Vaultwarden

Vaultwarden is an unofficial, lightweight Bitwarden-compatible server written in Rust. Point the official Bitwarden apps (desktop, mobile, browser extension, CLI) at it and you get organizations, sharing, attachments, Send, emergency access and the built-in TOTP authenticator, with every user treated as Premium. AGPL-3.0, and not affiliated with Bitwarden.

It's one Docker container on SQLite by default (MySQL and Postgres work too), and it runs happily on a Raspberry Pi. It needs HTTPS, because the web vault won't work without a secure context, so plan on a reverse proxy and certificates. OIDC single sign-on landed in late 2025; a master password is still required.

The comparison: Bitwarden Premium is $19.80 a year and Families is $47.88 a year for six people, and Bitwarden's free plan already covers basic sharing and text Send. For one person the savings are small; the case is control and Premium features for a whole household or small team. Bitwarden Teams ($4 per user a month) and Enterprise ($6) bring vendor support and compliance paperwork vaultwarden can't.

The catch: updates aren't optional. New Bitwarden client releases regularly require a matching vaultwarden update, and the security advisory volume is real: 1.37.4 in October 2026 fixed seven, one rated high. Self-hosting your passwords means patching promptly, every time.