# Infisical vs Pulumi ESC

> Infisical scores 83.7 (A) on agent readiness against Pulumi ESC's 71.1 (BB), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pulumi ESC leads on payments & pricing. Both do secrets store. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/infisical-vs-pulumi-esc
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/infisical-vs-pulumi-esc.md (~2,500 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/infisical-vs-pulumi-esc.min.md (~780 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/infisical-vs-pulumi-esc.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

Infisical scores 83.7 (A) on agent readiness against Pulumi ESC's 71.1 (BB), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pulumi ESC leads on payments & pricing. Both do secrets store.

- Infisical: grade A, 83.7/100, rank #2 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/infisical.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/infisical.json
- Pulumi ESC: grade BB, 71.1/100, rank #120 of 722. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/pulumi-esc.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/pulumi-esc.json

## Which one, for what

### Infisical (A)

Good for: Teams that want an open-source secrets manager they can self-host, and for coding agents run under Agent Vault so they call APIs without ever holding a token.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 100 against 60
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 82
- Agent ergonomics, 91 against 75
- Security & auth, 91 against 79
- Maintenance & community, 90 against 82
- Transparency & trust, 83 against 65

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine
- Open source

Watch for: Free has no audit logs, Pro keeps them 30 days, and dynamic secrets need Advanced at $40 an identity a month

### Pulumi ESC (BB)

Good for: Teams already on Pulumi, or anyone who wants one place that composes static secrets, other vaults and short-lived cloud credentials, and agents that need to start with no signup.

Ahead on:
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 30

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: Audit logs, custom roles, team tokens, approvals and customer-managed keys need Pro ($400 a month) or Enterprise


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Infisical | Pulumi ESC | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 100 | 60 | Infisical +40 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 82 | Infisical +5 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 91 | 75 | Infisical +16 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 91 | 79 | Infisical +12 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 30 | 55 | Pulumi ESC +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 90 | 82 | Infisical +8 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 83 | 65 | Infisical +18 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **83.7 · A** | **71.1 · BB** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Infisical | Pulumi ESC |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | HTTP API | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Infisical | Pulumi Corporation |
| Hosted endpoint | `https://app.infisical.com/api` | `https://api.pulumi.com` |
| Transports | HTTP, Streamable HTTP, stdio | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT (core), proprietary under ee/ | Proprietary service under Pulumi's Terms & Conditions. The Pulumi CLI, the ESC evaluator and the ESC SDKs are Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | 10 | none |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-23 | 2026-10-07 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2025-09-15 | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 28k stars, 305k npm/wk, 391k PyPI/wk | 21k npm/wk, 54k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 3.8/5 (8) | none |

## Verdicts

**Infisical.** Agent Vault and Agent Proxy attach credentials at the proxy, so the agent's context never contains them. Free has no audit logs, Pro keeps them 30 days, and dynamic secrets need Advanced at $40 an identity a month.

**Pulumi ESC.** An agent can start without a signup, because the Pulumi CLI creates a free ephemeral account that includes ESC, and the REST API has a public OpenAPI document. Audit logs, custom roles and approvals need the Pro edition at $400 a month, and no API rate limit was found in the reviewed documentation.

## Before you call either

### Infisical

1. Run a coding agent under `infisical agent-vault run` with a bundle that allows only the hosts, methods and paths it needs, and set --ttl to the job length
2. Start @infisical/mcp with INFISICAL_ENABLED_TOOLS=list-projects,list-secrets,get-secret and INFISICAL_MASK_SECRET_VALUES=true unless the model must see a value
3. Log in once with Universal Auth and keep the access token for its TTL, since identity logins count against the per-IP write limit
4. Pass viewSecretValue=false to GET /api/v4/secrets when you only need names, and expandSecretReferences=true when values reference other secrets
5. On a 429 read the seconds from the message field and wait that long; don't retry a POST after a 5xx without checking it didn't land

### Pulumi ESC

1. Use `pulumi env`, not `esc`. The standalone CLI stopped at v0.26.0 and gets no security fixes
2. Read one value with `pulumi env open <org>/<project>/<env> <property path>` so the whole environment doesn't enter context
3. Run tools with `pulumi env run <env> -- <cmd>`, which filters secret values from the command's output unless -i is set
4. Set PULUMI_ACCESS_TOKEN for the SDKs. From 0.14.0 they no longer read the CLI login on disk
5. Send `Authorization: token <token>` and `Accept: application/vnd.pulumi+8` on REST calls, and expect 409 when an environment changed since it was read
6. Relay the claim link an agent account prints. The account goes read-only after 72 hours and locks after 30 days unclaimed

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Infisical or Pulumi ESC?

Infisical scores 83.7 (A) on agent readiness against Pulumi ESC's 71.1 (BB), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Pulumi ESC leads on payments & pricing.

### Do Infisical and Pulumi ESC need an API key?

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

### Can an agent call Infisical and Pulumi ESC without installing anything?

Yes. Infisical has a hosted endpoint at https://app.infisical.com/api and Pulumi ESC at https://api.pulumi.com.

### Are Infisical and Pulumi ESC open source?

Infisical is open source (MIT (core), proprietary under ee/). No open-source release is listed for Pulumi ESC.


## For agents

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

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