

This range matters in practice for hybrid teams. A container running in AWS might authenticate to Akeyless using AWS IAM for a machine identity, while a developer on the same team authenticates via SAML or OIDC as a human identity, both governed under the same policy model rather than two disconnected systems.

Secret Rotation Coverage

Technology	AWS Secrets Manager	Akeyless
RDS, Redshift, DocumentDB	Built-in managed rotation	Supported
Other AWS resources	Requires a custom Lambda function	Supported natively
SSH	Not built in	Built-in, no-code rotation
Azure resources	Not applicable	Built-in, no-code rotation
LDAP	Not built in	Built-in, no-code rotation
Custom applications	Requires a custom Lambda function	Built-in, no-code rotation via plugins

The practical difference is code. AWS Secrets Manager’s rotation works well for the specific AWS database services it was built around, but anything outside that scope means writing and maintaining a custom Lambda function. Akeyless’s built-in rotation support across SSH, Azure, LDAP, and custom secrets removes that engineering overhead, which matters directly for compliance frameworks like PCI DSS and SOC 2 that expect documented, consistent rotation practices across an entire credential estate, not just the AWS-native subset of it.

Performance & Caching

Both platforms are built to scale. AWS Secrets Manager relies on AWS’s own elastic infrastructure, which performs reliably for workloads that stay inside the AWS network. Akeyless adds an on-premises secrets caching option, serving frequently accessed secrets from local infrastructure rather than a round trip to a SaaS control plane every time, which reduces latency for high-load, latency-sensitive scenarios. Both providers auto-scale to handle load; the caching option is specifically about shaving latency for the busiest access patterns, not raw throughput capacity.

G2 Ratings Snapshot

As of this review, Akeyless holds a 4.6 out of 5 rating on G2 from 92 reviews, compared to AWS Secrets Manager’s 4.5 out of 5 from 18 reviews.

Category	AWS Secrets Manager	Akeyless
Overall rating	4.5 / 5 (18 reviews)	4.6 / 5 (92 reviews)
Ease of use	8.2	9.0
Quality of support	9.1	9.3
Centralized management	9.0	9.0
Multi-factor authentication	9.5	9.8
Audit trail	7.6	Not separately scored in this comparison

One verified Akeyless reviewer, a Financial Services user reviewing via G2, wrote: “Zero knowledge Security and strong cryptography. Advance RBAC and access controls. Focus mainly on machine, workload and non human identities (NHI).” (AWS Marketplace, review dated March 25, 2026). 

Making the Choice: Which Tool Fits You?

Match your organization’s actual footprint to the criteria below rather than a feature checklist:

• Compliance need: PCI DSS or SOC 2 requirements spanning credential types beyond AWS’s native rotation coverage favor Akeyless.
• Cloud footprint: single-cloud, AWS-only workloads favor AWS Secrets Manager; multi-cloud or hybrid environments favor Akeyless.
• Budget ceiling: predictable, usage-based AWS pricing may suit smaller AWS-only workloads; Akeyless’s free tier and custom enterprise pricing suit teams consolidating multiple tools into one platform.
• Rotation frequency and scope: teams needing rotation across SSH, Azure, LDAP, or custom secrets without writing Lambda functions favor Akeyless.

Neither tool is the universally correct answer. AWS Secrets Manager remains a strong, low-friction choice for teams fully committed to AWS. Akeyless is built for teams whose secrets already live, or are heading toward living, across more than one environment.

How Do Pricing Models Compare?

AWS Secrets Manager bills $0.40 per secret each month, prorated hourly, plus $0.05 per 10,000 API calls. There is no permanent free tier, though accounts created after July 15, 2025 receive up to $200 in general AWS credits. Cost scales in a straight line with secret count: a small team with a few dozen secrets stays inexpensive, while an estate with thousands of secrets across environments and regions can reach a four or five figure annual bill.

Akeyless offers a free tier and custom enterprise pricing rather than a published per-secret rate, so a direct dollar-for-dollar comparison depends on your specific secret count, API call volume, and which capabilities (dynamic secrets, certificate management, PAM) you need beyond basic storage. As a rough orientation point, a team already paying AWS Secrets Manager’s per-secret and per-API-call fees across a few thousand secrets, plus the engineering time spent writing custom Lambda rotation functions for anything outside RDS, Redshift, and DocumentDB, is a reasonable point to request an Akeyless quote and compare the two directly.

About Akeyless

Akeyless was built to unify secrets management, certificate lifecycle management, encryption and key management, and privileged access under one SaaS-delivered platform, rather than requiring separate tools for each. Its zero-knowledge architecture, Distributed Fragments Cryptography, is patented and independently sets the trust model apart from conventional managed-encryption vaults.

Akeyless is used by Fortune 500 enterprises and technology partners across regulated and high-growth industries, with a platform built for compliance reporting and audit requirements out of the box. That combination of unified scope and a differentiated trust model is what the comparisons throughout this guide are ultimately about.

Get Started With Akeyless

Akeyless offers a free tier for teams that want to evaluate the platform directly before committing to anything larger. Migrating existing AWS secrets is handled through Akeyless Multi-Vault Governance rather than a manual re-entry process. To see the platform directly, schedule a demo.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is the Core Difference Between Akeyless and AWS Secrets Manager?

AWS Secrets Manager is native to AWS and uses a standard managed-encryption model. Akeyless is a multi-cloud, SaaS-delivered platform built on a zero-knowledge architecture, meaning Akeyless itself never holds the means to decrypt customer secrets. See the Zero-Knowledge Security Model section above for the full comparison.

Can I Migrate Existing AWS Secrets Into Akeyless?

Yes. Akeyless’s Multi-Vault Governancer connects to an existing AWS Secrets Manager instance and governs those secrets centrally without requiring you to copy or duplicate them first. Migration paths and CLI-based setup steps are covered in Akeyless’s own documentation on managing secrets stored in AWS, Azure, GCP, and Kubernetes.

How Do Pricing Models Compare?

AWS Secrets Manager bills per secret stored each month plus a fee per API call. Akeyless uses a free tier plus custom enterprise pricing rather than a published per-secret rate. See the How Do Pricing Models Compare section above for a full breakdown and a rough orientation point for requesting a quote.

Does Akeyless Integrate With AWS IAM Roles?

Yes. Akeyless authenticates AWS-based workloads using native AWS IAM roles as one of its supported authentication methods, and its Multi-Vault Governance can govern secrets already stored in AWS Secrets Manager alongside secrets from other clouds under the same policy model.

Which Solution Is Best for Multi-Cloud Deployments?

Akeyless. It was built from the outset to support AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, and on-premises systems from a single control plane, which matters given 87% of organizations now run a multi-cloud strategy. AWS Secrets Manager remains strong within AWS specifically, but it is not designed to serve as a control plane across other providers.