[ SHORT ANSWER ]
Pick Infisical if self-hosting and an open-source license are requirements — it is genuinely good at that and 1Claw's Vault API is source-available under PolyForm Noncommercial, not open source. Pick 1Claw when you need agent-specific controls: per-agent identity, an MCP server, and Execution Intents (Pro and above) that let an agent use a credential it never receives.
Infisical solves secret sprawl for engineering teams and can run entirely in your own infrastructure. 1Claw assumes the consumer is an autonomous agent and builds the governance around that: deny-by-default path policy per agent, hash-chained audit, guardrails on what the agent does with the credential, and transaction signing.
Tier note: the 1Claw capability compared here requires Pro ($29/mo). See pricing.
[ COMPARISON ]
1Claw vs Infisical
Capability by capability. A dash means partial or qualified support — read the note.
[ WHEN TO USE ]
Which one is right for you
Most of these are not either/or. Where the competitor is the better answer, we say so.
Use Infisical when
- Self-hosting is a hard requirement — regulatory, air-gapped, or cost.
- You want an OSI-approved open-source license for the server itself.
- You need repository secret scanning as part of the same product.
Use 1Claw when
- Agents, not humans or CI, are the primary consumers of the credential.
- You want the agent to act without ever holding the secret value.
- You need guardrails and approvals on agent actions, not only on secret reads.
[ MIGRATION ]
Moving over in three steps
Most teams keep Infisical for what it is good at and add 1Claw for the agent layer.
- 1Export your Infisical projects and re-create them as 1Claw vaults with the same path structure.
- 2Register agents and attach path-scoped policies; verify with the audit log that reads resolve as expected.
- 3Move the agent's outbound API calls to Execution Intents bindings so the credential stays server-side.
[ FAQ ]
Common questions
Is 1Claw open source?
Partly, and it is worth being precise. The SDK, CLI, MCP server, GitHub Action, and agent templates are MIT. The Vault API, dashboard, and Shroud are source-available under PolyForm Noncommercial. If you need an OSI open-source server you can self-host commercially, Infisical is the better fit.
Can I self-host 1Claw?
Not on the same terms as Infisical. PolyForm Noncommercial permits non-commercial self-hosting; commercial self-hosting requires an Enterprise arrangement. For most teams 1Claw is consumed as a hosted service.
Does Infisical work with MCP clients?
1Claw's differentiator here is an MCP server built around per-agent path policy with exfiltration blocking on by default, plus tool-level threat checks. Evaluate that against your own MCP requirements rather than treating MCP support as binary.
[ RELATED ]
Other comparisons
[ FREE TIER ] 3 vaults · 50 secrets · 2 agents · 100 signatures/mo
Give agents access, not copies
Store the credential once, scope it per agent, and let the agent act without ever holding it.