Bitwarden is an established name among password managers, well-known for its free plan, cheap pricing, and for being open-source. To see if it’s the right password manager for you, though, I took it out and kicked its tires for a few days.
The result is a review that places Bitwarden firmly among the best password managers. It’s secure and comes at an extremely good value. However, it has a few issues in daily use that may make it unattractive for people with a few bucks more to spend. Let’s see if it’s the right fit for you.
How Much Does Bitwarden Cost?
Let’s start with the bottom line: One of Bitwarden’s biggest attractions is that it comes for free, or at least it has a very good free version. It may even be the best free password manager out there, together with KeePass—we compare the two in our Bitwarden vs. KeePass article.
Unlike most password managers, which will put some kind of limit on what their free version can do, Bitwarden’s free app has full functionality in all ways except that it only supports two-factor authentication (2FA) via email and authenticator app. That’s not a high price for a free piece of software.
If you need more advanced 2FA, you have to pay for the Premium plan, which costs an extremely reasonable $10 per year, making Bitwarden the cheapest password manager on the market. You also get some extra features, like Bitwarden Authenticator, a 2FA app like Authy or Google Authenticator, and some added security reports.
The third personal plan is aimed at families, which lets you sign up to six people for just $40 per year. This is a lot cheaper than any other family plan out there, including Dashlane’s, and probably the best option for anybody that wants to share their password manager with family members without spending too much.
Bitwarden Business Plans
Speaking of sharing, Bitwarden also has some plans aimed at businesses. These are a bit more pricey than the personal plans, but still are a good whack cheaper than similar plans offered by the competition.
At $3 and $5 per month per user for the Teams and Enterprise plans, respectively, they’re a pretty good buy, especially for remote teams that may not be able to ask a coworker for a site’s password quickly. The Enterprise plan seems a little pricey, considering it only adds a handful of features, but single sign-on capabilities may be worth it as it can greatly speed up how a team works.
What Is Bitwarden Like to Use?
Bitwarden has a lot going for it when it comes to usability, though it lacks polish in a few places. The strength of Bitwarden is simplicity: it has everything you need and offers few frills. The result is an app that you can grasp within seconds.
Bitwarden is available on Windows, Mac, and Linux, as well as Android and iPhone/iPad. It also seems to have a specialized browser extension for every browser ever made. Beyond the standards like Chrome and Firefox, you also have exotics like Vivaldi or even Tor. For the full overview, check out Bitwarden’s download page.
Saving and Managing Passwords
This is the main interface for Bitwarden, where you manage your passwords, credit cards, and all that. The larger part of the screen is taken up by your entries, so the accounts you have. You can subdivide these any way you’d like into folders, which you can access through the pane on the left.
This left-hand pane is very easy to navigate. The bottom portion stores the folders you’ve created for all the accounts you have, while above, you can find the different kinds of entries. Besides passwords, Bitwarden lets you store credit card information, IDs, and secure notes. This last feature is great for anybody that wants to scribble down some information but also needs the details to remain safe.
The result is an app that organizes entries nearly as well as 1Password. If you’re a more old-school type, you may even prefer Bitwarden’s folders over 1Password’s tags. That said, 1Password is a bit more flexible: if you like everything to be in just the right place, 1Password may be a better choice.
Adding entries to Bitwarden is also straightforward. Below is an example of a credit card entry, where you can add the obvious stuff like number and type, as well as notes. Passwords and secure notes work in much the same way.
You can also add custom fields to any entry, which adds some functionality. This includes adding extra simple input fields, but you can go so far as to add true/false statements and secret information; Bitwarden goes into more detail on its custom field page. Though I doubt it’s something that will be used by everybody, for the right person, it makes Bitwarden worth purchasing.
Bitwarden’s Browser Extension
So far, so good, but using Bitwarden on the fly isn’t as smooth. Like all other password managers, most of your day-to-day interaction will be through the browser extension.
At first, I was pleasantly surprised: Bitwarden’s extension is pretty comprehensive and it handles well. I like it more than 1Password’s, for example.
However, this is only part of the story. A browser extension isn’t just a control panel that you can open in your browser real quick; it also tracks what you’re doing, offering to enter or remember passwords. Getting rid of the busy is probably the best thing about password managers.
Thing is, though, that Bitwarden doesn’t do this quite as well as I’d like. If you open a new online account, you need to enter or copy-paste your new login information into Bitwarden manually. It has a powerful password generator, but you need to manually navigate to the right tab, operate it, and paste the result into the relevant field.
Accessing sites you already have an account for is also slightly cumbersome. You need to right-click the field, access the contextual menu, find the Bitwarden entry, and then choose auto-fill. Sure, it’s not as bad as copy-pasting, but there are better ways to handle this.
As much as I like Bitwarden, I feel it drops the ball here, at least a little. It could be a lot smoother, for one, and for another, Safari users can’t use it at all. They’ll have to copy and paste every password.
Oddly enough, autofill works a lot better on the mobile app for Android, where any site you want to access has a pop-up you simply need to tap. It works the same as any other password manager. On top of that, Bitwarden’s interface translates really well to the small screen, too.
Is Bitwarden Safe?
Though the user experience may be a bit clunky at times, it may be worth it for its security. Like all password managers, it stands and falls by how safe it keeps your data—which is why you should stop using LastPass since it’s been victim to more than a few breaches.
Bitwarden’s reputation for security banks hard on two pillars. The first is the fact that its code is open-source: literally anybody can go to Bitwarden’s GitHub page and inspect it. For most of us, this will likely be no more than an exercise of looking at all the pretty nonsense, but security professionals can check Bitwarden’s code for errors and suggest improvements.
This is the big reason why people use open-source software: with people from all over working together, you can create much more powerful programs than by just having a single team on it. With thousands of eyes on the way it works, we can assume that Bitwarden is always up to date and safe to use.
The other pillar is that Bitwarden undergoes regular security audits. The latest, at the time writing, was done in 2022 by security firm Cure53, with the one from the year before conducted by Insight Risk Consulting. Having firms like this underwrite Bitwarden’s security is a massive green flag since they are reputable firms that don’t use a pay-to-play model like some do—we go over some of the shady stuff going on in that industry in my article on whether you should trust VPNs.
Should You Sign Up for Bitwarden?
Choosing whether or not Bitwarden is the right fit for you depends on a few factors. Security isn’t a concern, thankfully, but the ease of use and price are. The way I see it, Bitwarden offers a free experience—or a very cheap one—but offers a user experience that’s not quite as smooth as I’d like.
As much as I like Bitwarden’s interface, the clunky autofill and adding of new accounts is a little too annoying for me. I’d rather pay a little more and have that handled for me more or less automatically, without copy-pasting or contextual menus. If you’re not too bothered by that, though, I definitely recommend you check Bitwarden out; there’s no way you’re going to get a better deal than this.
Bitwarden Password Manager
- Great free plan
- Cheap paid plans
- Good organization features
- Some features are a bit clunky
- Interface is kind of old-school