Vaultwarden: A Self-Hosted Password Manager (Bitwarden-Compatible)
Unlike most posts on this site, this isn't really a savings story at small scale — 1Password's team plan is already a flat, cheap rate. Here's where self-hosting a password manager actually pays off, and the security trade-offs you're taking on if you do it.
I want to be upfront about this one: unlike most of what I write about, switching your password manager isn't going to save you dramatic money at small scale. 1Password's Teams Starter Pack is a flat $24.95/month covering up to 10 people — that's already a good deal, and I'm not going to manufacture a bigger savings number than actually exists.
Where the math actually changes
| 1Password | Self-hosted Vaultwarden | |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | $3.99/month ($47.88/year) | $0 marginal (shares an existing VPS) |
| Team, up to 10 seats | $24.95/month flat (Teams Starter Pack) | $0–$6/month, flat regardless of seats |
| Team, 11+ seats | $7.99/user/month (Business plan) — 11 users = $87.89/month | Still $0–$6/month |
Under 10 seats, 1Password's flat team rate is genuinely competitive and I wouldn't switch on price alone. Past 10 seats, you're on per-user Business pricing and the gap opens fast — at 11 users you're already paying $87.89/month — well over 10x the $0–$6/month self-hosted range — and it keeps climbing per seat from there while the VPS bill doesn't move.
What Vaultwarden actually is
Vaultwarden is an unofficial, open-source reimplementation of the Bitwarden server, written in Rust. It's not run by Bitwarden and isn't officially supported by them — it's a community project (60,000+ GitHub stars, actively releasing) that speaks the same API the official Bitwarden apps and browser extensions use. You install the official Bitwarden apps like normal, then point them at your own server URL instead of Bitwarden's cloud, and everything else works the same.
The resource footprint is what makes this an easy fit for an existing small VPS: Vaultwarden idles under 50MB of RAM. The official self-hosted Bitwarden stack needs 4GB+ RAM and a multi-container Docker Compose setup — Vaultwarden is a single lightweight container that does the same job.
Take this caveat seriously
Every self-hosted swap on this site comes with a caveat section, but this one matters more than most: a password vault is the one thing where losing your own data is catastrophic, not inconvenient. Before you touch this:
- Back up the database, actually, and test the restore. Not just having backups configured — actually restore from one and confirm you can get your vault back. This is not the place to find out your backup script was silently failing.
- HTTPS is not optional. You're sending your entire vault, master password included, over this connection. Don't run this without TLS, ever, not even temporarily.
- Keep it patched. Vaultwarden ships regular updates; staying on an old version of anything security-critical is a worse trade than the SaaS fee you're trying to avoid.
If maintaining that discipline isn't something you're confident you'll actually do, the $3.99–$24.95/month you'd pay 1Password is buying you someone else's obligation to get this right. That's a legitimate reason to stay put, and I'd rather say so than oversell a security-critical swap.
I run mine on the same kind of small Vultr instance as the rest of this stack — see the full cost roll-up for how the pieces fit together.
Disclosure: this post contains an affiliate link to Vultr. If you sign up through it, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only link to providers I actually use.