BeyondTrust Password Safe vs Bitwarden comparison

BeyondTrust Password Safe

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

BeyondTrust Password Safe and Bitwarden compete in the password management category. BeyondTrust seems to have the upper hand for enterprise-level needs due to its advanced management capabilities, while Bitwarden stands out for its simplicity and cost-effectiveness for individual and small team use.

Features: BeyondTrust Password Safe offers session recording, password rotation, and the Smart Rules feature for automatic onboarding, along with strong asset management capabilities. Bitwarden provides features like emergency access, ease of use, and an open-source nature, making it ideal for personal use and smaller teams.

Room for Improvement: BeyondTrust Password Safe could better its documentation, ease integration complexities, and improve its user interface. Enhancing database management and standardizing documentation are other areas for growth. Bitwarden might improve device syncing and integration with open-source tools. Streamlining credential duplication and enhancing accessibility features could broaden its usability.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: BeyondTrust Password Safe offers various deployment options, but users find technical support and deployment complex due to documentation and integration issues. Bitwarden, mainly deployed on-premises, is praised for its good support and simple deployment processes, although some users see room for service improvements.

Pricing and ROI: BeyondTrust Password Safe is perceived as expensive, though more affordable than some competitors like CyberArk. The pricing is asset-based, providing value for organizations with numerous systems, while ROI is realized through enhanced security and compliance. Bitwarden is cost-effective, offering a premium plan at $10 per year for individuals, which includes its valuable emergency access feature, making it ideal for cost-conscious individuals and small businesses.

To learn more, read our detailed BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. Bitwarden Report (Updated: February 2026).

BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. Bitwarden

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

BeyondTrust Password Safe

Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers

8th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

6.9

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Privileged Access Management (PAM) (9th)

Bitwarden

Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers

9th

Average Rating

9.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.5

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of BeyondTrust Password Safe is 3.0%, down from 3.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Bitwarden is 5.4%, up from 4.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Enterprise Password Managers Market Share Distribution
Product	Market Share (%)
BeyondTrust Password Safe	3.0%
Bitwarden	5.4%
Other	91.6%

Enterprise Password Managers

Featured Reviews

PawanShirose

Associate Security Consultant at CyberSec Consulting

Has enabled bulk onboarding and password rotation while ensuring secure privilege management

I have faced stability issues when upgrading BeyondTrust Password Safe solution. The upgrade process can be lengthy compared to other modules. For example, upgrading the appliance and reconfiguring HA is easier in PRA. However, in BeyondTrust Password Safe, the upgrade activity can take longer, and I have occasionally experienced being stuck during appliance version upgrades, sometimes duplicating the upgrade. Regarding additional features, we have good features in BeyondTrust Password Safe compared to other modules, such as Secret Safe to secure secrets and the check-in, check-out functionality. We already have the main features, but I think it would be helpful if BeyondTrust implemented a heartbeat check feature on the privileged account level. This feature would allow PAM to check the credentials of privileged accounts, indicating if they are correct or not, showing if the heartbeat has failed if they are wrong.

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Antonio_Fernandez

Chief Information Technology at a consultancy with 51-200 employees

Offers ease of use and app easily shows the password when I go to any application

The functionality to fully utilize passkeys could be improved. The last time I spoke to support, they said the development team was working on it. So far, it's working okay on my personal devices. I would like to log in with a master account using a passkey, that would be easy. The product is really great. I just miss the functionality to log in to Bitwarden using a passkey.

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Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Pros

"BeyondTrust Password Safe has good reporting and Smart Rules which makes it convenient. Though Smart Rules are convenient, those who do not have much experience with such things may find it difficult to understand how these things work. Otherwise, I find Smart Rules very convenient to work with."

"Screen recording is valuable, and integration with applications is easy. We can customize whatever we want. We did a lot of application integration using scripting."

"I rate BeyondTrust Password Safe as an overall 10 out of 10."

"Overall, I rate the solution ten out of ten."

"Its number one feature is discovery. The discovery engine in BeyondTrust is off the charts. When they perform a discovery, you know everything there is about a server, including what software is installed. For example, if you want to group all of your database servers together, you can do that by using discovery and Smart Rules. If a server has Microsoft SQL installed, it gets put into a group based on a Smart Rule. It makes it very easy to determine what is what in your environment. As organizations grow or acquire other companies and merge, they lose track of what they have. BeyondTrust can help you throw a rope around it very rapidly."

"I find that BeyondTrust Password Safe is a very effective application for password management."

"I like the session recording feature. I also like the analytics and reports. You can pull up a report, and the UI is fantastic. The system is recording when nobody's there, so we have a record of what's happening."

"The time-saving benefits come from no longer having to remember multiple device passwords."

More BeyondTrust Password Safe pros

"Its integration capabilities and versatility, like the ability to securely save passwords and other critical information, make it incredibly useful."

"It is open source and the premium package is reasonable."

"Having all the passwords in one place is helpful."

"The product has a very friendly community."

"The customer service and support are good. The technician is on time and the follow-up is amazing."

"In our organization, we use Bitwarden for managing product credentials. Bitwarden's collection feature enables us to securely create and store credentials, and we can easily provide team members with access to the relevant collections."

"I've found something else that is extremely valuable. Bitwarden refers to it as "emergency access". It's essentially a digital legacy where you can assign approved users who can request access. If you don't decline within a certain timeframe, they can access it in case you're incapacitated or deceased. When I last checked, only a few services offered this feature. Bitwarden had the simplest and best implementation."

Cons

"If they can create a single platform to create a connector, it would be better than using the RBS server."

"From the client perspective, they usually complain that the RDP session disconnects without error notifications."

"We'd like to have incremental backups to ensure the solution's information is protected regularly."

"The initial server implementation tasks could be easier to process."

"When we deploy BeyondTrust, we have to deploy our own database on a SQL server. It doesn't deploy the database. I wish BeyondTrust packages the whole solution in one and includes the MySQL database so that when you deploy it, it deploys everything for you. BeyondTrust gives you the software, but you are in charge of setting up your own database. It is a single appliance just for the BeyondTrust portion but not the database. Unless that has changed in later releases, you have to set up your own database for BeyondTrust Password Safe. I find that part complex because we then need the expertise and help of the database team to set it up, which also increases the deployment time. If they can deploy the database, it will reduce the deployment time."

"There is a limited capacity on the appliance, which I wasn't informed about when I purchased the product. I can have a maximum of 150 rules per appliance; any more than that and rule processing becomes very complex, especially regarding password revision. Hitting a capacity limit you don't know about can be problematic. Ideally, we would not have a limited capacity, allowing us to be in a completely managed state with password rotation for every service account, not just the highly privileged ones."

"The effectiveness of BeyondTrust Password Safe's session management capabilities for SSH and RDP is pretty much robust, but it needs more improvement for other applications and web-based applications."

"If they can create a single platform to create a connector, it would be better than using the RBS server."

More BeyondTrust Password Safe cons

"It would be ideal if the application could be seamlessly integrated into our open-source software, especially for the purpose of enabling straightforward logging."

"I would like to log in with a master account using a passkey, that would be easy."

"Enhancing the tool by including additional security variables would be a valuable improvement."

"The solution should be made more secure as it has the banking sector and assets saved."

"The product must be a bit more unified and refined."

"I often use another password manager as well to keep my passwords separate, ensuring redundancy. But one simple thing Bitwarden could improve is providing an option to duplicate credentials. Often, you're creating many sets of credentials for the same thing. If they all have the same information, notes, login, collection, and naming - all you're changing is the password. The ability to duplicate credential records quickly would be a big win. It doesn't do that right now."

"The product could be cheaper."

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing of BeyondTrust is very good as compared to other products. That was the main reason we decided to go with BeyondTrust at first."

"We just pay for Password Safe. Session management is included, but we don't use it. There aren't any additional costs besides the standard licensing fees. We pay for an annual license."

"This solution is not cheap—it's a very expensive solution. Very, very expensive compared to the features and functions that they offer."

"At the time, BeyondTrust was significantly cheaper than CyberArk. Pricing-wise, if I remember correctly, it goes by assets. The pricing was negotiated for our instances based on the number of assets that we onboard into the system. It is a little different from CyberArk, where the pricing is by users. So, it depends. If you have a lot of assets, it can get very expensive."

"It has subscription-based licensing. BeyondTrust is three times less expensive than CyberArk."

"The pricing structure is better than the competitors. It's much cheaper than CyberArk. They do the licensing on the basis of assets, not on the number of users. For CyberArk, they base the licensing on the number of users, and they have an expensive model of pricing. BeyondTrust has a cheaper model."

"I would rate the pricing a seven out of ten, where one is cheap and ten is expensive."

"When you buy Password Safe and perform your initial Discovery, you have all these servers that are added to your assets in BeyondTrust, but you're not using a license until you actually start managing the systems. BeyondTrust's licensing is based on the systems when they're managed, which means when an administrator is able to connect to the server through BeyondTrust with a managed account. There would be a privileged account on the endpoint when the licensing starts. A significant advantage to that is that there are many organizations that want to evaluate their environment prior to automatic management."

More BeyondTrust Password Safe pricing and cost advice

"In our region, it comes at an affordable price."

"The solution is reasonably priced."

"It is an open-source tool."

"I use a free version and it works well for me."

"The product is not costly. I pay $10 per month."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

22%

Manufacturing Company

Computer Software Company

Healthcare Company

Computer Software Company

Government

Comms Service Provider

Healthcare Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	13
Midsize Enterprise	5
Large Enterprise	10

By reviewers
Company Size	Count
Small Business	5
Large Enterprise	3

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for BeyondTrust Password Safe?

My experience with BeyondTrust Password Safe's pricing, setup cost, and licensing has been positive, primarily due to its asset-based licensing model. This is a significant advantage for us because...

What needs improvement with BeyondTrust Password Safe?

What is your primary use case for BeyondTrust Password Safe?

I am working on both BeyondTrust Password Safe and the PRA (Privileged Remote Access). I have three years plus experience working with BeyondTrust Password Safe solution, and I have hands-on, good ...

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Bitwarden?

The product is not costly. I pay $10 per month. I use the basic plan, so I don't need the higher plan with more compliance features.

What needs improvement with Bitwarden?

What is your primary use case for Bitwarden?

I use it to log in to my private websites, accounts, and banking information.

CyberArk Privileged Access Manager vs BeyondTrust Password Safe

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Product Reports

BeyondTrust Password Safe

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Also Known As

BeyondTrust PowerBroker Password Safe

No data available

Overview

Beyond Trust Password Safe is an automated solution that combines password and privileged session management into a single platform. Password Safe delivers secure access control, auditing, alerting, recording, and monitoring.

This free and open-source password manager supports Windows and Linux, and some ports are available for other platforms as well. Their proprietary algorithm, Twofish, is considered highly secure, with the advantage that it is not affiliated with NIST. The Twofish algorithm secures the data while keys are delivered using SHA-256 authentication.

The application is easy to use, and you can download the Windows app from several sites. Additionally, the application is available in 14 languages.

Beyond Trust Password Safe Key Features

Continuous automated account discovery: Scan, identify and profile assets with the discovery engine. The solution has dynamic categorization that enables the automated onboarding of assets into groups.
Application-to-application password management: Password Safe offers an adaptable API interface including an unlimited number of password caches, therefore providing scalability and redundancy.
Secure SSH key management: The system automatically rotates SSH keys to enforce granular access control and workflow. Private keys securely log users onto systems without exposing them.
Adaptive access control: Evaluates context and provides access requests by considering factors such as time of access and location to determine the user’s authorization level.
Enhanced privileged session management: Admins can record, lock, and document suspicious behavior without disrupting productivity by managing sessions live.
Advanced privileged threat analytics: Password Safe monitors assets and user behavior every day, analyzing what are normal patterns and detecting deviations.
Multi-factor authentication: Password Safe supports 2FA (two-factor authentication) using Yubikey 4, Nano, or Neo.

What can you do with Password Safe?

Cross-device and cross-platform syncing: You can safely store encrypted password files online, where you can access them via Password Safe-compatible apps.
Drag and drop password: Password Safe has a “Dragbar,” which you can use to complete forms by dragging and dropping icons over the form - for example, passwords, usernames, design tiles, and emails.
Autotype: With Password Safe, when you click on a web page or login box, the autotype feature will try to fill in your credentials automatically for you.
Import and export: You can import passwords from text, XML, or CSV fails. You can also export passwords in text, XML, and the PSAFE format.
Password generator: Generate secure passwords by using the algorithm. You can also define your password rules.

Beyond Trust Password Safe Benefits

Controls third-party access: Password Safe secures the connection and automatically checks privileged credentials. The solution records all sessions.
Uses context to determine access: Password Safe considers risk factors like location, day, or time of access and uses them to adjust the permissions and privileges of each user.
Manages access for privileged and non-privileged accounts: By integrating with SailPoint IdentityIQ, Password Safe effectively manages user access for privileged as well as non-privileged accounts.
Reduces cloud risk: Password Safe simplifies secure storage and session management. It supports major cloud providers such as Azure, Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and GoGrid. It also supports social networks - Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Integrates password and privilege management: Integrates with Endpoint Privilege Management to control the resources users can access and the actions they are allowed to take

Reviews from Real Users

A PAM Architect at a tech services company says, "BeyondTrust Password Safe's features that I have found most valuable are really those that are knitted in. That is their Smart Rules and Smart Groups, where you design your administration model so you create your AD groups and your asset groups, and configure Password Safe."

An I.S. Architect at a insurance company mentions that "Session recording, password rotation, and password vaulting are the most valuable features."

"One of the most valuable features is that this is a product designed with enterprises in mind," adds a Cybersecurity Architect at a tech vendor.

BeyondTrust

Bitwarden stands out with its open-source platform and cost-effective premium options, offering password suggestions and alerts, secure sharing via the "send" feature, and reliable performance. Its digital legacy management through emergency access is unmatched at its price.

Bitwarden provides an open-source platform suitable for individual and team password management. Users benefit from password suggestions and alerts, secure sharing, and constant performance reliability. Emergency access sets Bitwarden apart by allowing digital legacy management. The mobile app offers quick password autofill and vault health reports, enhancing usability. Challenges include improving security features, better integration of automated functions, and reducing costs relative to competitors. Users value the open-source nature, cross-platform compatibility, and self-hosting capabilities, which ensure portability and permissions management.

What are Bitwarden's Key Features?

Open-Source Platform: Ensures transparency and flexibility.
Emergency Access: Provides digital legacy management.
Password Suggestions and Alerts: Enhances password security.
Secure Sharing: Allows safe information exchange.
Mobile App Usability: Offers quick password autofill.

What Benefits Should Users Look for in Reviews?

Reliability: Consistent performance across devices.
Cost-Effectiveness: Competitive pricing for the features offered.
Cross-Platform Compatibility: Operates on multiple devices and systems.
Flexibility with Self-Hosting: Control over data storage and management.
Digital Legacy Management: Provides access to accounts in emergencies.

In industries where data security is crucial, Bitwarden's open-source platform is favored for managing sensitive credentials, allowing secure information sharing among team members. Its compatibility with different platforms and self-hosting options provides the flexibility and control needed to maintain data security without vendor lock-in.

Sample Customers

Aera Energy LLC, Care New England, James Madison University

Information Not Available

BeyondTrust Password Safe vs. Bitwarden