Lifetime Mac
Privacy, security & networking

KeePassXC

Offline password manager with no account and no cloud

Price: Free

Open sourceNothing to buy; source published

Checked on keepassxc.org, the page Get it opens.

The catch

No sync of its own, and the iOS app is a separate paid purchase from someone else

The full picture

You own the sync problem. The database is a file, so getting it onto a second machine means iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Syncthing or a USB stick, and if two devices write to it at once you resolve the conflict yourself. There is no built-in sharing and no web vault. Mobile is outside this project: reading the same database on an iPhone means a third-party KDBX client such as Strongbox or KeePassium, with its own price. The Mac build is Qt rather than native Cocoa and looks it, and browser autofill needs the extension plus the native messaging connection set up once.

Replaces
1Password Individual, Bitwarden Premium, Dashlane and 1 more$48 and $20 a year.
Developer account
None needed

What it looks like

Images belong to their developers.

What you’re buying

KeePassXC is a password manager with no company attached to it. Your passwords live in one encrypted KDBX file that you can see in Finder, copy to a drive and open in a dozen other clients. Nobody can deprecate your vault, raise its price, get breached on your behalf or lock you out of it, because there is no server involved at all.

Day to day it does the things you expect: the browser extension fills logins, it generates passwords, it stores TOTP secrets so your second factor is in the same place, and it supports a YubiKey as part of unlocking the database rather than as an afterthought. Reports flag reused and weak entries.

The trade is explicit, and it is sync. A hosted manager quietly keeps your Mac, phone and work laptop in agreement; here that is your arrangement to make, usually by putting the KDBX file in iCloud Drive and being careful not to edit it in two places at once. On iOS you buy a separate client from a different developer.

If you have one Mac, or you are already comfortable with a synced folder, this is as good as a password manager gets and the file is yours forever. If you share passwords with family, want recovery when you forget the master password, or do not want to think about file conflicts, pay the subscription — that is what it buys.

What owners report

Points that recur across the discussions below. A report of what users say, not our verdict: we don’t review software.

Praised

  • The reason people give for using it is consistently the same: the vault is a file they hold, with no vendor able to change terms, get breached on their behalf or lock them out
  • Defenders repeatedly point to the project working in the open — a published external audit and public code review — as what their trust actually rests on

Details

Works offline
Yes
Apple Silicon
Native
On Setapp
No
Minimum macOS
not stated
Developer
KeePassXC Team
Source
github.com
The KeePassXC page at keepassxc.org
The developer’s own page. keepassxc.org, captured 22 Sep 2026

Also bought outright