head to head · open source
passforios vs rowel
passforios has 1,650 GitHub stars, 117 forks, 176 open issues and last shipped 2 months ago. rowel has 964 stars, 82 forks, 24 open issues and last shipped yesterday. passforios leads on adoption by 71% (1,650 vs 964 stars). passforios is written in Swift under MIT; rowel is written in Rust under GPL-3.0. passforios has attracted 7% as many forks as stars, rowel 9%. rowel was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee. The two share 1 topic tag (password-manager), so they are genuine substitutes rather than adjacent tools.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| passforios | rowel | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 1.6K | ★ 964 |
| License | MIT | GPL-3.0 |
| Written in | Swift | Rust |
| Last push | 2026-09-26 | 2026-11-09 |
| Forks | ⑂ 117 | ⑂ 82 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick passforios if
- You weight community size — 1.6K stars and counting
- You want the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Swift
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick rowel if
- You want the rowel feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the GPL-3.0 license terms
- Your stack matches Rust
- You evaluated both and rowel fits your workflow better
About passforios
Pass Pass is an iOS client compatible with ZX2C4's Pass command line application. It is a password manager using GPG for encryption and Git for version control. Pass for iOS is available in App Store with the name "Pass Password Store", and both iPhone and iPad are supported. You can also help us test beta versions through TestFlight. Features Compatible with the Password Store command line tool. View, copy, add, and edit password entries. Encrypt and decrypt password entries by PGP keys. Synchronize with your password Git repository. User friendly interface: search, long press to copy, copy and open link, etc…
read the full passforios overview →
About rowel
Free Offline first Password Manager for MacOS, Windows and Linux. ❤️ it? Then ⭐️ it on GitHub or Tweet about it. Features Store Login/Password credentials Credit card Information Secure notes to store sensitive information One click Strong Password Generation Time based One Time Passwords support (TOTP) Google Drive Sync (optional) No data is leaving your computer: Your vault is a locally stored, encrypted SQLite database (SQLCipher); each entry's secrets are sealed in an extra application level AEAD layer Secrets stay encrypted at rest and in memory, decrypted only when you reveal or copy them Ability to…
read the full rowel overview →
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Frequently asked questions
Is passforios or rowel more popular?
passforios has 1,650 GitHub stars and rowel has 964. passforios has the larger community by that measure.
Are passforios and rowel free?
Both are open source. passforios is licensed under MIT and rowel under GPL-3.0. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between passforios and rowel?
passforios is written in Swift and rowel in Rust. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, passforios or rowel?
Choose passforios if you want the larger community (1,650 stars) or its MIT licence terms. Choose rowel if its feature set, stack or GPL-3.0 licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.