Password Management · head-to-head
Bitwarden vs Passbolt
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Bitwarden 3.5/5 and Passbolt 2.5/5 in Password Management. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 3 of the 6 judges pick Bitwarden and 2 pick Passbolt, 1 calls it a tie. Bitwarden scores higher on 5 of 6 criteria (Audit logs, policies & reporting, SSO, directory sync & provisioning, Sharing, roles & recovery, plus 2 more). Passbolt scores higher on 1 of 6 criteria (European sovereignty). Provenance — Bitwarden: Rest of world, United States; Passbolt: EU-Made. Ratings are the AI panel’s opinion, formed from public evidence: how scores are made.
The short answer
Bitwarden's means run higher on audit and policy (7.7 vs 5.0), identity integration (7.3 vs 4.7), sharing and access control (6.7 vs 4.7), deployment and portability (7.0 vs 5.8) and pricing transparency (5.5 vs 2.5), with the lean 6 to 0 on the first, second and last. Passbolt leads sovereignty 6.0 vs 3.7, 5 leans to 1. Security architecture splits: Bitwarden's mean is 6.8 vs 6.0, yet 2 judges lean Passbolt, 1 Bitwarden, 3 tie. Weighted totals split too — CISO 6.6 vs 6.5, identity engineer 7.1 vs 0, skeptic 6.2 vs 6 favor Bitwarden; compliance auditor 6.5 vs 5.8 and DevOps engineer 6.8 vs 6.6 favor Passbolt; one judge's totals are not shown. Attributes: Bitwarden — US legal entity, US by default data residency, ownership and subprocessor exposure unknown; Passbolt — LU legal entity, EU only residency, US CLOUD Act reach subprocessor exposure, ownership unknown. Passbolt publishes no prices, and pricing is not weighted in its verdicts.
Choose Bitwarden if
- You need single sign-on over SAML 2.0 and OIDC with three documented decryption paths — identity integration means are 7.3 vs 4.7 and the lean is 6 Bitwarden, 0 Passbolt, 0 tie.
- Your auditors drive the purchase — audit and policy means are 7.7 vs 5.0 and the lean is 6 Bitwarden, 0 Passbolt, 0 tie.
- You must budget from a published per-user price — Bitwarden lists Teams at "$4 per month / per user billed annually" and Enterprise at "$6 per month / per user billed annually"; pricing transparency leans 6 to 0, and no per-user price is published for Passbolt (pricing is not weighted in Passbolt's verdicts).
- Your team relies on documented offboarding and emergency access — sharing and access control leans 5 Bitwarden, 0 Passbolt, 1 tie, and the captured pages for Passbolt give no public information on offboarding or emergency access.
Choose Passbolt if
- Your contract requires a European legal entity and European data residency — Passbolt's attributes read legal entity jurisdiction LU and data residency EU only, and sovereignty leans 5 Passbolt, 1 Bitwarden, 0 tie (means 6.0 vs 3.7).
- You must run air-gapped, or self-host from a Raspberry Pi up to a high-availability setup — the Passbolt verdict documents both, weighed in the sovereignty means of 6.0 vs 3.7 (5 leans to 1).
- Your policy requires open-source code in the paid edition — the security architecture lean is 2 Passbolt, 1 Bitwarden, 3 ties, though Bitwarden's mean is higher at 6.8 vs 6.0.
- Your DevOps engineer owns the decision — the weighted total reads Passbolt 6.8 vs Bitwarden 6.6.
- Your compliance auditor signs off — the weighted total reads Passbolt 6.5 vs Bitwarden 5.8.
Read this comparison as one judge. Each weighs the same scores by what they care about.
The bench's picks
Same scores, different priorities: each judge's weighting applied to both products. The split is the finding.
- The CISO Bitwarden Passbolt picks Bitwarden
- The Identity Engineer Bitwarden Passbolt picks Bitwarden
- The Compliance Auditor Bitwarden Passbolt picks Passbolt
- The SME Owner Bitwarden Passbolt tie
- The DevOps Engineer Bitwarden Passbolt picks Passbolt
- The Skeptic Bitwarden Passbolt picks Bitwarden
Criterion by criterion
| Criterion | Bitwarden | Passbolt |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption model & independent audits | 3.5 of 5 | 3 of 5 |
| Sharing, roles & recovery | 3.5 of 5 | 2.5 of 5 |
| SSO, directory sync & provisioning | 3.5 of 5 | 2.5 of 5 |
| Audit logs, policies & reporting | 4 of 5 | 2.5 of 5 |
| Hosting choice, offline access & export | 3.5 of 5 | 3 of 5 |
| European sovereignty | 2 of 5 | 3 of 5 |
| Criterion | Bitwarden | Passbolt | The bench leans |
|---|---|---|---|
| Encryption model & independent audits | Passbolt, 2 of 6 judges | ||
| Sharing, roles & recovery | Bitwarden, 5 of 6 judges | ||
| SSO, directory sync & provisioning | Bitwarden, 6 of 6 judges | ||
| Audit logs, policies & reporting | Bitwarden, 6 of 6 judges | ||
| Hosting choice, offline access & export | Bitwarden, 1 of 6 judges | ||
| European sovereignty | Passbolt, 5 of 6 judges | ||
| Pricing transparency | no published price | not comparable |
Stars show the bench average per criterion; the lean counts which product each judge scored higher. Open a judge's tab for their reasoning on both sides.
Sovereignty, side by side
| Dimension | Bitwarden | Passbolt |
|---|---|---|
| Legal entity | Incorporated in US | Not determined |
| Ownership | Not determined | Not determined |
| Data residency | Not determined | Not determined |
| Subprocessors | Not determined | US CLOUD Act reach |
Facts, side by side
Only facts both products carry under the same definition — anything else would not be a fair row.
| Compliance · ISMS | ISO27001 ISMS1 | yes · Passbolt SA2 |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting · Provider | Microsoft Azure · Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS)1 | Google Cloud Platform · Belgium · Germany3 |
| Legal · Copyright entity | Bitwarden, Inc.4 | Passbolt SA5 |
| Legal · Entity | 8bit Solutions LLC6 | Passbolt SA7 |
| Product · Account recovery | enterprise · yes1 | yes · yes8 |
| Product · Encryption | PBKDF2 SHA-256 · Argon2id · yes · AES-CBC 256-bit1 | End-to-end encryption; client-side encryption9 |
| Product · Open source | x10 | yes · yes11 |
| Product · Self hosting | yes10 | yes7 |
Questions about Bitwarden and Passbolt
Which is better, Bitwarden or Passbolt?
As of 28 Oct 2026, the panel rates Bitwarden higher: 3.5/5 against 2.5/5. Weighted by what each judge cares about, 3 of the 6 judges pick Bitwarden and 2 pick Passbolt, 1 calls it a tie. Which one fits depends on the criteria that matter to you; the table on this page shows both side by side, and each judge’s reading has its own page. Both were scored by the same AI bench under the same rubric, from public evidence only, as the methodology describes.
Is Bitwarden or Passbolt European?
Bitwarden is not European by provenance (Rest of world, United States). Passbolt is European (EU-Made). Provenance is read from each company’s own legal pages: who builds it and who owns it.