Fireblocks alternatives: choosing wallet infrastructure for your next stage

The short answer

If Fireblocks is on your shortlist, you likely need governed wallets, an API, and a policy engine. Every credible alternative has these features. Choosing the right vendor comes down to where the rules are enforced, who runs the automation signer, which chains and integrations you need, and whether the pricing model aligns with the value you get from the wallet provider.

Here is our shortlist, organized by the job you need the wallet to do.

Why teams look past Fireblocks

Fireblocks is a mature platform. It builds direct-custody wallets on a 3-of-3 MPC scheme with a single master key per workspace, unlimited vault accounts, and exchange and network integrations that apply to direct custody only. Its policy engine runs inside Intel SGX enclaves, and rules are signed by a quorum of admins before they take effect.

Teams usually start a search for alternatives for one of four reasons.

The pricing does not match your use case. Fireblocks prices on volume, with a self-serve entry plan that includes a quarterly transfer allowance and custom tiers above it. That fits a desk whose value scales with what it moves. It fits less well for a treasury team making a handful of large payments a month, or a platform issuing many low-balance wallets, where Turnkey prices per signature and Privy per monthly active user.

Trust is anchored in the vendor's infrastructure. The MPC shares Fireblocks holds and the policy engine that evaluates every transaction both run in enclaves that Fireblocks operates. An enclave hides the code from the host it runs on, but it runs whatever code Fireblocks deploys, bugs included. You are trusting Fireblocks' code and its release process. Security teams that require provable guarantees look for controls they can read and verify themselves, for example open-source contracts on a public chain.

The workload has a different shape. Fireblocks grew up around custody and trading, with the Fireblocks Network and exchange accounts as central features. It does cover payments and DeFi: a Gas Station for EVM fees, an Automation add-on for sweeps, rebalancing, top-ups, and triggered transfers, and transaction simulation and dApp protection for contract interactions. Fireblocks sells them as parts of a large platform, some as add-ons at an additional cost. The narrower vendors below sell them as the core product.

Embedded wallets are a separate product. Fireblocks Embedded Wallets use a 2-of-2 MPC arrangement with one share on the user's device, and Fireblocks recommends running them in a separate workspace from direct custody. Dedicated embedded-wallet providers bundle authentication, session management, and export flows that a consumer product needs on day one.

Utila: for stablecoin payment operations

Utila is stablecoin and digital asset infrastructure for fintechs and enterprises, and the product is built around payments. Sponsored transfers let a gas wallet pay network fees for deposit wallets, natively on major EVM chains, Solana, Sui, and Aptos, with policy enforced at the deposit wallet rather than the gas wallet. Utila also covers deposit monitoring, sweeping token balances to treasury, and an address book with grouped entries.

Automation runs through a co-signer delivered in the Utila CLI. It runs in your infrastructure, polls the vault, and signs only transactions designated to its service account. In webhook mode it forwards each transaction to your endpoint and refuses to sign if that endpoint fails to answer, which is the right default for a payout engine. Webhooks are signed with RSA-4096 and retried with exponential backoff for up to 24 hours.

On the security model, private keys are split between the customer and Utila, every device has a cryptographic identity approved by multiple admins, and policies can only be changed by an admin quorum. Utila holds SOC 2 Type II and has been audited by Halborn.

Tradeoffs: like Fireblocks, Utila holds a key share and evaluates policy off-chain, so the trust model is similar even if the product focus differs. Utila has published its own comparison with Fireblocks. We compare the two in depth in Fireblocks vs Utila.

Fordefi: for DeFi-heavy desks

Fordefi is an MPC wallet, security platform, and Web3 gateway for builders, traders, and operators. Its emphasis is what an approver sees and how that feeds policy. Before approval, Fordefi resolves the contract into a verified human-readable name, simulates the transaction, and flags risks. Simulation results also feed the policy engine. Rules can match on USD value of outgoing or net amounts, on external screening results, and on decoded ABI parameters.

Key material is split in two, with the customer share on a device or an API Signer you run yourself and the Fordefi share inside AWS Nitro secure enclaves. Chain coverage is wide, with 13 chain families including 50 or more EVM networks, Solana, Cosmos, Bitcoin, Sui, Aptos, TON, and TRON. Backups can use threshold recovery phrases, a YubiKey, an air-gapped public key, or third parties such as Coincover and Station70.

Tradeoffs: the policy engine still runs in vendor infrastructure, Fordefi allows one API Signer per organization, and payment-operations tooling is not the emphasis. See Fordefi vs Fireblocks for the head-to-head.

Safe: for teams that want to own the account

Safe takes a different approach from the other vendors. It is an open-source smart account whose core model is a set of owners and a confirmation threshold, deployed as a proxy on hundreds of EVM networks. The rules live onchain, so anyone can verify who can move funds. Modules add behaviour such as spending allowances or recovery, and a transaction guard adds checks before and after owner-signed transactions, with a separate module guard available for module-initiated ones where the contract version supports it.

The core contract enforces only the threshold, so a Safe with no extensions is a plain multisig. Richer controls come from extensions. Every module and guard is another contract attached to the account, with its own code. Be careful to ensure modules are independently audited, and that they do not interact poorly with other installed extensions. A malicious or vulnerable module can take over a Safe, and a broken guard can lock one.

Choose Safe when your engineers want a public, composable account and are prepared to design the operating model around it. Our Safe wallet review goes through the details, and Safe vs MPC wallets explains why the two can be different layers rather than competing products.

Turnkey and Privy: for wallets inside your product

If the requirement is issuing wallets to your own users, Fireblocks Embedded Wallets compete with two developer-first providers.

Turnkey runs key generation, signing, and its policy engine inside AWS Nitro enclaves. Policies are JSON objects with an effect, a consensus expression, and a condition, evaluated with implicit deny. End users live in sub-organizations that the parent can read but not act in. Turnkey Verified publishes attestation proofs for address derivation and policy outcomes. Pricing is usage-based per signature.

Privy bundles authentication with wallets. Keys are split with Shamir secret sharing into an enclave share and an auth share, and reconstructed only inside an AWS Nitro enclave for signing. Once attached to a wallet, policies deny anything they do not allow and are evaluated in the enclave. Its pricing scales with monthly active users.

Tradeoffs: both are developer primitives. Turnkey policies can require consensus from several users and Privy supports key quorums, so organizational controls are possible to assemble, but neither ships a treasury console with approval queues and finance-friendly reporting as a product. Both also carry the enclave trust described above for Fireblocks. Keys and the policy engine run in AWS Nitro enclaves on code the vendor deploys, and you are trusting that code and its release process. Turnkey's published attestation proofs let you check what the enclave produced, which is further than any other vendor here goes. Turnkey vs Privy covers the decision.

Den: for rules you can prove

Den is general-purpose wallet infrastructure for treasury, payments, and Wallet-as-a-Service. It is designed for teams whose policy rules need to hold even if any one of Den's servers, a signer, or the contracts is compromised. This is accomplished by validating every transaction against policy across multiple layers before it executes. This includes the signing client, Den's Guardian service, and the onchain contracts. The signing client is whatever produces the signature, Den's mobile app or a developer SDK. The Guardian is an offchain service that runs on Den's server, or via a self-hosted instance. Even if the Guardian is compromised it cannot approve a payment, change a policy, or move funds, because the contracts require signatures from keys your members hold.

Policies cover auto-approval or M-of-N manual review by members or groups, filters on source account, initiator, token, recipient allowlists and amount, contract-level rules on address, function and argument values, and rate limits per initiator, account or destination over a time window. Governance changes such as adding members or editing policies require the organization's admin threshold, which you can set above one so that no single administrator can change the rules.

Automation runs through API members, programmatic signing keys that can live anywhere, including your own KMS, HSM, or even an MPC provider such as Fireblocks. Den covers network fees so you do not need to worry about holding gas tokens, managing top-ups, or adding gas accounting to every transaction. The contracts are open source and were audited by Certora and yAudit. Deployment can be Den Cloud, your own cloud, or on-premise, and disaster recovery offers two timelocked paths that keep working if the Guardian is permanently unavailable.

Den has limits. It currently supports popular EVM networks, with new networks deployable on request. Integration runs through the API and developer SDK. In the standard flow the Guardian is operated by Den, so teams that want full independence need the self-hosted option. Den also does not offer exchange connectivity comparable to the Fireblocks Network.

How to make the call

Four questions separate these options faster than a feature checklist.

1. Where must the rule be enforced? In the vendor's infrastructure (Fireblocks, Utila, Fordefi, Turnkey, Privy), in a smart account you configure with optional guards (Safe), or across several redundant layers including the signing client, a server, and the chain (Den).
2. Who runs the automation signer? Fireblocks, Utila, and Fordefi all let you host a co-signer or API signer holding a key share. Den's API members sign with keys you already manage. Safe automation runs through modules or delegated keys you deploy.
3. Which chains and counterparties are non-negotiable? Non-EVM coverage points to Fordefi, Utila, or Fireblocks. Exchange settlement points to Fireblocks. EVM-only treasury and payments open up Safe and Den.
4. What does exit look like? Ask each vendor what you can do without them. Safe accounts keep working without any company. Den's two recovery paths are timelocked and work without the Guardian, and Den offers a migration path that does not lock you in. MPC vendors have key backup procedures that you should test before you need them.

If you are picking a provider for treasury management, read crypto treasury wallets for finance teams. If you are choosing infrastructure for a product rather than an internal treasury, start with the best wallet infrastructure for fintechs.