Bitwarden vs Keeper 2026: Pricing, Security Model and Verdict

Bitwarden is the better pick for most companies in 2026: Teams costs $4 per user a month billed yearly and already includes SCIM provisioning, which Keeper reserves for its $6 Enterprise tier. Choose Keeper when an auditor asks for FedRAMP High or FIPS 140-3, or when a team of 5 to 10 wants the cheapest business seat, Business Starter at $2. Prices verified on both vendors' pricing pages on 18 October 2026.

The two products protect a vault the same way at the cryptographic level: encryption and decryption happen on the device, and neither vendor can read the vault. Where they split is the paperwork and the tier map. Keeper sells government-grade authorizations and a catalog of paid add-ons. Bitwarden sells open-source code, self-hosting and a cheaper path to directory provisioning.

Toolradar data: Toolradar, the software directory we run, tracks 37 password managers as of 17 October 2026, and Bitwarden is the most compared of them over the last 90 days, with 501 side-by-side comparisons. That makes Bitwarden the default yardstick for password manager buyers, and the question this page answers is whether Keeper beats it on price or on assurance.

At a glance

Keeper's figures come from Keeper's business pricing page and personal pricing page; Bitwarden's from Bitwarden's pricing page. Both show yearly billing, and both exclude taxes.

Which is cheaper for individuals and families?

Bitwarden, by a wide margin. Premium costs less than half of Keeper Unlimited for one person, and Bitwarden adds a free tier with unlimited passwords, unlimited devices and sharing with one other user. Keeper's pricing pages list no free plan; personal buyers get a 30-day trial and then pay.

The family gap is wider. Bitwarden Families covers six people for $47.88 a year, about $7.98 each. Keeper Family covers five for $91.99, or $18.40 a person, though it includes 10GB of secure file storage, an allowance Bitwarden's pricing page does not state for its family plan. Keeper also sells dark web monitoring separately: BreachWatch costs $26.99 a year for one person and $53.99 for a family, which takes a monitored Keeper household past $145 a year.

What Keeper gives back for the money is polish around the edges: emergency access for estate planning, unlimited shared folders and 24/7 support on the personal plans. If those matter less than the bill, Bitwarden wins this half of the comparison outright. Our best password managers for families ranking covers the other household options, and best free password managers covers what a $0 vault gives up.

Which is cheaper for a business?

At list price the two business ladders mirror each other: the middle and top tiers cost the same per seat on both. The difference is what each tier contains, and that decides the real bill.

Totals multiply the yearly per-user price by the seat count. The Keeper add-ons are priced per user per year: BreachWatch for business $24, Advanced Reporting and Alerts $12 and Compliance Reporting $12, all from Keeper's price data on 18 October 2026.

Three conclusions follow from the table. A team of 10 or fewer pays half as much on Keeper Business Starter, as long as it stays under the 10-user cap. A team that wants the vault to follow its identity provider pays $600 a year less on Bitwarden at 25 users, because SCIM sits one tier lower. And a fully equipped Keeper Enterprise deployment costs two thirds more than the seat price suggests once the reporting add-ons go on.

Keeper's best business perk is a free Family plan for every user from the Business tier up. Bitwarden includes free Families seats only on Enterprise. For a 25-person company that wants to give staff a personal vault, Keeper Business delivers that at $1,200 a year, where Bitwarden needs Enterprise at $1,800. The full tier-by-tier breakdowns are in our Bitwarden pricing and Keeper pricing guides.

Security model: open source vs government authorizations

Both vendors run a zero-knowledge design, and the cryptography is comparable. Keeper generates 256-bit AES keys on the client, derives the key that protects them from the master password with PBKDF2 at 1,000,000 iterations, and uses ECC-256 keys for single sign-on users, according to Keeper's security page. Bitwarden encrypts vault data with AES-CBC 256-bit and derives keys with PBKDF2 SHA-256 or Argon2, according to Bitwarden's compliance page.

The difference an assessor sees is in the evidence each one offers:

• Keeper lists SOC 2 Type 2, ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018, FedRAMP and GovRAMP authorization at the High level, and FIPS 140-3 validation under certificate #4743. Its vulnerability disclosure program runs with Bugcrowd, and penetration tests come from NCC Group and Cybertest.
• Bitwarden lists SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, ISO 27001 and annual HIPAA audits, and states it is pursuing FedRAMP High rather than holding it. Its code is open source on GitHub, so a reviewer can read the client and server instead of trusting a report.

For a federal contractor or a state agency, that settles it: Keeper has the authorization, Bitwarden does not yet. For a private company whose security team prefers to verify code rather than certificates, Bitwarden's open source is the stronger argument, and its SOC 3 report is publicly available.

Hosting follows the same split. Bitwarden stores encrypted data in Microsoft Azure in the US or EU, and Enterprise customers can self-host the whole server. Keeper offers data regions in the US, a US Government Cloud, the EU, Australia, Japan and Canada, as a hosted service. A team that must keep vault data on its own infrastructure has one option here, and it is Bitwarden.

Identity, offboarding and admin

Offboarding is where a password manager earns its seat price, and the tier you need for it differs between the two.

Bitwarden Teams includes directory synchronization and SCIM, so a leaver disabled in Okta or Entra ID loses vault access without a manual step. Passwordless SSO integration, enterprise policies and the admin account recovery workflow wait for Enterprise. Our 1Password vs Bitwarden comparison goes deeper on what Teams leaves out.

Keeper puts SCIM, AD/LDAP provisioning, SSO/SAML, advanced two-factor options and role-based access control together in Enterprise. Business gets shared team folders, delegated administration and the advanced organizational structure, which suits a company with several departments that still provisions users by hand. A company that already runs an identity provider gets automated offboarding one tier cheaper on Bitwarden.

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Where each one falls short

Bitwarden's weakness is the free-vault problem. Staff can open a personal Bitwarden account for nothing and park company passwords in a vault IT does not own, and the admin account recovery workflow is Enterprise only, so on Teams a locked-out user cannot be recovered by an administrator. Its family plan also states no file storage allowance, so a household that keeps scanned documents in the vault has less to plan around.

Keeper's weakness is the add-on model. Dark web monitoring, advanced reporting and compliance reporting are each extra, so the advertised seat understates the deployed cost. Business Starter's 10-user cap forces a jump to Business, at double the seat price, on the eleventh hire, and Enterprise is bought through a quote rather than a card, which slows a small IT team down.

Who should pick which?

Pick Bitwarden if you are an individual or a family watching the bill, a company that wants SCIM without paying for the top tier, or a team that must self-host or review the source code. Pick Keeper if you sell to the US government or a state agency and need FedRAMP or GovRAMP High, if you want FIPS 140-3 validated cryptography on paper, or if you are a team of 5 to 10 that needs nothing beyond a shared vault and an admin console.

At 25 users with SSO the two cost the same, so the decision rests on self-hosting against authorizations. Our Bitwarden review and Keeper review score each one on its own, the best password managers ranking sets both against the field, and NordPass vs Bitwarden covers another common shortlist. Team seat prices across the market sit in our password manager pricing index.

How we compared

Every price on this page was read on 18 October 2026 on the vendors' own pricing pages, in US dollars, at yearly billing: Bitwarden pricing, Keeper business and enterprise pricing and Keeper personal and family pricing. Security and compliance claims come from Keeper's security page and Bitwarden's compliance page, read the same day. Totals multiply list prices by seats and exclude taxes, discounts and quote-only products. Neither vendor's software was installed for this page; it compares what each vendor publishes.

Cite this: Cyberpresso, "Bitwarden vs Keeper 2026: Pricing, Security Model and Verdict", October 2026.

FAQ

Bitwarden vs Keeper: which should I choose in 2026?

Choose Bitwarden for the lower personal and family prices, SCIM on the Teams tier, open-source code and self-hosting. Choose Keeper when you need FedRAMP or GovRAMP High authorization or FIPS 140-3 validation, or when a team of 5 to 10 wants Business Starter at $2 per user a month.

How much does Bitwarden cost compared with Keeper?

For one person, Bitwarden Premium is $19.80 a year and Keeper Unlimited is $42.99. For a family, Bitwarden Families is $47.88 a year for six people and Keeper Family is $91.99 for five. For businesses both charge $4 and $6 per user a month billed yearly at their middle and top tiers.

Is Keeper more secure than Bitwarden?

Neither has a proven edge in cryptography: both encrypt on the device with AES-256 and run a zero-knowledge design. Keeper holds more formal authorizations, including FedRAMP High and FIPS 140-3. Bitwarden publishes its source code and holds SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3 and ISO 27001.

Does Keeper have a free plan like Bitwarden?

Keeper's pricing pages list no free plan, only a 30-day free trial for personal plans and free trials for business plans. Bitwarden's free plan includes unlimited passwords, unlimited devices and sharing with one other user.

Which one includes SSO and SCIM?

Bitwarden includes SCIM and directory sync on Teams and adds SSO on Enterprise. Keeper puts SCIM, AD/LDAP and SSO/SAML together on Enterprise. A company that only needs automated provisioning pays less on Bitwarden.

Can I self-host Keeper or Bitwarden?

Bitwarden Enterprise can be self-hosted. Keeper is a hosted service with data regions in the US, a US Government Cloud, the EU, Australia, Japan and Canada.

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