Good post. I switched from Bitwarden to KeepassXC / KeepassDX / Syncthing across my Android phone, Linux PC, and Windows PC. This was the setup I had prior to using Bitwarden for the first time. The Keepass experience is significantly better these days! Importing from Bitwarden is trivial too. Recommended!

I don't care about raising prices, I'm worried about the new CEO having a PE mindset. That means Bitwarden will now focus on extracting value while the product stagnates and degrades in quality. Time to jump ship before their security and quality goes down the drain.

Thank you for this post/link. I have been side eyeing Bitwarden since they started ensh*ttifying the desktop UX last year to make it more like everything else and take up too much space. It had been working perfectly well for browser autofill - super fast and staying out of the way. Now it is bloated white space, slow, standardized UX elements like any SaaS built by AI. Will check out Vaultwarden, Proton Pass, Keepass, I guess. But sadly - yet another tool that worked perfectly well that was ruined in contempt of its own users (LastPass, Authy, Google Reader, etc - the list goes on)

Ah damn. I've only recently moved in to Bitwarden - paid - largely on the basis of a multiple-user shared vault and emergency grants to personal vaults.

I'd really, really like them to not to ruin it or make it massively more expensive.

Thank you for pushing me to migrate away from Bitwarden. I've used them for years but I was moving away slowly; now I've moved.

After the LastPass fiasco I switched to selfhosting a password manager (bw).

Rapidly starting to think even a vibecoded solution may be a better plan relying on commercial options. High risk of don’t roll your own crypto mistakes but realistically that’s not the threat model here anymore for the random individual. It’s online breaches or perhaps a wrench attack not highly skilled crypto adversary. Plus there are probably ready made crypto modules so wouldn’t be a true handroll

Lately I've been scrutinizing Bitwarden after discovering a long history of memory leak problems in the GitHub issue tracker. It's an extention I use with all of my browsers. It seems to use an unusually high amount of RAM on Safari and I suspect it's why RAM just never stops growing in MS Edge.

Overall it's not a problem for me if Bitwarden wants more money, but I have to draw the line at replacing top leadership with randoms from private equity and secret price hikes. I'm glad this is being highlighted and it's motivating me even more to find suitable FOSS-friendly alternative.

It still says "Always free" on the website for me. It's both on the billing page on the page linked in the article.

I do share the concerns though. The change in leadership, the poor transparency, 100% price increase and the quiet change in core values.

I was happy paying $10 yearly for Bitwarden. I'm still okay with $20 but there's a seed of doubt.

Enshittification is properly viewed as a cybersecurity risk, a category of insider threat. You defend against it, when possible, by using open source software and open, documented file formats. That way, if open source enshittifies, the community can defend by forking. I’m so grateful for KeepassXC.

Not disputing the overall feeling about the changes at Bitwarden but "Always free" phrase is still actually there if you're creating a personal Free account.

I use BitWarden because I'd never trust a password manager with close source clients. Before BitWarden I used a local manager: BitWarden made my life easier.

The web interface I'd never use: I have no guarantee that my passphrase does not leave my computer. Same for the import feature: this also requires the passphrase to be sent to their servers.

Needless to say I move to the next ethical e2ee password manager if BitWarden turns it's back on open source.

funny, I just changed to bitwarden from 1-password after they had a big price increase (I probably otherwise would have been a lifetime customer if it could have been a leave it and never think about it again for the next 40 years deal).

I'm not too worried, if bitwarden changes their price somebody is going to vibecode a decent enough solution for pennies on the dollar, or there's always apples built-in product.

I don't see the problem here. It's a great product and if they want to make money then I don't mind. If it's too expensive, and they hike the price to something ridiculous then I'll vote with my wallet.

I don't think these companies are obligated to run a free tier. Someone has to pay the infra. It's a little shady that they didn't announce any of this though. But bitwarden is open source and you can host it all yourself

This feels more like an expectation management problem than a product problem.

what are some bitwarden alternatives?

This is terrifying, but I couldn't help myself from frustration at the LLM writing that only worsened over the course of the post. Bloggers, it's not subtle. Please, stop, or at least disclose it.

curious whether "always free" is only marketing or actually has some legal implications

Well the CEO has released a blog post about having an "always" free version. So the people crying here can stop, unless you want to whine/rant more.

https://bitwarden.com/blog/my-first-100-days-at-bitwarden/