67.4k stars · AGPL-3.0 · 1.37.3 (2026-09-13, from GitHub's own /releases/latest). ungh's cached latest is 1.37.0 of 2026-07-24 · Track this in Scout
A password server that the official Bitwarden apps connect to, small enough to run on the cheapest machine you can rent.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
Vaultwarden is a rewrite of the Bitwarden server in Rust, by a separate group of people. It speaks the same language as the official Bitwarden clients, so the same apps, add-ons and command-line tool work against it without modification.
What it is good for. Anyone who wants a shared password store and does not want a monthly bill per person. A family of five, a team of eight, a person who simply prefers to hold their own copy. It is also for anyone who wants the paid Bitwarden features — file attachments, two-factor login, organisations — without the paid plan, because Vaultwarden turns them all on. The official server needs a few gigabytes of memory; this one runs in a few hundred megabytes.
- The clients are the official ones, so you are not trusting a second-rate app with your passwords.
- Very small. It runs happily alongside other things on a machine with 1 GB of memory.
- Actively maintained with a serious attitude to security: release 1.37.0 in July 2026 fixed eight medium-severity holes and was marked mandatory.
- AGPL-3.0 (a licence that requires you to publish your changes if you offer the modified version to other people over a network). Fine for private use, a real constraint if you want to build a product on it.
- It is not the official server and the Bitwarden company does not support it. If something goes wrong, the people who can help are volunteers.
- It will not work over plain HTTP. Browsers refuse the encryption functions without a proper certificate, so you need a domain name and HTTPS before anything works at all. This catches almost everyone once.
- bitwarden/server
The official server from the company, using the same clients, but far heavier to run and with the paid features behind a plan.
Track this in Scout - keepassxreboot/keepassxc
A desktop password safe with no server at all; you sync the one encrypted file yourself.
Track this in Scout - passbolt/passbolt_api
A team-first password manager built around sharing rules rather than personal vaults.
Track this in Scout
docker run -d --name vaultwarden \ -v /vw-data/:/data/ \ -e DOMAIN="https://vault.example.com" \ -p 8080:80 \ vaultwarden/server:latest
