Can one's vault be kept locally and not on the cloud?

Ask the Community Password Manager
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1

I am brand new to Bitwarden. I do not wish to have any of my passwords or any vault stored on a cloud server. Can I use Bitwarden offline, without being connected to the Internet?

2

Welcome, @instrumentally to the community!

Yes, Bitwarden has a self-host capability.

Bitwarden can be used with no connection to its server, but in a read-only mode.

Do create an emergency sheet and periodic backups (zip format, kept offline is best). Although always important, backups are doubly important if self-hosting because server failures are yours to solve.

3

@instrumentally Welcome to the forum!

If you do not wish to have your encrypted password database exposed to the internet, then Bitwarden is probably not the right password manager for you. The main value proposition of Bitwarden is that it makes cloud-storage of your vault secure, thereby allowing you to automatically synchronize your passwords across multiple devices. This more or less requires internet connectivity.

As noted by @DenBesten, Bitwarden does offer the option to run and manage your own on-premises server for hosting your password database (and synchronizing the data with your connected devices), but if you don’t want to expose your data to the internet, you would have to set up an air-gapped intranet for your server and your devices, and harden this network against external attacks.

 

Once a device has authenticated itself to the server and downloaded the encrypted database from the server (which requires internet connectivity, or intranet connectivity to an air-gapped self-hosted server), then that device can be disconnected from the internet, and you will be able to continue to access your Bitwarden vault contents in read-only mode.

Based on your expressed preferences, you might be better off using a local (non-synced) password manager, like KeePassXC. Alternatively, you can take some time to learn about how Bitwarden makes cloud storage of vault data a secure proposition. Here are some resources to get started, and you can always ask for clarification here on the forum: