Best for teams that are
- Developers and DevOps teams managing infrastructure secrets within AWS
- Applications needing automated rotation of database credentials
Skip if
- General business users (HR, Sales) needing a tool to autofill website logins
- Teams with no infrastructure or applications hosted on AWS
Expert Take
Our analysis shows AWS Secrets Manager is the definitive choice for AWS-centric workloads due to its 'zero-maintenance' managed nature. Research indicates its standout feature is the native ability to automatically rotate RDS and Redshift credentials without writing custom code, a significant security advantage. While it lacks the multi-cloud flexibility of HashiCorp Vault, documented evidence confirms it meets the highest compliance standards (FedRAMP, HIPAA) out of the box.
Pros
- Native auto-rotation for AWS databases
- No infrastructure to provision or manage
- Deep integration with AWS IAM
- FedRAMP, HIPAA, and PCI compliant
- Built-in replication for disaster recovery
Cons
- Expensive at scale ($0.40/secret/month)
- Limited dynamic secrets for non-AWS
- Vendor lock-in to AWS ecosystem
- API costs for high-traffic polling
- Less granular policy control than Vault