Most password managers are built for humans — logging into websites, sharing team vaults, autofilling forms. But API keys, tokens, and machine credentials live in a different world. We tested the field and found two clear winners: Keeper Business for teams that need a dedicated secrets manager with CLI/SDK access, and Enpass for organizations that demand full data sovereignty.
Best overall for DevOps teams. Keeper Secrets Manager (KSM) provides a dedicated API-first vault for machine credentials, with native CI/CD integrations, role-based access controls, and complete separation from human password storage.
Best for data sovereignty. Encrypted vaults live on the organization's own cloud (M365, Google Workspace, etc.), giving full control over data residency while maintaining strong local encryption.
Your team probably already uses a password manager. But ask yourself this: where are your API keys? Your CI/CD tokens? The database credentials that your deployment scripts pull at 3 AM?
Standard password managers are designed for people — they assume a human is sitting at a keyboard, clicking "copy," and pasting into a login form. Machine-to-machine secrets are a fundamentally different problem. They need programmatic access, audit trails that separate human from automated usage, and architectures that don't collapse if a single vault is breached.
After digging into the security landscape, we found two solutions that actually get this right — each for a different reason.
The market for API-key storage splits into two philosophies. One says: build a separate, API-first vault that's isolated from human passwords. The other says: let organizations keep the keys in their own infrastructure, on their own terms.
Both are valid. Which one fits you depends on how much control you need — and how much complexity you're willing to manage.
Keeper's approach is the most straightforward for DevOps teams. Their Keeper Secrets Manager (KSM) is a dedicated, API-first secrets vault that sits alongside — but entirely separate from — their human-facing password manager.1
What does that mean in practice? Your developers authenticate via CLI or SDK, pull secrets programmatically, and never expose raw keys in environment variables or config files. KSM integrates directly with CI/CD pipelines, so your GitHub Actions or Jenkins jobs can fetch credentials at deploy time without storing them in plaintext anywhere.1
The separation matters. If a developer's master password is phished, the API-key vault isn't compromised — it uses its own encryption keys and access policies. Keeper also provides granular role-based access controls, so you can grant read-only access to a staging server and full access to production — and audit every single request.3
For organizations already running Keeper for human passwords, adding KSM is a natural extension. The same admin console, the same compliance reporting, but a completely isolated secrets layer.
Enpass takes a different — and for some organizations, more compelling — route. Instead of storing your data on a vendor's server, Enpass lets you keep your encrypted vault wherever you choose: Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox, OneDrive, or even a local network drive.2
This is a big deal for regulated industries or companies with strict data residency requirements. If your compliance team needs to certify that API keys never leave EU data centers, Enpass makes that trivially true — because you control the storage layer. The vault is encrypted locally with your master password before it ever touches your cloud provider, and Enpass never sees the decryption key.2
The trade-off? Enpass doesn't have a dedicated secrets-management API like KSM. You can store API keys and machine credentials in your Enpass vault, and the desktop app includes CLI-based access, but it's not purpose-built for the automated, high-frequency credential rotation that DevOps teams often need. It's best suited for smaller teams or organizations where control over where data lives outweighs programmatic access speed.
| Feature | Keeper Business | Enpass |
|---|---|---|
| Secrets API | Dedicated KSM with CLI/SDK | No dedicated API |
| Data Storage | Keeper cloud (zero-knowledge) | Your own cloud (BYO) |
| CI/CD Integration | Native (GitHub, Jenkins, etc.) | Manual setup |
| Audit Logging | Per-request, role-based | Basic access logs |
| Best For | DevOps teams, mid-to-large orgs | Privacy-first, regulated orgs |
Choose Keeper Business if your team needs a proper secrets-management workflow — automated credential rotation, CI/CD pipeline integration, and strict separation between human and machine access. It's the more complete solution for engineering teams that treat infrastructure as code.1
Choose Enpass if your primary concern is data sovereignty. If your compliance framework requires that secrets never touch a third-party server, or if you want to use existing enterprise cloud storage (M365, Google Workspace) as your vault backend, Enpass gives you that control without sacrificing strong encryption.2
Either way, the worst option is doing nothing. API keys hardcoded in config files, tokens passed as environment variables, secrets stored in shared spreadsheets — these are the breaches waiting to happen. Pick a system, any system, that treats machine credentials as first-class citizens.
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| Pick | Price | Secrets API | Data Storage | CI/CD Integration | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Keeper Business ▶ Pick | — | Dedicated KSM | Keeper cloud | Native support | Check price ↗ |
Enpass also good | — | No dedicated API | Your own cloud | Manual setup | Check price ↗ |
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Each contender was provisioned on a clean cloud box and driven through its real workflow — the agent ran the official setup where one existed, then exercised the core features the way a new user would across a week of trials before scoring.