Review: Bitwarden Password Manager

A password manager makes creating strong passwords—and remembering them!—easy. Good password managers will generate strong passwords for you, store them in a secure vault and log you into websites, all without you doing anything. There are dozens of cloud-based password managers on the market, but in my testing one consistently rises to the top—Bitwarden.

Bitwarden is open source, secure, works across platforms, and offers an intuitive workflow that makes it easy to manage your passwords across all your devices. The free plan makes a good, basic, but secure password manager, and Bitwarden’s premium features cost less than the competition.

The Open Source Advantage

The code that runs Bitwarden is open source. That means it’s freely available for anyone to inspect, attack, seek out flaws, and report them. In theory, the more eyes on the code, the more airtight it becomes. None of the other major cloud-based password managers out there are open source. While this doesn’t make Bitwarden invulnerable, the company has never had a breach.

Like most password managers, Bitwarden uses AES-256 encryption to protect your data. Your passwords are only ever unencrypted on your own devices. Bitwarden maintains a zero-knowledge system. All your usernames, passwords, URLs, notes, and other vault data are end-to-end encrypted, which means that Bitwarden cannot see or access any of your data.

To further enhance its security standing, Bitwarden is regularly audited by third-parties to ensure it’s secure. The most recent overall test is from 2023, when the Cure53 security firm did a source code audit and penetration test of the core application and library. Individual platform apps and the web interface have also been audited, all of which leaves me feeling pretty good about the security behind Bitwarden. It’s also worth noting that, if you know what you’re doing, you can install Bitwarden’s backend code on your own server for self-hosting if you prefer to run your own cloud.

Using Bitwarden

All the security in the world is kinda useless, though, if actually using the apps and services isn’t a good experience. Fortunately, Bitwarden has a mostly smooth workflow that integrates well with different platforms and takes advantage of standardized security features like passkeys. You can even log into Bitwarden with a passkey, which means you don’t even need to use your username or password to open your vault.

There are apps for Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, as well as extensions for all major web browsers. I’ve used Bitwarden on every platform and in every browser. Yes, even Opera. At the start of 2025, Bitwarden switched to native apps for Android and iOS. I never minded the old app, but this is decidedly faster in my testing (at least on Android. The final iOS version is not out of beta yet).

Bitwarden also recently revamped its browser extension, giving it a cleaner look with more customization options to tailor the user experience to fit your workflow. There’s a new compact mode that saves a bit of space, and light and dark themes to fit with your PC’s theme.