Shelve

Free plan APISelf-hostedWeb

What Shelve is

Shelve is an open-source platform for managing environment variables and secrets across development teams. It is available as a hosted service or for self-hosting, and supports development, preview, production, and custom environments. Its CLI can inject secrets into a running process and push or pull them between a local project and Shelve. Teams can apply role-based access controls, while API tokens can be scoped to teams, projects, environments, and permissions. Selected variables can be synchronized to selected repositories as GitHub secrets for GitHub Actions and CI/CD pipelines. Shelve describes per-project envelope encryption with AES-256-GCM. Hosted traffic uses TLS 1.3; self-hosted deployments should configure HTTPS at their proxy or platform. Security-relevant actions are recorded with actor, IP, user agent, and resource context, and hosted audit logs are retained indefinitely. Hosted and self-hosted plans are free. Self-hosting leaves deployment, encryption keys, database, and audit trail under your management. The service makes no availability guarantees, and support is best-effort by email.

Who it suits

Shelve suits development teams managing secrets across multiple environments and CI/CD workflows. It also fits teams that want either a hosted service or control over a self-hosted deployment.

What it does well

Open-source and free plans
Supports hosted and self-hosted deployment
Scoped role-based access and API tokens
GitHub Actions secret synchronization
Per-project AES-256-GCM encryption

What to know first

No availability guarantees
Self-hosting requires managing core infrastructure
CLI supports one account at a time
Self-hosted HTTPS must be configured

Plans

Plan	Billed and limits	Price
Hosted	Currently free; no payment processing or billing · No hard environment variable limits currently · reasonable use expected; not for large file storage	Free
Self-hosted	Open source and free to self-host · You manage your own deployment, encryption key, database, and audit trail	Free

As shelve.cloud lists them, read 11 Oct 2026. The maker's own page has the final word.

Verdict

Shelve offers free, open-source secret management with scoped access, CLI injection, and GitHub synchronization. Decide whether its self-hosting responsibilities, best-effort support, and availability terms fit your team.

Facts from Shelve's own pages

AI coding agents: The CLI can create ignore files for coding agents and inject variables into a process without writing them to disk. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Audit logs: Shelve records security-relevant actions with actor, IP, user agent, and resource context, and says hosted audit logs are retained indefinitely. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
CLI: Its CLI can inject secrets into a process at runtime and push or pull secrets between a local project and Shelve. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
CLI account limit: The CLI supports one account at a time, and switching accounts requires logging out and back in. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Encryption: Shelve describes per-project envelope encryption using AES-256-GCM, with each project’s data key sealed by a platform key. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Environments: Shelve supports development, preview, production, and custom environments. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
GitHub integration: Shelve can sync selected variables to selected repositories as GitHub secrets for use in GitHub Actions and CI/CD pipelines. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Maker: The maker’s site identifies Hugo Richard as the service provider; the terms specify France as the legal jurisdiction. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Other integrations: The documentation lists one-click deployment using Coolify and email OTP plus GitHub and Google OAuth authentication. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Purpose: Shelve is an open-source platform for managing environment variables and secrets across development teams. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Service availability: The terms say Shelve makes no availability guarantees and provides email support on a best-effort basis. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Support: The maker lists GitHub issues and [email protected] for support and contributions. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Team access: Teams can use role-based access controls, and API tokens can be scoped to teams, projects, environments, and permissions. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026
Transport security: The encryption documentation says traffic to the hosted app uses TLS 1.3; self-hosted deployments should configure HTTPS at their proxy or platform. · shelve.cloud, 11 Oct 2026

Where Shelve stands on Freedom251

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