Vaultwarden · Password managers
Self-hosting Vaultwarden for 10 people: the cost
At 10 users, Vaultwarden needs 0.3 GB of memory and 2.2 GB of disk. That fits the Basic 512 MiB at DigitalOcean for $4.00 a month. Add backups and the time it takes to look after and the real figure is $42.30 a month.
- Server
- $4.00Basic 512 MiB, 1 vCPU
- Backups
- $0.80provider snapshots
- Your time
- $37.500.5 h a month at $75
- All in
- $42.30per month
- First-time setup
- $150about 2 hours, once
How 0.3 GB was arrived at
0.2 GB covers the stack at rest, every container the project ships included. 10 users at 1 MB each adds 0.0 GB, giving 0.3 GB. Adding 25% headroom so the machine is not run at its ceiling gives 0.3 GB, and the smallest plan at or above that is the Basic 512 MiB with 0.5 GB.
Disk works the same way: 2 GB to begin with, plus 0.02 GB per user, so 2.2 GB against the 10 GB the plan includes.
A Rust reimplementation of the Bitwarden server. It runs comfortably in a fraction of a gigabyte because vault data is small and encrypted client-side.
Over three years
| Period | Server and backups | Your time | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Setup, once | — | $150 | $150 |
| Per month | $4.80 | $37.50 | $42.30 |
| First year | $57.60 | $600 | $658 |
| 36 months | $173 | $1,500 | $1,673 |
If you do not price your own time, the 36-month figure is $173 instead. Both numbers are real; which one applies depends on whether the hours would otherwise have been billable.
What you would be paying instead at this size
| Commercial product | Tier | Per month | Difference | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1Password | Business | $89.90 | $47.60 | breakdown |
A positive difference means self-hosting is cheaper at this size, with your time already counted.
Where to put Vaultwarden
0.3 GB of memory and 2.2 GB of disk is what this needs at 10 people. The cheapest plan that fits, among the providers whose prices we have read ourselves, is the Basic 512 MiB at DigitalOcean for $4.00 a month.
Go to DigitalOcean Compare hosts
We are not claiming this is the cheapest server on the internet. It is the cheapest one we can honestly quote. Hetzner Cloud, Vultr and PikaPods publish prices we could not read programmatically, and Hetzner in particular is usually cheaper per gigabyte of memory than anything quoted above. Price them yourself before you commit.
The DigitalOcean link above is a referral link: if you sign up through it and pay your first $25, we receive $25 of DigitalOcean account credit. That never changes the computed costs, which server is chosen, or the conclusion of this page. The sizing model and every price source are published in full.