1Password raised prices again on March 27, 2026 — Families went from $59.88 to $71.88 a year, the latest in a steady climb for a vault you don’t actually control. Vaultwarden is a lightweight, self-hosted server that speaks the Bitwarden protocol, so every official Bitwarden app on every platform connects to it — except the data lives on a box you own and the bill is whatever your server costs.

What works the same

You keep the things that make a password manager worth using: end-to-end encrypted vaults, browser extensions and mobile apps for autofill, passkeys, TOTP codes, secure notes, and organization sharing for a family or team. Because the clients are the stock Bitwarden ones, the day-to-day experience is identical — Vaultwarden just replaces the server they sync to.

What you give up

You’re now the administrator. There’s no vendor to call, no managed uptime, no hand-holding — if your server goes down, sync goes with it (local caches still work). Vaultwarden is a community reimplementation, not the official Bitwarden server, so a brand-new feature can lag by weeks. You also need a basic grasp of Docker, HTTPS and backups.

The math

1Password Families: $71.88/yr after the March 2026 hike; Individual $35.88/yr. Vaultwarden: $0 software, running in about 10 MB of RAM on a $4–6/mo VPS — roughly $48–72/yr, and often free if it shares a server you already run. Prefer zero maintenance? Hosted Bitwarden is $10/yr for the same clients. Either path stops the annual 1Password increase.

Migration — time & effort

Plan a couple of hours. Export your 1Password vault (.1pux or CSV), spin up Vaultwarden with Docker behind HTTPS, then import the file through any Bitwarden client. Point your browser extensions and phones at your server URL, confirm a few logins and passkeys carried over, and delete the export file. Keep 1Password active for a week as a safety net before you cancel.