# AWS Secrets Manager vs Phase

> AWS Secrets Manager scores 77.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Phase's 68 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Phase leads on reliability and maintenance & community. Both do secrets store. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aws-secrets-manager-vs-phase
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aws-secrets-manager-vs-phase.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aws-secrets-manager-vs-phase.min.md (~680 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aws-secrets-manager-vs-phase.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- Updated: 2026-10-08

AWS Secrets Manager scores 77.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Phase's 68 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Phase leads on reliability and maintenance & community. Both do secrets store.

- AWS Secrets Manager: grade BB, 77.7/100, rank #18 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/aws-secrets-manager.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/aws-secrets-manager.json
- Phase: grade B, 68/100, rank #194 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/phase.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/phase.json

## Which one, for what

### AWS Secrets Manager (BB)

Good for: Agents running on AWS compute that should read credentials through a role with no key at all, and for RDS-family databases that need managed rotation.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 96 against 58
- Agent ergonomics, 90 against 56
- Security & auth, 91 against 83
- Payments & pricing, 30 against 25

Also in its favour:
- Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for: Every API call is billed, so per-request reads add up and the docs push you to cache

### Phase (B)

Good for: Small teams that want an open-source secrets manager hosted in the EU or self-hosted, with coding agents kept away from values through the CLI.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 91 against 77
- Maintenance & community, 83 against 65

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: No OpenAPI document was found. The REST reference is prose with examples, covering 47 operations


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | AWS Secrets Manager | Phase | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 77 | 91 | Phase +14 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 96 | 58 | AWS Secrets Manager +38 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 90 | 56 | AWS Secrets Manager +34 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 91 | 83 | AWS Secrets Manager +8 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 25 | AWS Secrets Manager +5 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 65 | 83 | Phase +18 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 77 | 73 | AWS Secrets Manager +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **77.7 · BB** | **68 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | AWS Secrets Manager | Phase |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Amazon Web Services | Phi Security Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://secretsmanager.us-east-1.amazonaws.com` | `https://api.phase.dev` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Pay per use | Freemium |
| Price for secrets store | $0.40 per month (plan) | not published |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | none | MIT outside the `ee/` directories, which are under the proprietary Phase Console Enterprise licence |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | none | 2026-10-04 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-10-01 | 2025-10-06 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-05-18 | 2026-03-11 |
| Customer content may train models | yes, with an opt-out | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | yes | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | yes | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 15.2M npm/wk, 578.4M PyPI/wk | 928 stars, 2.5k npm/wk, 235 PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.9/5 (8) | none |

## Verdicts

**AWS Secrets Manager.** IAM roles support access without long-lived credentials on AWS compute services. Each API call is billed, making caching relevant to frequent reads.

**Phase.** Service account tokens can be minted with an expiry over the API, every secret read is logged, and the CLI redacts values when it detects an AI agent. No OpenAPI document or pagination was found in the reviewed documentation, and the Free plan keeps audit logs for 24 hours.

## Before you call either

### AWS Secrets Manager

1. Give the agent's task or instance role secretsmanager:GetSecretValue on the specific secret ARN, not a wildcard
2. Cache the value for the run, or read through the Workload Credentials Provider on localhost; each GetSecretValue is billed and logged
3. In Claude Code or Codex, install the aws-core plugin from the Agent Toolkit for AWS and pass secrets as {{resolve:secretsmanager:...}} references through asm-exec so values stay out of context
4. Pass a ClientRequestToken on PutSecretValue so a retry can't create a second version, and don't write more than once every 10 minutes
5. Read VersionStage AWSPREVIOUS if a rotation lands mid-run and the new credential isn't live yet

### Phase

1. Enable server-side encryption on the app before calling `/v1/secrets`. Without it the REST API cannot read or write that app's secrets
2. Send `Authorization: Bearer ServiceAccount <token>` for a service account and `Bearer User <token>` for a personal access token. The token type is part of the header
3. Stay under 120 requests a minute per account on Free and 240 on Pro, and wait the seconds in the `retry-after` header on a 429
4. Treat a 409 on `POST /v1/secrets` as the key already existing at that path, and use `PUT` to change it. Rotating secrets reject `PUT` and `DELETE`
5. Have a person run `phase ai enable` and choose masked values. The CLI blocks an agent from running `phase ai enable` or `phase ai disable` itself

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, AWS Secrets Manager or Phase?

AWS Secrets Manager scores 77.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Phase's 68 (B), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Phase leads on reliability and maintenance & community.

### Do AWS Secrets Manager and Phase need an API key?

Both take an API key or an OAuth sign-in.

### Can an agent call AWS Secrets Manager and Phase without installing anything?

Yes. AWS Secrets Manager has a hosted endpoint at https://secretsmanager.us-east-1.amazonaws.com and Phase at https://api.phase.dev.

### Are AWS Secrets Manager and Phase open source?

No open-source release is listed for AWS Secrets Manager. Phase is open source (MIT outside the `ee/` directories, which are under the proprietary Phase Console Enterprise licence).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aws-secrets-manager-vs-phase.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/aws-secrets-manager-vs-phase.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "aws-secrets-manager", "b": "phase"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare aws-secrets-manager phase`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/aws-secrets-manager.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/phase.json

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