Passbolt vs Vaultwarden: Which Self-Hosted Password Manager is Right for You?
Both are open-source, self-hosted password managers. But they solve different problems. Vaultwarden is lightweight, client-rich, and free-forever; Passbolt is team-centric, auditable, and compliance-ready. Here's what you actually need to know to choose.
Feature-by-Feature Comparison
Choose by team size and sharing model
Vaultwarden excels for solo users, families, and teams under 50 people who need simple shared collections. Passbolt is worth the cost and complexity for 10-100 person organizations that need per-secret, per-person access control and audit trails. If you're smaller, Vaultwarden removes friction. If you're regulated or require granular permissions, Passbolt earns its price.
Why the encryption model matters
Vaultwarden uses Bitwarden's proven encryption: your master password derives a key, which encrypts your vault. The server never sees your data. This is battle-tested by millions of Bitwarden users and is fast, efficient, and scales to single-digit megabytes on disk.
Passbolt uses OpenPGP: each secret is encrypted individually for each person who needs access. Alice encrypts a password using Bob's public key. Bob decrypts it using his private key. No shared master key. This gives true per-resource, per-person control, but it means the server must manage and store multiple encrypted copies of each secret, and clients spend CPU cycles on PKI operations.
For most teams: Vaultwarden's simplicity wins. Shared collections cover 80% of real workflows.
If you need true per-resource audit trails: Passbolt's model forces accountability, you always know who decrypted what, because only their key works.
Both are encrypted end-to-end. Your hosting provider (whether self-hosted or Opsily) cannot read your secrets. The difference is in how you grant access to teammates.
Vaultwarden runs on almost anything
Vaultwarden fits in 256 MB of RAM. It runs on Raspberry Pi, $5/month cloud VMs, old laptops, and NAS boxes. Passbolt needs 2 GB minimum and 4 GB recommended. If you're cost-conscious or running hardware you already own, this difference compounds fast.
Passbolt Pro cost scales with team size
Passbolt Community Edition is free but has no LDAP, SSO, or detailed audit logs. Pro is €4.50/user/month minimum 10 users (€540/year). A 25-person team runs €1,350/year on top of infrastructure. Vaultwarden is free for 25, 50, or 500 people—no per-seat billing, ever.
Why managed Vaultwarden at Opsily
Vaultwarden is free but self-hosting costs time. You own backups, patches, SSL renewal, and uptime monitoring.
No ops tax
We handle backups (daily, encrypted), SSL certificates (auto-renewed), updates, and 24/7 monitoring. You deploy once and never touch it again. Saves 3-5 hours/month of manual DevOps work.
Isolated, hardened infrastructure
Your Vaultwarden instance runs on its own dedicated server in ISO 27001-certified data centers. No shared resources. No neighbor noise. Full GDPR compliance built in.
Scale with zero disruption
Need more capacity or a second instance for high availability? One click provisions a new server. No downtime. No data migration scripts. Your team stays in control.
Built for teams who need reliability
Managed Vaultwarden at Opsily
Simple, flat-rate pricing. No per-user billing. All plans include encrypted daily backups, ISO 27001 data centers, auto-renewing SSL, GDPR compliance, and 24/7 monitoring.
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Migrating between password managers
Both Vaultwarden and Passbolt support export/import. Here's what to expect.
Export from your current password manager
Both Vaultwarden and Passbolt can export to JSON or CSV. Download your encrypted vault from your current instance.
Prepare the data
Vaultwarden to Passbolt: Your Bitwarden-format export maps smoothly. Passbolt to Vaultwarden: OpenPGP keys don't translate; Passbolt exports as plaintext JSON, which Vaultwarden imports directly.
Import into your new instance
Paste your export file into the new manager's import tool. Test a few entries to confirm they landed correctly.
Run both in parallel
Keep the old instance live while your team rotates credentials and browser extensions. No rush. Cutover when everyone confirms their vault is complete.
Decommission the old instance
Archive or delete the old instance once your team has fully migrated. If you're switching to Opsily, we can keep backups of your old data for 30 days.
Frequently Asked Questions
Vaultwarden uses the same encryption as Bitwarden (which Bitwarden Inc. audits regularly). Your vault is encrypted before it leaves your device, and the server cannot read it. Passbolt is also secure, but uses OpenPGP instead of Bitwarden's key derivation. Security comes down to key management, not which password manager you choose. Both are open-source and can be audited. Neither has a reported breach. Security-wise, pick based on access control needs, not encryption trust.
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