Vaultwarden is a brilliant lightweight Bitwarden server — until you're the one patching it at 2 a.m. If your team is under 12 and you'd rather not run the box, LitePassword is the managed swap.
Where each tool actually wins for a small team. No marketing fluff — the columns reflect what each product ships today.
| Feature | Vaultwarden | LitePassword |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting model | Self-host only (Docker container you run) | Managed cloud only |
| Ongoing maintenance | You — patches, backups, TLS, uptime, upgrades | None — we run the infrastructure |
| Encryption | Zero-knowledge (AES-256, PBKDF2 / Argon2) | Zero-knowledge (AES-256, PBKDF2) |
| Setup time | 30 min – a few hours (Docker + reverse proxy + TLS) | <60 seconds |
| Pricing for 5 users | "Free" + server (~$5/mo) + your time | $5/mo flat (Family) |
| Recovery model | Bitwarden account recovery (admin reset, opt-in) | One-time recovery key issued on setup — you keep it |
| Open source | Yes (GPLv3) | No |
| Tier | Vaultwarden | LitePassword |
|---|---|---|
| Free / personal | Free (self-hosted, you pay for the server + your time) | $0 (1 user, 1 vault, 5 secrets) |
| Starter | VPS ~$5/mo + maintenance | $1.50/mo flat (1 user, 10 vaults, 50 secrets) |
| Small team | Same server, any team size (you scale the box) | $5/mo flat (up to 5 users, 50 vaults, 200 secrets) |
| Business | Self-host only — no managed tier | $10/mo flat (up to 12 users, 150 vaults, 600 secrets) |
| Enterprise | Self-host only | — not offered (by design) |
Yes — LitePassword positions exactly here. Free for one user, $5/mo flat for the 5-user Family plan, $10/mo flat for Business up to 12 users — no per-seat scaling, no SSO upsell, no minimum-seat contract. Zero-knowledge encryption is on by default.
Try it free →Yes — LitePassword positions exactly here. Free for one user, $5/mo flat for the 5-user Family plan, $10/mo flat for Business up to 12 users — no per-seat scaling, no SSO upsell, no minimum-seat contract. Zero-knowledge encryption is on by default.
Try it free →Yes — LitePassword positions exactly here. Free for one user, $5/mo flat for the 5-user Family plan, $10/mo flat for Business up to 12 users — no per-seat scaling, no SSO upsell, no minimum-seat contract. Zero-knowledge encryption is on by default.
Try it free →Vaultwarden is a fantastic piece of software — a lightweight, Bitwarden-compatible server you can run on a $5 VPS or a spare box at home. You get zero-knowledge encryption, no per-seat fees, and full data control, and the Bitwarden apps, extensions, and CLI all just work against it. For a homelab or an ops-comfortable team, it’s hard to beat.
The reason teams leave is always the same, and it’s not the cryptography. It’s that someone now owns a server. Every CVE in the container, the host OS, the database, and the reverse proxy is your problem. So are backups (and tested restores), TLS certificate renewals, version upgrades with the occasional breaking change, and uptime — because when the box is down, nobody can unlock their vault. For a 5-person team, that’s a part-time job nobody volunteered for, and a real bus-factor risk if only one person knows how it’s wired.
You adopted Vaultwarden for the zero-knowledge guarantee, not for the privilege of being a part-time sysadmin. LitePassword keeps the guarantee and drops the server:
Stays the same: zero-knowledge architecture, AES-256 encryption, on-device key derivation (PBKDF2), per-vault access control, the principle that the vendor cannot read your data.
Drops away: the Docker container, the reverse proxy, the backups, the patching, the TLS renewals, the 2 a.m. uptime pages.
Be honest with yourself. Keep self-hosting if:
If none of those apply, the maintenance is a tax you’re paying for a guarantee you can get without it.
Because Vaultwarden speaks the Bitwarden protocol, you export from any Bitwarden client connected to your instance as JSON, then paste each secret into the matching LitePassword type. A 10-person team typically migrates in about 15 minutes of focused work. The full walkthrough — export, import, and how to take the container down cleanly — is in the Vaultwarden → LitePassword migration guide.
Still weighing whether to drop self-hosting at all? Read a managed alternative to self-hosted password managers, or compare the self-hosted cousins: Passbolt and Bitwarden.
Free for one user, $5/mo flat for 5-user Family, $10/mo flat for Business up to 12. No per-seat scaling. No SSO upsell.
If you ran Vaultwarden for zero-knowledge encryption without per-seat fees, a managed zero-knowledge manager keeps the encryption guarantee and removes the server. LitePassword is a flat-priced managed option for teams of 12 or fewer: $5/mo flat for up to 5 users, $10/mo flat for up to 12. You keep on-device key derivation and ciphertext-only storage; you drop the Docker container, the backups, and the patching.
Yes. Vaultwarden and LitePassword are both zero-knowledge — your master password derives the key on your device and the server stores ciphertext only. The difference is operational: with Vaultwarden you run the server and own its security; with LitePassword we run it, with no admin-level decrypt mode on our side.
Yes. Because Vaultwarden is Bitwarden-compatible, you export from any Bitwarden client connected to your Vaultwarden instance as JSON, then paste each secret into the matching LitePassword type. The full walkthrough, including decommissioning the container, is in the [Vaultwarden migration guide](/migrate/vaultwarden).
Vaultwarden is free as in software, not free as in effort. You still pay for the VPS, and you own every CVE in the container, the OS, the database, and the reverse proxy — plus backups, TLS renewals, and uptime. For a small team, that maintenance often costs more (in time) than a $5–$10/mo managed plan. If you enjoy running it or need data residency, keep it.
No. Vaultwarden's appeal is that the Bitwarden apps, extensions, and CLI all point at your server. LitePassword is its own product with a web vault — it is not Bitwarden-compatible. If Bitwarden-client compatibility is the whole reason you self-host, stay on Vaultwarden or move to managed Bitwarden instead.
Stay if you have an ops-comfortable team that already runs the container without friction, you need strict data residency on your own infrastructure, you depend on Bitwarden-client compatibility, or your team is well past 12 people. Below that, the managed swap usually pays for itself.
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