Years ago I bought 1Password via a one off payment and set it up to sync via my iCloud Drive

> anything other than a safely encrypted SQLite file There is a little bit of subtlety to this https://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/files/6487/pwvault.pdf

> and you could never use a third party storage service with BW AFAIK https://github.com/dani-garcia/vaultwarden

Well, good to know that U.S. feds now just need to send a single ping to get all the world's passwords on Apple devices.

I don't have a problem with the subscriptions. I've tried out a number of options over the years, including KeePass, LastPass, 1Password, and most recently Bitwarden. KeePass was a great bit of software but managing the vault syncing myself and having to wait for (and trust) the third-party Firefox extension to update was tiresome. For about a buck a month, LP was a pretty good deal and handled all of that overhead for me. I eventually moved to 1Password and it's still what I recommend to most people. $45CAD a year is a pittance for how often I use it. The app and extensions are always up to date, they "just work" even for my 70 year old father. At $12CAD a year, Bitwarden is pretty damn reasonable too. I don't get the hand-wringing when it comes to reasonably priced services. Development and infrastructure costs money. Yes, a power user can manage everything entirely with free software …

I don't mind paying for quality software, which I considered 1Password v7 to be. However, their recent v8 launch has soured me on the company pretty severely. The macOS app is a pretty dramatic downstep and their focus on a browser extension over a system/menubar app is frustrating to say the least. I don't know if Apple Passwords will be a perfect fit for me, I'm hoping someone shares a deep dive on the product soon because I'm not in a position to use the beta, but I'm happy to see some more competition in the space.

>and you could never use a third party storage service with BW AFAIK You can run your own BW server, or at least you could as of a few years ago. It's not well documented, but it was doable. The only reason I don't use BW is because the iOS app doesn't locally cache passwords, and I didn't want to open up my home network or set up a VPN just for a bitwarden server.

Apple is one of the few entities I'd trust for password management. Besides relying on them not being breached, devices I physically have make for good auth mechanisms. It's the one thing I really don't want to deal with a third party for. Irks me a bit how Apple knows this. And it's not that big a deal to occasionally copy a password onto a Linux or Windows device, or better yet, use the iPhone to authenticate for it.

Did you ever look into KeePass? The solution you're looking for already sort of exists, several more than decent apps which offer lifetime one-time purchases. Not sure what else to tell you. Keychain/"Passwords" is way too obfuscated and user-unfriendly and hostile to data portabillity to the extent I could never trust or rely on it.