Vault vs gopass: What are the differences?

Introduction:

Vault and gopass are both password management tools that provide a secure and efficient way to store and manage passwords. However, there are several key differences between the two.

1. Architecture and Purpose: Vault is a tool developed by HashiCorp that focuses on secret management and encryption as a service. It provides a centralized solution for storing secrets, authentication, and authorization. On the other hand, gopass is a command-line password manager primarily designed for individual use and does not offer centralized storage or advanced access control features.

2. Access Control and Collaboration: Vault excels in access control and collaboration capabilities. It allows fine-grained access policies to be defined for users and applications, ensuring that only authorized parties can access certain secrets. It also provides audit logs and supports integration with various authentication backends. Gopass, being more focused on individual use, lacks such sophisticated access control and collaboration features. It mainly offers password storage and retrieval for personal use.

3. Secret Types and Management: Vault provides a wider range of secret types and secrets management capabilities. It can store not only passwords but also API keys, encryption keys, and certificates. Vault also offers dynamic secrets, which are short-lived credentials generated on-the-fly for applications to access systems or resources securely. Gopass, on the other hand, is primarily designed for password management and does not support managing other types of secrets or providing dynamic secret generation.

4. Integration and Extensibility: Vault is highly extensible and supports seamless integration with various external systems and cloud platforms. It has a rich ecosystem of plugins and integrations that allow users to connect Vault with other tools and services. Gopass, on the other hand, has limited integration options and is primarily meant to be used as a standalone command-line tool.

5. API and Automation: Vault provides a comprehensive API, allowing developers to automate secret management tasks and integrate Vault into their workflows. It offers a wide range of API endpoints for performing operations such as creating, accessing, and revoking secrets. On the other hand, gopass does not provide a dedicated API and is primarily meant for manual interaction through the command-line interface.

6. Scalability and High Availability: Vault is designed to be highly scalable and supports clustering for high availability. It can be deployed in a distributed environment, allowing multiple instances of Vault to work together and provide redundancy. Gopass, on the other hand, is not designed for scalability or high availability. It is more suitable for individual or small-scale password management needs.

In Summary, Vault and gopass differ in their architecture, access control capabilities, secret types, integration options, automation support, and scalability. Vault is a centralized secret management tool with advanced features, while gopass is a command-line password manager primarily meant for individual use.