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Bitwarden vs HashiCorp Vault comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 16, 2024

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

Bitwarden
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
9th
Average Rating
9.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
HashiCorp Vault
Ranking in Enterprise Password Managers
4th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Secrets Management Tools (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of January 2026, in the Enterprise Password Managers category, the mindshare of Bitwarden is 5.9%, up from 4.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of HashiCorp Vault is 7.7%, down from 13.2% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Enterprise Password Managers Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
HashiCorp Vault7.7%
Bitwarden5.9%
Other86.4%
Enterprise Password Managers
 

Featured Reviews

AF
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.
Manish Indupuri - PeerSpot reviewer
senior DevOps engineer at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Centralized secret management has strengthened security and simplified compliance across cloud-native environments
Configuring HashiCorp Vault since we are mainly using it in Kubernetes or OpenShift clusters took some time and effort to align with our deployment. The initial setup can be a little confusing and complex for someone who is newer. However, it is not impossible to achieve, but it will take some time to understand the product. The ACLs within HashiCorp Vault, such as policies and AppRole authentication, were not intuitive at first. However, we slowly became habituated to the product once we began using it. Once we moved past the learning curve of these challenges, HashiCorp Vault becomes a critical security layer of our workloads. The only minor challenge is the initial setup complexity, especially for teams new to HashiCorp Vault's authentication methods and storage backends. Other than that, it works flawlessly.

Quotes from Members

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

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."
"The product has a very friendly community."
"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."
"Having all the passwords in one place is helpful."
"The customer service and support are good. The technician is on time and the follow-up is amazing."
"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."
"For me, the most valuable features include that it's easy to manage and maintain the password API for retrieving passwords and other things."
"HashiCorp Vault has reduced the workload regarding rotating secrets and securely managing them."
"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is that it's an open source solution. Second, it's cloud agnostic, so it's very easy to maintain and control, which is why we prefer HashiCorp."
"Using HashiCorp Vault has led to measurable changes, particularly in secret management and cost optimizations."
"It is a good product to consider for companies who are looking to build on-premise or hybrid infrastructure."
"The most valuable feature of HashiCorp Vault is version control."
"HashiCorp Vault has positively impacted my organization by streamlining access and secret management."
"HashiCorp Vault has positively impacted security governance that we have by greatly reducing the risk of a leak and then a bypass, but overall, it's increased the security of our organization."
 

Cons

"The product could be cheaper."
"It would be ideal if the application could be seamlessly integrated into our open-source software, especially for the purpose of enabling straightforward logging."
"Enhancing the tool by including additional security variables would be a valuable improvement."
"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 solution should be made more secure as it has the banking sector and assets saved."
"I would like to log in with a master account using a passkey, that would be easy."
"The product must be a bit more unified and refined."
"One of the challenges we had was that we used a really old version, so part of what we plan for this year is to migrate it to at least a supported version."
"The documentation is very general; it should have more examples and more use cases."
"The onboarding is a challenge. It should be more self-service, but it involves reviews and approvals."
"HashiCorp Vault is quite complex to use for new users and has a steep learning curve; I would consider the tool very good for highly advanced teams who manage huge numbers of credentials, but it's probably not very appropriate for smaller teams with maybe less experience using vaults such as this."
"An improvement needed is the ability for auto-initialization. There should be an inbuilt option for automatic initialization rather than running it manually."
"I would like to see better integration of HashiCorp Vault with SAP products."
"While not a missing feature, I feel that the enterprise license is expensive, especially for some of the smaller use cases."
"There could be a plugin for the database to change the secret automatically. It would be an efficient feature for password security."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I use a free version and it works well for me."
"It is an open-source tool."
"The solution is reasonably priced."
"The product is not costly. I pay $10 per month."
"In our region, it comes at an affordable price."
"The solution's cost is reasonable."
"The product is expensive."
"I am using the open-source version of Vault and I would have to buy a license if I want to get support."
"The AWS version is much cheaper than HashiCorp Vault."
"It could do everything we wanted it to do and it is brilliant, but it is super pricey. To be fair to HashiCorp, we drove the price up with our requirements around resiliency. Because of the nature of our company, we don't really operate in the cloud."
"In my case, the open-source version works well. It's advisable for small to medium-scale organizations, but for large-scale organizations, you should go with the enterprise version."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
9%
Comms Service Provider
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
9%
Government
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise16
 

Questions from the Community

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?
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. ...
What is your primary use case for Bitwarden?
I use it to log in to my private websites, accounts, and banking information.
Which is better - HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager?
HashiCorp Vault was designed with your needs in mind. One of the features that makes this evident is its ability to work as both a cloud-agnostic and a multi-cloud solution. As a cloud-agnostic sol...
What do you like most about HashiCorp Vault?
The feature I find most beneficial in HashiCorp Vault is the secret engine. It integrates smoothly with many applications, making it easy to set up and implement quickly. This allows you to test it...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for HashiCorp Vault?
The experience with pricing, setup costs, and licensing for HashiCorp Vault is generally managed by the client. They take care of all those aspects, and after onboarding HashiCorp Vault for our app...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
Adobe, SAP Ariba, Citadel, Spaceflight, Cruise
Find out what your peers are saying about Bitwarden vs. HashiCorp Vault and other solutions. Updated: December 2025.
881,114 professionals have used our research since 2012.