On 3 January 2023, David J Eddy exported his LastPass vault into Bitwarden and then closed the LastPass account. The trigger was the LastPass breaches in the last months of 2022. Encrypted customer vaults were exposed. He treats that as the thing a password manager cannot lose, and he says his confidence in the company was gone.
He wrote the requirements down first.
- Import from LastPass with as little work as possible.
- A web app, a browser extension, and mobile clients.
- A self-host option, even if he did not turn it on that day.
- A way to share with an organization.
- Free, or a low yearly price.
Bitwarden matched the list. It is open source, the docs are good, and the free account covered a lot. He cites personal Premium at $10 a year if you want the extras. That price is from his January 2023 post.
Long notes and flat folders
He followed Bitwarden’s docs and moved 1,000-plus items, poorly organized, in a couple of minutes. An hour of checking came after that. Then he deleted the items in LastPass and closed the account. Installing the browser and mobile clients was uneventful.
Two leftovers needed hands.
PGP keys stored as LastPass notes were longer than a Bitwarden password item allows. Those came across by hand.
Folders do not become nested groups. He could not move a group under another group and keep the shape. The post does not say how many folders that affected.
He does not paste the CSV steps, and he does not say whether he deleted the export file after the import. The LastPass → Bitwarden playbook treats that plaintext file as the dangerous artifact. A successful import can also skip item types. His PGP notes are that case.
Self-hosting is a different project
Bitwarden’s docs include a self-host install. He wanted the option. His warning is that the install starts the services, and a production vault needs more. Daily backups, copies in another region, versioned backups, access logs, and a test of the restore. He is describing the bar, not claiming he ran that stack for this move.
What I would copy
Count items before and after. “A couple of minutes” is the happy path for a CSV that fits. The long notes did not fit. Search the LastPass export for notes over Bitwarden’s item limit, and for attachments, before you call the import done.
Plan the groups you want, then file items into them. He could not turn a LastPass folder into a nested Bitwarden group.
Delete the CSV, and then close the old account only after the hour of auditing he did. He deleted LastPass at the end, which is the right order, and the post never mentions shredding the export. Do that too. Premium at $10 a year is his 2023 number, so read Bitwarden’s current price if the bill is why you are moving.