Bitwarden vs Element

Bitwarden (Open source security solutions for individuals, teams, and business organizations. Explore Password Manager, Secrets Manager, and passkey innovations.) and Element (Founded by the creators of Matrix, we build digitally sovereign, secure and interoperable real-time communication solutions for large organisations.) both appear on the Smoower Developer Ecosystem Index.

Bitwarden (rank #55) holds a modest lead over Element (rank #189) on the overall Smoower ecosystem score (60 vs 50). The gap of 10 points reflects composite signals across code, docs, community and reach.

On code quality (the state of repositories, tests, releases and polish), Bitwarden is slightly ahead of Element. On education (docs, guides and learning material for developers), Element is ahead of Bitwarden. On reach (how visible the ecosystem is beyond its own repos), Bitwarden is clearly ahead of Element. On momentum (release cadence and how fast the ecosystem moves), Bitwarden is ahead of Element.

Bitwarden carries 54,524 GitHub stars across 68 public repos, with 51 repositories active in the last 90 days and 119 external contributors on record. Element shows 34,608 stars across 137 public repos, 33 active in the last 90 days and 97 external contributors.

Bitwarden is the stronger read for anyone weighting reach. Element looks better where education is the deciding factor. The table below breaks the scores down pillar by pillar; the linked profiles cover the underlying repos, docs and community signals in full.