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How we rank & scoreA polished, closed-source password manager with a mandatory subscription and cloud-hosted vaults.
Bitwarden is our top pick — Open-source and free forever — the easy pick for most people. We compare all 4 options below, with honest trade-offs.
Jump to the full comparison →Subscription-only, roughly $3–8/user/month depending on plan
There is no perpetual license and no self-hosting — your vault lives in AgileBits' cloud on a recurring bill. Open-source managers let you self-host or keep a purely local vault.
| Alternative | License | Self-host | Pricing | Sovereignty |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitwarden★ | GPL-3.0 (clients) / AGPL (server) | Yes | Generous free tier; paid from about $1/month; self-host free | 88 |
| Vaultwarden | AGPL-3.0 | Yes | Free / self-host | 95 |
| KeePassXC | GPL-2.0 / GPL-3.0 | Yes | Free / open-source | 92 |
| Proton Pass | Proprietary hosted service (client apps open-source, GPL-3.0, audited) | No | Free tier; paid from about $2/month (or bundled in Proton Unlimited) | 62 |
Open-source and free forever — the easy pick for most people.
There is no single best answer — it depends on what you are actually trying to do.
Just tell me the best 1Password alternative
Bitwarden88
Our top pick — the highest Sovereignty Score at 88, and the one we would choose ourselves.
Bitwarden vs Vaultwarden →I have no budget — is there a genuinely free one?
Vaultwarden95
Open source under AGPL-3.0. Free / self-host
Vaultwarden vs Bitwarden →I want to self-host it and own the data
KeePassXC92
Self-hostable, so your data stays on your own server. Free / open-source
KeePassXC vs Bitwarden →Open-source and free forever — the easy pick for most people.
Bitwarden is a mature, audited, open-source password manager. Use its low-cost hosted plan or self-host the server for full control, with clients on every platform.
A lightweight, self-hosted Bitwarden-compatible server.
Vaultwarden is a resource-light server that speaks the Bitwarden protocol, so you run your own vault backend and use the official Bitwarden clients against it. It fits on the smallest VPS or a homelab box.
A fully local, offline password database.
KeePassXC keeps your passwords in a single encrypted file on your own disk — no server, no cloud, no subscription. Sync the file yourself however you like.
End-to-end encrypted password manager from the Proton privacy suite.
Proton Pass is a hosted, end-to-end encrypted password manager (passwords, passkeys, 2FA codes, and hide-my-email aliases) from the Swiss privacy company Proton. Its apps are open-source and independently audited, but the service runs on Proton's servers — you can't self-host it. It's the easy, no-server option for people who want strong privacy without running infrastructure.
Entry last verified 2026-07-04. Licenses and pricing change — spotted something out of date? That's a correction we want.
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