EU Sovereignty Score
Non-EU vendorPassword ManagerHeadquarters: US

Bitwarden: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Bitwarden is a password and secrets manager for individuals and organisations. Users store credentials and other secrets in an encrypted vault that syncs across devices. It comes as a web vault, desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux, browser extensions, mobile apps and a command-line tool. You can use Bitwarden's cloud service or self-host the full stack, for example with Docker or on Kubernetes using Helm.

Bitwarden, Inc. is headquartered in Santa Barbara, California, and is therefore subject to US law. The cloud service stores vault data in Microsoft Azure, in either the US or the EU, at the customer's choice. According to Bitwarden, its servers hold only encrypted or hashed data because encryption happens on the user's device. The source code is public: the server is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and the clients under GPL-3.0, although some modules are proprietary. For a European organisation, self-hosting gives the most control; with the cloud service, the EU region is still offered by a US company on a US cloud provider.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Bitwarden pre-selected
MastodonLinkedInBlueskyXEmail
Sovereignty score
61 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign
  • Jurisdiction SOV-210
    Headquartered in the US: CLOUD Act and FISA 702
  • Data residency SOV-350
    Hosting inside and outside Europe (US, EU)
  • Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-390
    Self-hostable: encryption keys under your own control
  • Freedom from lock-in SOV-680
    Open source: low switching costs
  • Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-675
    Source code auditable, forkable and self-hostable

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 1, 2026
HeadquartersUS (US)Verified by hand
EU adequacy decisionOnly for companies individually certified under the EU-US Data Privacy FrameworkVerified by hand
Sovereignty modelVendor-hosted (non-EU)Verified by hand
Data hostingUS, EUVerified by hand
Open-sourceYesVerified by hand
GDPR-compliantYesVendor-stated
Hosting signalFASTLY - Fastly, Inc., US (US)Technically measured
CategoryPassword Manager
TypeProduct
Websitebitwarden.com ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Bitwarden

The European alternatives to Bitwarden come from our knowledge base of over 6,200 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

25 European Password Manager vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

Is Bitwarden one of many dependencies?

Score your whole stack in about three minutes. Free, no account needed.

Assess your stack →View a sample report (opens in a new tab)

Why digital sovereignty matters with Bitwarden

Bitwarden is headquartered in the United States. US vendors fall under the CLOUD Act and FISA 702: US authorities can compel access to data, even when that data sits in a European data centre. That is the core of the jurisdictional exposure in our model.

Bitwarden hosts data in US, EU. Exactly what stays within the EU — and what does not — is defined by the vendor's data processing agreement and sub-processor list, not by a setting you control yourself; check those documents for the precise scope, including backups, logs and support access.

Bitwarden is open source. You can audit the source code, self-host the software and keep the encryption keys under your own control. Switching is easier because data and software are not tied to a single party.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Bitwarden together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Bitwarden?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Bitwarden include Proton Pass, KeePassXC and Vaultwarden (self-host). On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Bitwarden?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Bitwarden include Proton Pass, KeePassXC, Vaultwarden (self-host), Passbolt, KeePass, Psono and AuthPass. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Bitwarden GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Bitwarden is headquartered in US and hosts data in US, EU. The vendor states it is GDPR-compliant, but the data falls under non-EU jurisdiction. For full EU data residency the EU alternatives on this page usually offer more certainty.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 1, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Cyber Resilience Act

Public signals that relate to the EU Cyber Resilience Act. They do not count towards the score. A missing line means "not found publicly".

Report a vulnerability
github.com/bitwarden/server/security/policy

For products in scope of the CRA, CE marking is required from 11 December 2027; this cannot be checked yet.

Checked on October 9, 2026. What is the Cyber Resilience Act?

Digital sovereignty in Password Manager

Password Manager: Password vault — generate, store and autofill passwords. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

Also in this category

See all →
Open in the alternatives dashboardMissing a vendor? Submit itAre you this vendor? You can also become a sponsor on the Password Manager page — with no effect on your score
8 European alternatives to Bitwarden — GDPR-compliant & EU-hosted · EU Sovereignty Score