Password managers
Self-hosted alternatives to Bitwarden, priced
1 open-source tool that can replace Bitwarden, each shown with what it would actually cost to run for a team of 10 people. Bitwarden on the Teams tier costs $40.00 a month at that size.
| Tool | Server only | With your time | vs Bitwarden | Operational weight | Licence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vaultwarden | $4.80 | $42.30 | -$233 | easy | AGPL-3.0 |
The final column is the 36-month difference: positive means self-hosting is cheaper.
Which one to pick
Vaultwarden 67,195 stars
A Rust reimplementation of the Bitwarden server. It runs comfortably in a fraction of a gigabyte because vault data is small and encrypted client-side.
At 10 people it needs 0.3 GB of memory and 2.2 GB of disk, which fits the Basic 512 MiB at DigitalOcean for $4.00 a month. Setting it up is roughly 2 hours of work, then 0.5 hours a month to keep it healthy.
Full Bitwarden versus Vaultwarden breakdown · Vaultwarden at every team size
How the pricing was established
Bitwarden pricing was read from its own pricing page on 2026-09-14. Server prices come from the providers listed on the hosting page. The sizing model and the cost of your time are set out in full on the methodology page.