Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can • Hacker News Board

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#111

Post by RHSeeger » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:12 PM UTC

hnarn wrote: post #107

9x39 wrote: post #77

Serious question - how come free is a requirement for a password manager? Everyone's gotta eat, including the maintainers of password managers. Tech has generous TC, lots of high-end laptops and phones worth thousands, AI & cloud spend, and yet the only acceptable price for secrets management is $0 it seems at times.

It’s about the backpedaling. No one says it has to be free, they said that. They just have to keep their promise.

And, honestly, if they came out with a statement that said (effectively), "Look, we're losing money here... we just _can't_ support free going forward. Here's our plan" that would be understandable. Sometimes you have a plan/goal, and you realize later that you were wrong and things need to change. But that's not what they did.

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#112

Post by anonymousab » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

craigmart wrote: post #48

This is an incredible overraction over a minor change that did not even happen. You can still find "Always free" in the pricing line of the very same page everyone keeps linking as proof https://bitwarden.com/products/personal/#whats-the-differenc... Edit: it actually disappeared for some time but they put it back on May 18 snapshot from May 15: https://web.archive.org/web/20260515190646/https://bitwarden... snapshot…

It is not an overreaction at all to them replacing the principled leader who promised things with the vulture leader whose job and job history is primarily to enshittify things and sell them off.

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#113

Post by esseph » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

craigmart wrote: post #67

Angostura wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it did happen - and then unhappened when people noticed.

I had checked as soon as I found out about the news the other day and it was there. I just checked on wayback machine and you're right, it was removed for some time. However, if they're willing to put back that claim immediately, I doubt that their intention was to drop the free plan anytime soon, but probably it was to incentivize people to use the paid plans. Enshittification must happen sooner or later afterall, b…

> Enshittification must happen sooner or later afterall

There are a fair amount of multi-hundred year old companies out there.

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#114

Post by marssaxman » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:18 PM UTC

cjs_ac wrote: post #19

I store my passwords using this: https://www.passwordstore.org/ It's a shell script that stores passwords in a git repository, containing one file per entry. The files are encrypted using a GPG key. Because it's just a git repository, you can synchronise it between devices using whatever infrastructure you want. I use a FOSS client for it on iOS, and there was one for Android before I got an iPhone.

Thanks for the pointer. I use a similar system, but hadn't thought to put the password directory into a git repo.

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#115

Post by blablabla123 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

The last months didn't make Bitwarden look very good. On the other hand, what about the competition? Sure there's KeePassXC but that's essentially local. Bitwarden even has Send to quickly share with anyone.

I might self-host something at some point. But even choosing something seems a menial task, not to speak of setting it actually up...

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#116

Post by throawayonthe » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

ktm5j wrote: post #30

MostlyStable wrote: post #11

While I'm not _happy_ about the messaging changes, those alone are not enough to do more than start paying closer attention. I highly, highly doubt that vault export would be the first meaningful feature change, and so I think there will be stronger signals of actual issues before then. As I understand it, so far the only actual change is an announced increase in prices. Obviously, from the consumer perspective, chea…

I hear you, but I feel like it's a better safe than sorry situation. Exporting your passwords takes two seconds. I think you can export to an encrypted file, but I just did a plain-text json file and gpg'd it. Can't hurt to play it safe.

if you have to do the 'encrypt single plaintext file' dance at least use age[0] in 2026

[0] https://age-encryption.org/

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#117

Post by aryan14 » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

blablabla123 wrote: post #115

The last months didn't make Bitwarden look very good. On the other hand, what about the competition? Sure there's KeePassXC but that's essentially local. Bitwarden even has Send to quickly share with anyone. I might self-host something at some point. But even choosing something seems a menial task, not to speak of setting it actually up...

You can host your keepass db file anywhere you like, whether that’s google drive or on a hard drive.

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#118

Post by halJordan » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

craigmart wrote: post #48

This is an incredible overraction over a minor change that did not even happen. You can still find "Always free" in the pricing line of the very same page everyone keeps linking as proof https://bitwarden.com/products/personal/#whats-the-differenc... Edit: it actually disappeared for some time but they put it back on May 18 snapshot from May 15: https://web.archive.org/web/20260515190646/https://bitwarden... snapshot…

I dont think its an over reaction. It's pretty common to lock in users by removing or imposing cost on exports. Having an export from today is a lot better than having nothing in 5 years when bitwarden disables exports

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#119

Post by omnimus » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

arikrahman wrote: post #106

scrollop wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should try hosting it yourself in docker. Absurdly easy to do if you get an llm to do it and it works very, very well. Hope they don't alter self hosting it.

You can get rid of the element of hope by using KeepassXC and syncthing. Bonus is you can use this FOSS stack completely offline.

And not be able to use it on your phone or share it with people you work with.

Vaultwarden is the way. Easy to host docker. Solid. And if bitwarden blocks the clients there will be a fork.

It's leading to it anyway.

Re: Get your passwords out of Bitwarden while you still can

#120

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 21, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

culi wrote: post #88

Terr_ wrote: post #41

So I have an admission here: I keep seeing HN stuff about these networked password managers and I don't quite understand the appeal. Is it because everybody else is swapping between several different computers, and you need the synchronization? I just have everything in KeepassXC, and the ciphertext is subject to the same kind of backup regime I use for other files, [edit: and also additionally] a copy kept on a USB…

USB stick in your pocket sounds nice but what happens when you drop your keys and it cracks or you get caught in a rain storm and it gets soaked?

[deleted]