Bitwarden vs ExpressKeys Comparison

• Premium (individual, annual): $19.80/year
• Families (up to 6 users, annual): $47.88/year

Penetration test and source-code audit of the Bitwarden core application

White-box design and cryptographic-trust-assumption review plus dynamic penetration testing and source-code audit of the ExpressKeys Android and iOS apps and their shared Rust core. Five senior testers, sixteen days. Backend components and third-party dependency analysis were out of scope.

600,000 PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 iterations by default on the client, plus more server-side (700,000 total for the master password hash); Argon2id is available as an alternative KDF. Item names, notes, URIs, custom field names, TOTP secrets and card/identity data are all encrypted client-side. Vault metadata — which account an item belongs to, the number of items — is not.

The vault is protected by a symmetric document key, itself wrapped by a root key derived from your vault password via PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA512 at 210,000 iterations. Cure53's March 2026 audit flagged this as GPU-crackable and recommended a memory-hard function (Argon2id or scrypt) instead.

Private US company based in Santa Barbara, California; the parent company of 8bit Solutions LLC. Founded by Kyle Spearrin, who remains Chief Innovation Officer.

ExpressVPN (and ExpressKeys as one of its products) is registered in the British Virgin Islands and has been part of Kape Technologies plc (LSE-listed, ultimate beneficial owner Teddy Sagi) since September 2021.