Two right answers. Different homes.
This is the rare comparison where both sides get the cryptography right: Bitwarden Send also encrypts client-side and also puts key material in the URL fragment. What separates them is everything around the crypto — accounts, files, receipts, and where the tool lives in your life.
Bitwarden Send if you live in Bitwarden; BurnPony if the sender shouldn't need an account either. Bitwarden Send is a feature of a password manager: creating a Send requires a Bitwarden account, and in exchange you get file support and organization policies. BurnPony is a standalone one-shot tool — no account on either end — with receipts, live status, QR handoff, and a viewer built to be read.
At a glance.
| BurnPony | Bitwarden Send | |
|---|---|---|
| Client-side encryption | Yes — AES-256-GCM on your iPhone | Yes — encrypted before upload |
| Key in the URL fragment | Yes | Yes |
| Account to create a share | None | Bitwarden account required |
| Account to receive | None — any browser | None — any browser |
| File support | Text notes only (up to 50,000 chars) | Yes — files on paid plans, text on free |
| View limits | 1–100, deleted atomically on the last view | Max access count available |
| Expiry | 1 hour–30 days | Deletion and expiry dates |
| Read receipts | Opt-in, disclosed, with push | No |
| Live status + early burn | Yes — Sent tab | Sends can be deleted from the vault |
| QR handoff | Yes | No built-in QR for Sends |
| Open source | Planned — viewer auditable via View Source today | Yes — clients and server, today |
| Self-hosting | Custom server URL in app; server source planned | Yes — mature, documented, today |
| Price | Free | Free tier; files need paid |
Honest tradeoffs.
Where Bitwarden Send wins
- Open source today, all of it. Bitwarden's clients and server are public now, with years of audits. BurnPony's release is planned; until it ships, that column belongs to Bitwarden without argument.
- Files. A Send can carry a document. BurnPony is text-only by design for now — attachments sit in the Exploring bucket of the roadmap.
- Organizational muscle. Teams, policies, admin controls, mature self-hosting. If your company already runs Bitwarden, Send is the path of least resistance.
- One tool for everything. If your secrets already live in a Bitwarden vault, creating a Send from them is friction-free.
Where BurnPony wins
- No account, full stop. Creating a BurnPony note requires no registration anywhere. For sending one secret to one person, "first, make an account" is a real cost Bitwarden can't avoid.
- The sender knows what happened. Disclosed read receipts, live view counts, and opened-at times in the Sent tab. A Send tells you much less about its own fate.
- Built for the handoff. QR codes for in-person delivery, an auto-hide countdown carried encrypted inside the note, and a viewer short enough to audit on the spot.
- Existence privacy. Burned, expired, and never-existed notes are indistinguishable from outside — the relay won't even confirm a link was once real.
The verdict.
- Choose Bitwarden Send if you already run Bitwarden (personally or as an org), you need to send files, or fully-published source and mature self-hosting are requirements today.
- Choose BurnPony if you want a dedicated one-shot tool with no account for anyone, receipts and live status for the sender, and in-person QR handoff.
- Use both if the vault handles your passwords and BurnPony handles the moments a secret has to leave it.
Try BurnPony
Free. No accounts, no tracking. In development — one email on launch day if you want it.