How to Install Vaultwarden in 2025

This guide follows the documentation found here.

Prerequisites

You will need to secure your Vaultwarden site with an SSL certificate to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks and enable features requiring secure contexts, like websocket code block auto-copy. We have a video on setting up SSL with Nginx Proxy Manager, watch it here and the article is here.

Create a Container/VM in Proxmox

Configure your CT with 512MB RAM, 2 CPU cores, and 10GB storage.

1. Login with username root and your CT password.
2. Get your IP address with:

ip a

Installing Vaultwarden Video

Installing Docker & Compose

Follow official Docker documentation here.

Remove conflicting packages:

for pkg in docker.io docker-doc docker-compose docker-compose-v2 podman-docker containerd runc; do sudo apt-get remove $pkg; done

Add Docker's GPG key and repo:

# Add Docker's official GPG key:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

# Add the repository to Apt sources:
echo \
  "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
  $(. /etc/os-release && echo "${UBUNTU_CODENAME:-$VERSION_CODENAME}") stable" | \
  sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

Install Docker packages:

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

Verify Docker installation:

sudo docker run hello-world

Verify docker compose version:

docker compose version

Create a Compose File

Create compose.yml:

nano compose.yml

Paste this:

services:
  vaultwarden:
    image: vaultwarden/server:latest
    container_name: vaultwarden
    restart: unless-stopped
    environment:
      DOMAIN: "https://vw.domain.tld"
    volumes:
      - ./vw-data/:/data/
    ports:
      - 80:80

Start container in detached mode:

docker compose up -d

Set Up Your SSL Certificate

If you haven’t done this, watch our previous video on setting up SSL with Nginx Proxy Manager here.

After Logging Into Vaultwarden

1. Open Vaultwarden via your configured URL.
2. Create a username and password, then login.
3. Install the browser extension via the link in Vaultwarden.
4. In Chrome, find the Vaultwarden extension, select "Accessing," choose self-hosted option, and enter your Vaultwarden URL.

5. You can now save passwords on your websites, generate complex passwords, and manage them with Vaultwarden.

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