I really love Bitwarden and have been using it privately for some time.
The security model, transparency, and open-source approach are excellent.
However, I personally struggle with permanent subscriptions that run indefinitely. I would be very interested in a lifetime license or one-time purchase option for individual users, even if priced higher than the yearly plan.
I believe this could appeal to long-term users who want to support Bitwarden but prefer predictable, one-time costs instead of ongoing subscriptions.
Thanks for considering this idea and for building such a great product.
As maintaining servers and BW in general will cost money long after you did your initial payment, i wonder how much would such an option have to cost, to make financial sense?
An exercise (both for you and for myself).
If BW sais that lifetime licence is 1000 euros, would you pay that?
Some math: Currently the licence costs 20e/year => 1000/20=50 which means youād pay that licence āin advanceā for 50 years. Does that sound like a good deal to you?
I donāt think iād pay that much. I donāt expect BW to exist 50 years from now.
Another exercise:
At some point (10 years from now), the licence price increases from 20 ā 50e/year.
Letās take the same 1000 euros as a lifetime licence payment
This means 10*20 = 200 for 10 years, then 800/50 = 16 years, for a total of 26 years of āprepayā licence.
Is this a better deal?
Iām not sure either.
Taking into account that money loses value over time (ie. buying something for 1000 euro now vs buying something for 1000 euros 15 years from now), would it make sense to pay the 1k now?
hmm. Iād have to sleep on this one to give you an answer.
But what if the price would be only 500 euros? Maybe thatās a better deal?
Using the second example above, weād prepay for 16 years of usage.
What do i mean by prepay? Weād have a positive return of our money if we would be able to use BW for 16 years.
I think the reason some companies can offer lifetime licenses is not because they expect to support a single user for 50+ years at a loss, but because ālifetimeā is usually defined as the lifetime of the product or the company, not the customer.
A few points why this can make sense in practice:
Lifetime users often have lower ongoing costs: fewer support requests, stable usage patterns, and less pressure for constant new features.
A higher upfront payment provides immediate, guaranteed cashflow, which is often more valuable than uncertain subscription revenue spread over many years.
Lifetime (or āsupporterā) tiers can act as a trust and commitment signal, especially for open-source projects. Users who choose this option usually want to support the project long-term.
Importantly, lifetime does not need to replace subscriptions. It can be a limited, high-priced option for a small group of users, while subscriptions remain the main revenue stream.
For users like me, itās less about āpay once and get everything foreverā, and more about avoiding an open-ended subscription and having a finite, predictable commitment.
Even alternatives like long-term prepaid plans (e.g. 10ā20 years) or a capped supporter license could deliver most of these benefits while keeping financial risk fully under control.
i agree but not fully. By the same logic, why did Adobe move from Full payment (3000 euro) to only subscription? Some people chose to not pay again, or pay an upgrade once every 10 years. (my example with Adobe may not be a good one though)
i disagree. perhaps some may feel this way, but not most users. And those who feel this way will help in other ways too. Iām not sure lifetime would make a significant difference.
completely agree. But then, why would i be stupid to pay more for the lifetime than what is my expected usage of the software? Idealism is nice, but real life is not like that.
For users like me [ā¦]
I get it, i do get it. I like to own my software and have paid for some lifetime licences. But the licence had to feel like a deal for me, in order to consider it.
I have also made donations to others, just because i thought they deserve it. But thatās different as i could stop donating at any point.
For me at the very least, choosing to buy or not to buy a lifetime licence could probably be summarised (grossly) as āhow much of a deal this licence isā. And thatās why my example was about how much should it cost.
For others who just want to donate money to BW, i am sure there could be other ways which could be negociated, like for example i want to pay you X just to prioritize feature Y.
My impression is that software developers who are not confident about their ability to sell future software upgrades (because planned improvements and new features may not be sufficiently compelling to users) tend to prefer to lock in their userbase by forcing a subscription-only model (in which the product stops working, or is significantly degraded in functionality, if the subscription lapses).