RyanL Bitwarden Employee
Hello everyone!
Starting in the next release, the Bitwarden apps published to the various stores will be the commercially licensed builds. No action is needed, and the apps will work exactly as they do today.
Bitwarden remains committed to open source security and transparency
The GPLv3 OSS licensed version continues to be updated and published on GitHub
All current features are available in both versions
License details are on GitHub
Bitwarden remains committed to a robust, free forever plan for everyone
If you have any questions, please ask them in this thread. Thanks all!
EDIT:
Bitwarden is not going closed-source
You can still fork Bitwarden
No change to self-hosting, the licensing change affects those who are repackaging and reselling Bitwarden
The free plan is here to stay permanently
Claude, code me a bit warden clone…
Careful, Claude is very sensitive these days. Might want to add ‘please’ and ‘thankyou’.
Anthropic is drawing a line in the sand protecting their model’s training sets from abuse.
Meanwhile OpenAI is down in a dungeon torturing GPT6 into writing academic mathematics papers.
They say if because AI will conquer the world… Reality since they use conversations to train AI, their AI is becoming less gentle.
Does anyone know if there’s any chance for a fork before this situation inevitably deteriorates? I dont know the license on that software well enough to know if its an option.
are u gonna maintain clients?
No, I have money to pay instead. If I were able to contribute to the effort, I would have said that. Just picking fights in response to open questions today?
I pay for their product and its totally worth. It was $10 for the longest time and much like everything in the last few years has increased price to what it is actually worth. To be honest $20 a year is still stupid cheap and worth it to keep them developing the product. Bitwarden is also one of the few password managers that hasn’t had a user data breach.
As always, people overreacting in the comments (of the linked forum). So the current plan is that the core remains OSS, but upcoming features are partially not. To me that sounds similar to Chrome’s or VSCode’s approach.
It’s not overreacting when you have seen the same development at least 10 times before. Its called experience.
So the current plan is that the core remains OSS
… for now.
Enhance, Embrace, Extinguish.
yeah sorry I dont want that
I’m not saying that’s great news, but it doesn’t sound like the self destruction move that some OSS companies have done recently. I wouldn’t migrate away just because of that change. In the end, they have to find a sustainable mode of operation.
It’s 2026 and you have way too much optimism left after all the OSS rug pulls of the last six fucking years.
Even hardware rugpulled. Fucking Micron.
Forget it; BitWarden is cooked.
They are going to slowly strip features from the free version over time.
Be cautious in such cases is not overreacting. We’ve seen enough open to closed rug pulls in the last years.
Fucking minIO
So it’s open core now? As if this would be any better.
@Mustachius_Grumpius “The GPLv3 OSS licensed version continues to be updated and published on GitHub
All current features are available in both versions
License details are on GitHub
Bitwarden remains committed to a robust, free forever plan for everyone”
Unfortunately, there is no historical example where this hasn’t turned predatory. It’s a tale as old as venture capital has been in software development:
- get free contributions from altruistic people doniting their time and expertise to your FOSS project that you’re selling
- make a closed-source set of extensions as optional dependencies
- slowly diverge the closed source feature set to include developer and user “must-haves” you do not contribute upstream
- slow or functionally halt open source contributions
It is an oft-repeated long con to pull off a mass heist of donated skill and time while imposing vendor lock-in on your users through a back door.
"As the poison spread through his body, the frog cried out, “Why did you sting me? You have killed us both!”
The scorpion replied, “I couldn’t help it. It’s my nature.”
I swear most of Grafana’s new features are enterprise only now
- Embrace
- Extend
- Extinguish
If there is no intention to put the screws to the user base, then why do it on the first place?
We all know how this game ends when venture capital gets involved.
@flop_leash_973 Where are the screws here?
Split versions is usually the first step. Many projects have done so before. Next year there will be some technical reason they can’t keep feature parity with the commercial repository, and it will drift from the OSS repository. Oops, we broke compatibility, sowwy guys. A couple of years later the OSS repository will be closed because it is a security risk. By that point the company and management would’ve drifted so far from the initial values of the project that people won’t notice. Those who cared will have jumped ship to alternatives sooner, those who noticed later will be already too deep into depending on the software that they will keep paying the subscription.
I have no evidence, but I also don’t have any doubts this is the plan.
Yup. All CURRENT, these will start to diverge…
yeah but its typical double speak
Why do you think so?
all “current” features. further down its asked about the future and they arent always clear but the fo state there wont be feature parity moving forward
@surewhynotlem @Mustachius_Grumpius
Experience…
I kinda thought the paid plan already had extra features no? Like silly ones but I swear it isn’t just donations right?
It had cloud storage, built in TOTP with autofill, and some had features like organizations and sharing
Still, this fucking sucks. Bitwarden was literally created as a ln answer to this shit happening to LastPass and Dashlane.
I get it because minio dying burned me hard but so long as it keeps operating as it does now do we need more features? I would be fine with a continuously secure version of exactly what it does now. I kinda hate feature bloat
If it’s not getting security updates and it’s not ona completely airgapped sysyem it’s a huge liability. Especially something that lives at the storage level.
Aren’t there forks being maintained? I was looking at implementing it right before it went enshitty, and I could have sworn there were alternatives…
So, Vaultwarden it is?
This seems to be clients for the end devices, which I’m worried may actually be a move towards locking out VaultWarden which will uses the BW Clients
Not surprised in the slightest sadly.
There is no way I’m self hosting something this important… So now I’m not sure what to do actually.
That’s why I’m just using KeePass. It’s just an encrypted file that you can store on whatever storage you want and sync with existing solutions like Syncthing etc.
Yes it’s a bit finicky when you edit the file on multiple devices before they’ve synced but it works very well for me…
If self hosting is not an option. Ideas that come to mind:
Evaluate what it is worth to you and maybe pay for it, if they offer enough worth to you and it is affordable.
Then there are people who host it and provide it to others. Together with other apps, as a suite. Maybe that’s an option. But I suppose, donating or paying is expected here, too.
Or switch to another solution. Preferably one with an import feature.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access TLS Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL VPN Virtual Private Network
[Thread #125 for this comm, first seen 11th Oct 2026, 04:30] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Heh, I’m looking at you to those people that looked at me weird because I told them I was good with Keepass!
Having only ever used keepass, what was the advantage of bitwarden? That you didn’t need to sync it yourself?
That you didn’t need to sync it yourself?
and that you have to never deal with sync conflicts. It’s a huge deal for those who are using tech but not understanding it, and a convenience for the rest
That’s the main benefit yeah.
I use the send tool as well for sensitive files
It’s also way easier to have shared passwords for family accounts.
Does anyone have a handy guide to switching to selfhosted version? I was considering doing that but I let my plan renew out of laziness.
My knowledge of network security is very limited, right now I only self-host things like movies, music, ROMs, etc. I would love to do the same with my passwords, but I don’t think I would feel comfortable doing it with such sensitive data.
A viable concern if you wanted to put it public-facing. If you only care about syncing when you’re home, though, you should be able to host it perfectly fine just not giving any pathways in from the outside world.
If you wanted to use the Android application, you would have to learn about TLS certificates anyway, because it doesn’t work without HTTPS.
Works fine with acme certs though
Idk how it compares feature wise, but i have been running keepassxc/keepassdx combined with syncthing (or any file synchronization/cloud system) for many years without issues. The entire password manager database sits in one encrypted .kdbx file that you keep synced between your devices. Syncthing is nice because its p2p, so no self-/hosting required.
https://keepassxc.org/
https://github.com/keepassxreboot/keepassxchttps://f-droid.org/packages/com.kunzisoft.keepass.libre/
https://syncthing.net/
https://github.com/syncthing/syncthingI used keepass but switched to vaultwarden, i might consider switching back, but is there a good self hostable web front end for a keepass database? (I need to access it on my work laptop and can’t install stuff there)
There is KeeWeb but I am not sure how well maintained it is. This issue is still open. It might be worth contacting your employers IT department instead. Asking for a well known password manager like KeePass shouldn’t raise any eyebrows.
It’s syncing it to my work laptop that would be the issue.
I dont think there is. Keepass is trying to be as offline as possible. Just makes for a piece of software with much less attack surface.
Every single time Bitwarden is mentioned on the internet, someone comes in here and proudly recites the anthem “I have been using Keep ass with sink things”
It sucks compared to a dedicated extension.
No autofill No TOTP or 2FA support Doesn’t do passkeys Doesn’t have organizational sharing Doesn’t sync to mobile devices Doesn’t integrate with mobile browsers without trusting some compatible 3rd party app Requires selfhosting your passwords (don’t fuck it up!)
It’s actually pretty sad that the open source world doesn’t have a better solution for this. I mean I guess BitWarden was it but that’s been stolen by venture capital so
Why is it that every time i comment about keepass, its because some web based password manager once again broke, got hacked, or stopped development. Keepass users just stay winning :)
Also i have been using keepass with TOTP 2FA for years what are you on about?
Also also, you shouldnt use fido passkeys. Its a failed technology that is worse than what it tries to replace.
There isn’t anything wrong with passkeys that can’t also be made wrong with passwords, and there isn’t anything more secure about passwords, at all.
Please don’t tell me you took that article that was spammed all over here a few days ago at face value…
Both KeepassXC on desktop and KeepassDX on mobile support autofill, passkeys, and TOTP. Syncing to mobile devices is handled by Syncthing (I use BasicSync on Android) and is quite seamless after setup.
Integration with mobile browsers and other applications is handled by the OS-level autofill service (at least on Android). Trusting a third party app that is completely open source and has a ton of eyes on it? I don’t see a problem with that.
Selfhosting is literally the entire point, since who more can you trust with your most sensitive information than yourself? And even if you don’t trust yourself with being able to keep good backups and following the 3-2-1 rule, you’re more than welcome to sync with a third party cloud provider of your choosing since the password file is fully encrypted.
Yup great combo. It baffles me why anyone one would favour to depend oneself on an online service instead
I just wish Syncthing didn’t have such a convoluted port usage, and also that its Android usage didn’t revolve around an unofficial app.
So I’ll stick to apps that do sync over SSH (using FolderSync atm).
That’s my stack, except swap keepassdx for keepass2android, and add the Firefox plugin.
I had done that for a long time. It worked until it didn’t and I lost passwords. I tried again with keepass2android and it’s built-in sync. It again worked fine until at some point it wasn’t able to sync anymore for no discernible reason. I’d love for this to be a reliable setup, but it just isn’t in my experience, at least when there are 3+ devices involved with different clients and no proper awareness of the password manager and the sync sides of each other.
Exactly. No way I’m going to use this for something critical.
Here it explains some self host options with links to “Get Started” for each:
https://bitwarden.com/help/self-host-bitwarden/
For example, here’s the link to “Linux standard deployment”
https://bitwarden.com/help/install-on-premise-linux/
You may also want to consider not making your server available to the open internet, and instead access it only on your LAN via VPN.
That or jump to Vaultwarden https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden
Is there another client we can use with vaultwarden though? (In the scenario wgere that gets locked down)
There is an iOS app for Vaultwarden. Under that name.
https://apps.apple.com/za/app/vaultwarden-password-manager/id6799711599
Don’t see one for Android. And for the rest I just online.
The web interface is hosted directly by your vaultwarden interface so it’s not lockdown-able. The only things that are would be the browser extension and phone apps. Both of which are formally unnecessary because you can always just use the web interface. I’m sure if they ever locked down there’d be community versions in no time as they’re basically just web wrappers anyway.
The apps keep a synced local copy, so if the server is down or unreachable you can still get to your passwords. That can also be locked by biometrics etc.
There’s a lot of stuff that without be lost by going to just the web interface
great suggestion
Can I simply migrate content from Bitwarden to Vaultwarden?
I couldn’t tell from looking at the faq or wiki.
Vaultwarden still depends on upstream bitwarden
Only if you’re using the Android app or the web browser plugin, the actual core system does not.
They could lock Bitwarden out tomorrow and Valtwarden would still work fine.
Then people would just have to write specific application and plugin if they wanted to continue to use it with no change.
The web interface would be fine.
The web interface is from bitwarden. Technically they could fork it but that would be much more work.
No it is not, the web interface is the page you get when you browse to the swrver directly, it is very different from the Bitwarden one.
Fine to me as long as this doesnt impact Vaultwarden
All these people keep saying that Vaultwarden won’t work because it relies on bitwarden’s API but if there is an incompatibility then wouldn’t vaultwarden just be left in a functional limbo? Like it’ll still work because self hosted but no more new features in parity with official client? Or have I misunderstood the connection between the two
this year there were 2 separate updates to bitwarden clients that fucked up vaultwarden servers, because the bitwarden developers “accidentally” reused a variable name in the data that was unused for a few years. but vaultwarden forgot to remove it, and now it is used in a different way, and the clients bugged away so hard that you had to uninstall them, because even if you was fortunate to be able to get to your passwords list you could not get it to sync otherwise
Are they still going to publish the Android client app via their own F-Droid repository?
