1Password → Vaultwarden
What it saves, what actually moves, what you rebuild — and the thing that catches people.
What it costs, and what it saves
1Password Families is about $60/year; Business is $8/user/month. Vaultwarden runs on a $5 VPS or a Raspberry Pi for any number of users.
Moves cleanly
All credentials, via 1Password's export and Bitwarden's import — the formats are compatible.
You rebuild
Sharing structure, which Vaultwarden calls organisations and collections.
What 1Password costs you today
Subscription-only, roughly $3–8/user/month depending on plan
What actually holds you in
Closed-source apps and cloud-only vaults on a mandatory subscription.
What you are moving to
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.
Free / self-host
Vaultwarden strengths
- Runs on tiny hardware
- Works with official Bitwarden apps
- You fully own the vault data
What you give up
- You are responsible for backups and TLS
- Unofficial (community) server
The migration, step by step
- 1Export from 1Password as a .1pux or CSV file
- 2Deploy Vaultwarden behind HTTPS — this is non-negotiable for a password manager
- 3Import via the Bitwarden web vault, which Vaultwarden serves
- 4Verify a sample of entries including TOTP secrets and attachments
- 5Set up automated encrypted backups BEFORE deleting anything from 1Password
The gotcha
You are now responsible for backups of your passwords. A Vaultwarden server without tested restores is a single hardware failure away from locking you out of everything you own. Test a restore before you cancel 1Password, not after.
When to stay on 1Password
You are not confident maintaining a server. Losing a password vault is a category of bad day that saving $60 a year does not justify.
More Layer 5 migrations
Figures verified 2026-07-04 against vendor pricing pages. Prices change and migrations differ by estate — treat the cost delta as a starting model, not a quote. Rankings and recommendations here are merit-only; affiliate income never changes a verdict. See our methodology.