BeyondTrust Password Safe vs HashiCorp Vault comparison

BeyondTrust and HashiCorp are both solutions in the Enterprise Password Managers category. BeyondTrust is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.9, while HashiCorp is ranked #4 with an average rating of 8.4. BeyondTrust holds a 3.5% mindshare in EPM, compared to HashiCorp’s 11.3% mindshare. Additionally, 84% of BeyondTrust users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 89% of HashiCorp users who would recommend it.

BeyondTrust Password Safe

Read 26 BeyondTrust Password Safe reviews

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1,871 Comparison Views

84% willing to recommend

HashiCorp Vault

Read 18 HashiCorp Vault reviews

6,497 Views
6,497 Comparison Views

89% willing to recommend

BeyondTrust Password Safe

HashiCorp Vault

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

BeyondTrust Password Safe and HashiCorp Vault are strong contenders in the enterprise security software market. BeyondTrust seems to have the upper hand due to its comprehensive feature set, session management capabilities, and cost-effectiveness.

Features: BeyondTrust Password Safe offers password vaulting, session recording, and Smart Rules for automated account onboarding. It supports integration of assets, databases, and applications, offering detailed analytics and reporting, high scalability, and effective session management. HashiCorp Vault focuses on secret management with features like token sharing, dynamic secrets, and key revocation. It also excels in encryption management, secrets engine integration, and cloud compatibility.

Room for Improvement: BeyondTrust Password Safe needs enhancements in documentation, error reporting, and deployment simplicity. Users experience issues with database onboarding and RDP access, and desire better application integration. HashiCorp Vault could improve its graphical user interface and documentation, particularly for public cloud service integrations. Simplifying implementation and providing better pricing transparency are also necessary improvements.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BeyondTrust supports various deployment environments, including Private Cloud, On-premises, and Hybrid Cloud. Customer service is responsive but occasionally slow to resolve issues. HashiCorp Vault, available for On-premises and Hybrid Cloud, benefits from a supportive community and documentation. Users find the system straightforward to deploy, though some support interactions could improve.

Pricing and ROI: BeyondTrust Password Safe is considered cost-effective with its asset-based pricing model, delivering rapid ROI. HashiCorp Vault, though initially costly due to scalability needs, offers an open-source version that reduces basic costs. Organizations with extensive needs may find Vault's pricing in line with its advanced capabilities, realizing ROI more quickly.

To learn more, read our detailed BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. HashiCorp Vault Report (Updated: July 2025).

Buyer's Guide

BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. HashiCorp Vault

July 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

BeyondTrust Password Safe

Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers

7th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.0

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Privileged Access Management (PAM) (9th)

HashiCorp Vault

Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers

4th

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of BeyondTrust Password Safe is 3.5%, up from 3.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HashiCorp Vault is 11.3%, down from 13.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Password Managers

Featured Reviews

Ali Hatamleh

IT operations manager at a tech services company with 11-50 employees

Smart tooling streamlines account organization and access through advanced grouping features

The features I find valuable in Password Safe include password retention and management, session privilege monitoring, live monitoring and recording, and the use of PS automation scripts for creating connections. The smart tooling and smart group features are also important as, after finalizing discovery, they auto-collect accounts in the environment and organize them in Smart Groups for easy access.

Read full review

Anand-Awasthi

Cloud Solutions Architect at IBM

Offers dynamic secrets and certificate management for proactive security measures

The best features in HashiCorp Vault are its dynamic certificate management and dynamic secret management, which are the key features that use data effectively. These are very targeted use cases that cut across multiple solutions. I have utilized Vault's encryption capabilities for securing data in transit and at rest, especially for dynamically consuming database encryption, which covers the requirements of various scenarios where databases do not have encryption capability. HashiCorp Vault provides security by rotating the keys and taking all the burden of securing the data from the database. These are key core features that many users employ in this solution. Vault's audit logs provide insights into access patterns and help ensure compliance. These facilities are configurable, and the logs are encrypted, ensuring that anything recorded in the logs is secure. We could use systems that comply with specific standards for audit logging and scanning, especially when working with them. The benefits from HashiCorp Vault include significant advantages in security lifecycle management itself. The value becomes apparent when security incidents occur. It has substantial value in proactively protecting from adverse situations, providing resilience and appreciation by customers in complete security lifecycle management solutions for core infrastructure applications.

Read full review

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"The CI/CD and REST API are also satisfactory; the solution has a full PAM feature set and they all work well."

"Screen recording is valuable, and integration with applications is easy. We can customize whatever we want. We did a lot of application integration using scripting."

"The product has improved security and login due to the system recordings. In case, there is a doubt that someone has done something which they shouldn't have been doing, we can just go back and check what the user actually did."

"The best aspect of the product is the ability to onboard devices. You can scan the IP subnets and onboard all the devices. You can then segregate them if it's a network device or a firewall. If it's a Windows server or a UNIX, you can basically scan your IT infrastructure and onboard the efforts, which should be managed. Once they have been onboarded, then the session management and password management are easy and nicely configurable."

"The flexibility of the licensing model is significantly better as it offers both unlimited users and unlimited devices, unlike Delinea, which is based on the number of users."

"I find that BeyondTrust Password Safe is a very effective application for password management."

"It simplifies your compliance and tracking to benchmark other credentials and analytics."

"The most valuable feature is the architecture capabilities, which allow designated server components for high availability and failover. It works well with identity and access management solutions, allowing users to be automatically onboarded and offboarded. The account mapping feature makes rollout seamless. The session monitoring capabilities are excellent, with keystroke and graphical monitoring. This enhanced our security posture by providing detailed accounts of user actions. It helped us pass our SOX audits."

More BeyondTrust Password Safe pros

"It is an added value for our customers to have a Secrets Management workflow available that is PaaS/CaaS/KaaS Platform agnostic."

"This solution is easy to use and to integrate."

"The tool's dynamic rotation of the password credentials is good."

"The interface is very simple to navigate."

"It's stable. I would rate the stability a nine out of ten."

"For me, the most valuable features include that it's easy to manage and maintain the password API for retrieving passwords and other things."

"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is that it's an open source solution. Second, it's cloud agnostic, so it's very easy to maintain and control, which is why we prefer HashiCorp."

"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is the management of tickets in the pipeline."

More HashiCorp Vault pros

Cons

"The pricing is not cheap, but it could be better."

"If they can create a single platform to create a connector, it would be better than using the RBS server."

"Adding user behavior analysis to the server or messaging would be beneficial."

"From the client perspective, they usually complain that the RDP session disconnects without error notifications."

"There are multiple features that have issues, although they could be specific to our environment. What we have seen is that whenever a user gets added to the authentication store, the sync between Password Safe and the authentication store, which is generally easy, takes a lot of time. It does not occur immediately."

"When we deploy BeyondTrust, we have to deploy our own database on a SQL server. It doesn't deploy the database. I wish BeyondTrust packages the whole solution in one and includes the MySQL database so that when you deploy it, it deploys everything for you. BeyondTrust gives you the software, but you are in charge of setting up your own database. It is a single appliance just for the BeyondTrust portion but not the database. Unless that has changed in later releases, you have to set up your own database for BeyondTrust Password Safe. I find that part complex because we then need the expertise and help of the database team to set it up, which also increases the deployment time. If they can deploy the database, it will reduce the deployment time."

"We don't have much control over the appliance. When anything happens in the backend, we have to depend on the support team. We need to raise a case so that they can update the appliance. If we have control over it, we would be able to troubleshoot easily."

"We face screensaver timeout issues and problems with the server. I would like the product to include a server visibility feature."

More BeyondTrust Password Safe cons

"I would like to see better integration of HashiCorp Vault with SAP products."

"The onboarding is a challenge. It should be more self-service, but it involves reviews and approvals."

"A drawback for some clients who have to be PCI compliant is that they still need to use and subscribe to an HSM (Hardware Security Module) solution."

"There could be a plugin for the database to change the secret automatically. It would be an efficient feature for password security."

"The solution could be much easier to implement."

"In terms of features, the only thing that I found a little bit hinky was that there was no revocation or deletion on the model we were using. Once in a financial year, a client interacts, and you pay for that client for the year. So, there are just little things like that in the pricing. There should be more clarity around the end of the key. I know there is no system like this. They all are the same. I tested Microsoft, Google, and some others, and none of them really want you to delete a key, which makes sense. You delete a key, and you lose everything that it has wrapped or encrypted, but it's actually just a language. Deletion isn't really deletion. It's really revocation, but overall, HashiCorp Vault ticked all the boxes for us, and I couldn't fault it."

"The documentation is very general; it should have more examples and more use cases."

"The product is complicated to install."

More HashiCorp Vault cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing structure is better than the competitors. It's much cheaper than CyberArk. They do the licensing on the basis of assets, not on the number of users. For CyberArk, they base the licensing on the number of users, and they have an expensive model of pricing. BeyondTrust has a cheaper model."

"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."

"We just pay for Password Safe. Session management is included, but we don't use it. There aren't any additional costs besides the standard licensing fees. We pay for an annual license."

"The pricing of BeyondTrust is very good as compared to other products. That was the main reason we decided to go with BeyondTrust at first."

"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."

"When you buy Password Safe and perform your initial Discovery, you have all these servers that are added to your assets in BeyondTrust, but you're not using a license until you actually start managing the systems. BeyondTrust's licensing is based on the systems when they're managed, which means when an administrator is able to connect to the server through BeyondTrust with a managed account. There would be a privileged account on the endpoint when the licensing starts. A significant advantage to that is that there are many organizations that want to evaluate their environment prior to automatic management."

"At the time, BeyondTrust was significantly cheaper than CyberArk. Pricing-wise, if I remember correctly, it goes by assets. The pricing was negotiated for our instances based on the number of assets that we onboard into the system. It is a little different from CyberArk, where the pricing is by users. So, it depends. If you have a lot of assets, it can get very expensive."

More BeyondTrust Password Safe pricing and cost advice

"The product is expensive."

"I am using the open-source version of Vault and I would have to buy a license if I want to get support."

"In my case, the open-source version works well. It's advisable for small to medium-scale organizations, but for large-scale organizations, you should go with the enterprise version."

"The AWS version is much cheaper than HashiCorp Vault."

"The solution's cost is reasonable."

"It could do everything we wanted it to do and it is brilliant, but it is super pricey. To be fair to HashiCorp, we drove the price up with our requirements around resiliency. Because of the nature of our company, we don't really operate in the cloud."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

16%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Financial Services Firm

20%

Computer Software Company

13%

Manufacturing Company

Government

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BeyondTrust Password Safe?

My experience with BeyondTrust Password Safe's pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive, primarily due to its asset-based licensing model. This is a significant advantage for us because...

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What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Password Safe?

We do not utilize the dynamic privilege elevation and delegation feature yet, because the customer is not planning to use this feature. They want to control the manner of user creation processes in...

See all answers

What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Password Safe?

Currently, we have one customer using BeyondTrust Password Safe. BeyondTrust Password Safe is usually used for two things: compliance and audit.

See all answers

Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?

HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...

See all answers

What do you like most about HashiCorp Vault?

The feature I find most beneficial in HashiCorp Vault is the secret engine. It integrates smoothly with many applications, making it easy to set up and implement quickly. This allows you to test it...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HashiCorp Vault?

If I were to set it up in AWS Secret Management, I would have to manage it, pay, and create secrets without being cloud agnostic. The advantage with Vault is that it is cloud agnostic. I can deploy...

See all answers

Comparisons

Delinea Secret Server vs BeyondTrust Password Safe

Compared 15% of the time

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs BeyondTrust Password Safe

Compared 12% of the time

BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access vs BeyondTrust Password Safe

Compared 10% of the time

Azure Key Vault vs BeyondTrust Password Safe

Compared 8% of the time

1Password Business vs BeyondTrust Password Safe

Compared 6% of the time

More BeyondTrust Password Safe Competitors

Bitwarden vs HashiCorp Vault

Compared 27% of the time

AWS Secrets Manager vs HashiCorp Vault

Compared 13% of the time

Delinea Secret Server vs HashiCorp Vault

Compared 11% of the time

Keeper Enterprise Password Manager vs HashiCorp Vault

Compared 11% of the time

LastPass Business vs HashiCorp Vault

Compared 3% of the time

More HashiCorp Vault Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

BeyondTrust Password Safe

April 2025

Download BeyondTrust Password Safe product report

Buyer's Guide

HashiCorp Vault

August 2025

Download HashiCorp Vault product report

Also Known As

BeyondTrust PowerBroker Password Safe

No data available

Overview

Beyond Trust Password Safe is an automated solution that combines password and privileged session management into a single platform. Password Safe delivers secure access control, auditing, alerting, recording, and monitoring.

This free and open-source password manager supports Windows and Linux, and some ports are available for other platforms as well. Their proprietary algorithm, Twofish, is considered highly secure, with the advantage that it is not affiliated with NIST. The Twofish algorithm secures the data while keys are delivered using SHA-256 authentication.

The application is easy to use, and you can download the Windows app from several sites. Additionally, the application is available in 14 languages.

Beyond Trust Password Safe Key Features

Continuous automated account discovery: Scan, identify and profile assets with the discovery engine. The solution has dynamic categorization that enables the automated onboarding of assets into groups.
Application-to-application password management: Password Safe offers an adaptable API interface including an unlimited number of password caches, therefore providing scalability and redundancy.
Secure SSH key management: The system automatically rotates SSH keys to enforce granular access control and workflow. Private keys securely log users onto systems without exposing them.
Adaptive access control: Evaluates context and provides access requests by considering factors such as time of access and location to determine the user’s authorization level.
Enhanced privileged session management: Admins can record, lock, and document suspicious behavior without disrupting productivity by managing sessions live.
Advanced privileged threat analytics: Password Safe monitors assets and user behavior every day, analyzing what are normal patterns and detecting deviations.
Multi-factor authentication: Password Safe supports 2FA (two-factor authentication) using Yubikey 4, Nano, or Neo.

What can you do with Password Safe?

Cross-device and cross-platform syncing: You can safely store encrypted password files online, where you can access them via Password Safe-compatible apps.
Drag and drop password: Password Safe has a “Dragbar,” which you can use to complete forms by dragging and dropping icons over the form - for example, passwords, usernames, design tiles, and emails.
Autotype: With Password Safe, when you click on a web page or login box, the autotype feature will try to fill in your credentials automatically for you.
Import and export: You can import passwords from text, XML, or CSV fails. You can also export passwords in text, XML, and the PSAFE format.
Password generator: Generate secure passwords by using the algorithm. You can also define your password rules.

Beyond Trust Password Safe Benefits

Controls third-party access: Password Safe secures the connection and automatically checks privileged credentials. The solution records all sessions.
Uses context to determine access: Password Safe considers risk factors like location, day, or time of access and uses them to adjust the permissions and privileges of each user.
Manages access for privileged and non-privileged accounts: By integrating with SailPoint IdentityIQ, Password Safe effectively manages user access for privileged as well as non-privileged accounts.
Reduces cloud risk: Password Safe simplifies secure storage and session management. It supports major cloud providers such as Azure, Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and GoGrid. It also supports social networks - Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Integrates password and privilege management: Integrates with Endpoint Privilege Management to control the resources users can access and the actions they are allowed to take

Reviews from Real Users

A PAM Architect at a tech services company says, "BeyondTrust Password Safe's features that I have found most valuable are really those that are knitted in. That is their Smart Rules and Smart Groups, where you design your administration model so you create your AD groups and your asset groups, and configure Password Safe."

An I.S. Architect at a insurance company mentions that "Session recording, password rotation, and password vaulting are the most valuable features."

"One of the most valuable features is that this is a product designed with enterprises in mind," adds a Cybersecurity Architect at a tech vendor.

BeyondTrust

HashiCorp Vault is a cloud-agnostic solution used for security and secret management. Its valuable features include integration with other HashiCorp tools, token sharing, open source nature, cloud agnosticism, and on-the-fly encryption management.

The solution provides encryption of data at rest, in use, in transit, on the fly, and linked with applications. It is free to use, and the interface is simple to navigate. HashiCorp Vault has helped organizations with its multiple authentication methods and RESTful API.

HashiCorp Vault Features

Data encryption: The solution is capable of encrypting and decrypting data, and will not store it. Organizations’ security personnel define their own encryption protocols; developers can store the encrypted data where they choose and are not obligated to design specific encryption processes.
Robust secrets: For systems such as AWS or SQL databases, Vault is able to generate secrets automatically. HashiCorp Vault is able to generate AWS keypairs with all the appropriate permissions when necessary, and when the approved time expires, will nullify them.
Secure secret storage: Any type of value or key secrets can be stored in the Vault. The Vault automatically encrypts the desired secrets before recording them into persistent storage, keeping them safe and secure. Users can record data using HCP Vault’s Consul service or disk, or choose from other options.
Nullification: Vault is able to nullify single secrets or all secrets from a particular group or specific user. This process is integral in securing systems in the event of an attack or inappropriate access.

Reviews from Real Users

“The greatest benefit of HashiCorp is its ability to manage encryption on the fly. It provides encryption of data at rest, in use, in transit, on the fly, and linked with applications, which was really attractive. The lifecycle of a key is so easy to manage in terms of rotating, revoking, and issuing. They have different auth methods, and I tried all different auth methods. It is seamless.”- Project Manager at a comms service provider.

“The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is that it's an open source solution. Second, it's cloud-agnostic, so it's very easy to maintain and control, which is why we prefer HashiCorp. “ - Mohamed A., Lead DevOps Engineer at Etisalat.

HashiCorp

Sample Customers

Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University

Adobe, SAP Ariba, Citadel, Spaceflight, Cruise

Buyer's Guide

BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. HashiCorp Vault

July 2025

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