Password managers
Open-source 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.
The cheapest way to replace Bitwarden here is Vaultwarden, at $42.30 a month against $40.00, with your own time already counted.
| 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.
Related
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- Where to host it
What you would be running
| Tool | Licence | Written in | Setup | Upkeep | GitHub stars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vaultwarden | GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 | Rust | 2 h | 0.5 h a month | 67,195 |
Questions people actually ask
Is there a free open-source alternative to Bitwarden?
There are 1 on this page, and every one of them is free of licence cost: they are published under AGPL-3.0. Running one is not free, though. The cheapest of them, Vaultwarden, costs $42.30 a month at 10 people once the server, backups and the time to look after it are counted.
How much does Bitwarden cost?
Bitwarden Teams costs $40.00 a month at 10 people: USD 4.00 per seat per month. That figure was read from the vendor's own pricing page on 2026-09-14.
What does it cost to self-host Vaultwarden?
$42.30 a month at 10 people. That is $4.00 for the Basic 512 MiB at DigitalOcean, plus backups, plus 0.5 hours a month of your own time priced at the published hourly rate.
How long before Vaultwarden is cheaper than Bitwarden?
Never, counting $150 of first-time setup. Over 36 months the difference is $233.
Which Bitwarden alternative is the easiest to run?
Vaultwarden, rated easy: about 2 hours to set up and 0.5 hours afterwards.