Sealed Secrets
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Encrypts Kubernetes Secrets into SealedSecrets safe for public storage, decryptable only by the in-cluster controller.
helm upgrade sealed-secrets bitnami/sealed-secrets \
--set controller.service.type=LoadBalancer \
--set controller.service.loadBalancerClass="my-custom-class"
helm install sealed-secrets bitnami/sealed-secrets --set rbac.proxier=true
export HTTPS_PROXY=http://proxy.internal:8080 && kubeseal --fetch-cert --controller-namespace=kube-system
helm install sealed-secrets bitnami/sealed-secrets --set revisionHistoryLimit=5
kubeseal -f my-secret.yaml -w sealed-output.json --scope cluster-wide
kubectl get sealedsecret <name> -o jsonpath='{.status}'
kubeseal --force-empty-data < empty-secret.yaml
kubectl annotate secret my-existing-secret sealedsecrets.bitnami.com/managed=true
controller --all-namespaces=false
kubeseal --recovery-private-key=key1.pem --recovery-private-key=key2.pem
kubeseal --recovery-old-unseal-secret=./old-sealed-secrets.json --recovery-namespace=sealed-secrets
kubeseal --key-cutoff-time=2023-10-27T00:00:00Z < plaintext.yaml > sealed.json
kubeseal --cert https://sealed-secrets-ingress/cert.pem --controller-name controller -w sealed-secret.yaml < plaintext.yaml
kubeseal --annotations 'env=prod,team=platform' < plaintext.yaml > sealed.yaml
./kubeseal.exe --cert cert.pem < secret.txt > sealed.json
kubeseal --fetch-cert > my-cluster-cert.pem
kubeseal --cert my-cluster-cert.pem < my-secret.yaml | kubectl apply -f-
Summary
Sealed Secrets is an open-source encryption controller for Kubernetes that lets teams store secrets safely inside git by encrypting them into a SealedSecret only the in-cluster controller can decrypt, with nobody else, including the original author, able to recover the plaintext. It runs as two parts: a controller deployed in the cluster and a kubeseal command-line client, installed via Helm, Kustomize, or Homebrew, that developers use to encrypt secrets before committing them. It is aimed at platform engineers and application teams practicing GitOpsGitOpsA practice where Git repositories serve as the single source of truth for infrastructure and application state, with automated systems continuously reconciling live environments to match what is declared in version control. who need Kubernetes config, secrets included, to live entirely in version control. It sits in the Kubernetes secrets-management space, alongside tools that integrate with external vaults, but takes the encrypt-and-commit approach rather than fetching secrets at runtime. First committed in 2017, it remains active, with 206 contributors and a release 49 days ago.
Encrypts Kubernetes Secrets into SealedSecrets safe for public storage, decryptable only by the in-cluster controller.
How Sealed Secrets helps
How do I get a secret into git without anyone else being able to read it?
encrypts the secret client-side into a SealedSecret using the cluster's public key, so the ciphertext committed to the repository can only be decrypted by the controller running inside the target cluster
Which of my SealedSecrets have drifted out of sync with their live counterparts?
the Helm chart ships a Prometheus rule that alerts when a SealedSecret no longer matches its unsealed Secret in the cluster
Can I restrict a sealed secret so it only works in one namespace or for one named resource?
scoping options let a secret be sealed as strict to a namespace, or tied to a specific name, so a copied SealedSecret manifest fails to decrypt anywhere else
Who can tell what secrets exist in my cluster just by reading exposed metrics?
metrics can be configured to omit SealedSecret namespaces and names from the exposed endpoint, closing off inventory enumeration by anyone who can reach the metrics port
How do I roll or retire the key that seals my secrets over time?
the Helm chart exposes key time-to-live and cutoff-time settings that control when the controller rotates to a new sealing key, without needing to re-encrypt existing SealedSecrets by hand
Will the controller notice a Secret that changed outside of git?
the controller watches Secrets directly, so it reacts to changes made against the live object rather than only reconciling on its own resync interval
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Score card
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Shipping velocity releases a month, last 12 months
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Documentation quality release-notes rubric, 0–100
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Breaking-change discipline how rarely a release breaks users, and notice given
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Maintenance risk quiet time against its own cadence, maintainers
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Innovation & surface new capabilities, API and MCP surface
- Community health
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Contributor trend distinct committers, this year against last
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Maintainer concentration bus factor now against a year ago
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Issue backlog trend issues closed per issue opened, 12 months
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Responsiveness median time to a maintainer’s first reply
Nine scores for Sealed Secrets, each built from the releases, notes and API history this site tracks — and, on Researcher and Business, where it stands among every measured tool in its category and how that has moved.
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Blank means never measured; nothing here is a filled-in zero.
Peer standings are included with Researcher and Business. See how this tool ranks against its competitors, using data we don't publish anywhere else.
See plans →Each score is 0–100 on a published rubric, derived from data this site already shows. A dimension we cannot measure says so — it is never scored 0 and never enters a rank.
How this is scored
- Shipping velocity — releases a month over the last 12 months, on a log scale where 16 a month scores 100. Needs 3 releases in the window.
- Documentation quality — the release-notes rubric published on the analytics page, unchanged.
- Breaking-change discipline — the share of releases carrying a breaking change (none scores 100, half or more scores 0). Only projects that label breaking changes are measured: a clean record cannot be told from an unlabelled one.
- Maintenance risk — quiet time measured against the tool's own release cadence (quiet longer than 90 days and three typical gaps scores 0), plus the number of active maintainers and whether contributors are growing, where known. Higher is lower risk.
- Innovation & surface — new capabilities in the feature ledger this year, API and MCP operations added, and the share of commits that are features: the mean of whichever we hold.
- Community health (open-source tools only) — each is a direction, not a size: contributors this year against last, the bus factor now against a year ago, and issues closed per issue opened, where steady scores 50, doubled 100 and halved 0; plus the median time to a maintainer's first reply (an hour scores about 100, a month or more 0). A commercial card has no repository and carries none of the four.
- Documented delivery (commercial tools) — when a vendor's documented new capabilities have slowed against its own baseline, that counts against the overall standing as heavily as two low dimensions. Steady delivery, or too little history to judge, leaves the standing alone; it is never a sixth score.
- Open-source tools are scored on repository signals; commercial tools on their published changelog. Ranks compare tools within one category and one profile and need at least five measured peers; the overall standing needs three ranked dimensions. Best-in-breed or consolidator is a shape, not a quality, and is never scored.
Release-note detail over time
See how much detail Sealed Secrets puts in its release notes, quarter by quarter, and compare it with tracked tools in the same category. This history uses up to ten retained, reviewed notes per tool; sparse or blank older quarters may reflect that limit.
Checking release-note history…
Releases
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- January 20201
- November 20192
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- September 20191
- August 20191
- July 20191
- March 20181
- February 20181
- October 20171
- July 20171
Project health
Issue, contributor and maintainer activity in bitnami-labs/sealed-secrets, 2023-10 – 2026-09, as of 2026-09-25. Twelve-month figures first; the trend lines run the whole window.
- Contributors 22 +7 vs prior 12 months
- Maintainers 2 +1 joined · −1 left, last 12 months
- Bus factor 1 committers behind half the commits
- Community-filed not measured of issues opened, last 12 months
- Median time to close not measured issues closed, last 12 months
- Open backlog not measured open issues today
- Issues opened / month not measured
- Open backlog not measured
- Contributors / month 4
- Commits / month 6
- Stars 9,285
Counts from the project's public repository and git history; no individuals are identified. Maintainers are the committers covering 80% of the last year's commits. how we measure this
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