Hosting Bitwarden yourself is free. However, some features of Bitwarden require that you obtain a paid license in order to unlock.
Premium Membership
Using premium features of Bitwarden in a self-hosted installation requires that you obtain a premium membership license.
- If you haven’t already, purchase a premium membership by logging in to your bitwarden.com account at https://vault.bitwarden.com and navigating to Settings → Go Premium.
- Download your premium license file from https://vault.bitwarden.com by navigating to Settings → Billing → Download License.
- Log in to the web vault of your self-hosted Bitwarden installation. Ensure that the email address used for your user account on your self-hosted installation matches the email address used on your bitwarden.com account. Also make sure that your account’s email address is verified.
- In your self hosted installation’s web vault, navigate to Settings → Go Premium.
- Upload the license file that you downloaded in step 2 and your user account will upgraded to premium.
Organization Account (Sharing)
The sharing features of Bitwarden require that you create an organization account. To create an organization in an on-premise hosted Bitwarden installation you must first obtain a families organization (for personal use) or enterprise organization (for business use) license. Only families and enterprise organization plans are eligible for on-premise hosting.
- If you haven’t already, purchase a families or enterprise organization plan by logging in to your bitwarden.com account at https://vault.bitwarden.com and navigating to Settings → Organizations → New Organization. If you would like to upgrade an existing organization account to a families or enterprise plan, please contact bitwarden support.
- Download your families or enterprise organization license file from https://vault.bitwarden.com by navigating to your organization’s admin area, then Settings from the organization’s sub-menu, and then Billing & Licensing → Download License. Enter the installation id that matches your bitwarden installation. You can always locate your installation id in the
./bwdata/env/global.override.env configuration file.
- Log in to the web vault of your self-hosted Bitwarden installation and navigate to Settings → Organizations → New Organization.
- Upload the license file that you downloaded in step 2 and your organization account will be created.