vaultwarden
by dani-garcia
Vaultwarden is a lightweight, unofficial server that works with the official Bitwarden apps and browser extensions. It lets you host your own password manager, including shared vaults for teams, on your own hardware.
- Stars
- 69.9k
- Licence
- AGPL-3.0
- Runs on
- A small server
- Setup
- Moderate
- Language
- Rust
- Age
- 3176 days
What you can do with it
- Store and sync passwords across devices using the official Bitwarden apps and browser extensions
- Share logins with staff through organisations, collections and member roles
- Protect accounts with two-factor login such as authenticator apps, YubiKey or FIDO2
Could replace
- Bitwarden
Our suggestion based on what it does, not a feature-by-feature comparison.
Make money with it
An IT freelancer could set up and maintain self-hosted password managers for small businesses as a paid service.
An idea, not financial advice. Check the licence before charging for anything built on it.
Ways a business could use it
- Give a small team a shared, company-controlled password vault without paying per-seat fees
- Offer clients or staff secure credential sharing and emergency access while keeping data on your own server
Can you use it commercially?
Free to use. Anything you distribute that includes it must be open-sourced under the same licence. Running it as an online service also counts, so a hosted version must offer its source.
Not legal advice. Read the project's licence file before building a product on it.
Getting it running
Run the published Docker or Podman container with a data volume, then put it behind a reverse proxy with HTTPS, which the web vault requires.
Follow the official instructions in the project README.
Things to check
- Unofficial project, not supported by Bitwarden, so bugs must be reported to the Vaultwarden team
- You are responsible for HTTPS, backups and updates, which matters greatly for a password store
- AGPL-3.0 licence has conditions if you modify and offer it as a service
Who's talking about it
Checked 29 Oct 2026. Summary drafted by AI from the project's README.
