Remove Duplicates from Bitwarden Export

If you’ve ever exported your Bitwarden vault to CSV and ended up with duplicate entries, this script is for you. It’ll scan through your export and remove any duplicates based on the key fields.

The Problem

Sometimes when you export your Bitwarden vault, you might end up with duplicate entries - same credentials, same notes, everything. This script helps you clean that up by keeping only unique entries.

How It Works

The script reads your Bitwarden CSV export, checks each entry against a set of key fields (type, name, URI, username, password, and notes), and keeps only the first occurrence of each unique combination. Pretty straightforward!

The Code

import csv

input_file = "bitwarden.csv"          # name of the file you exported
output_file = "bitwarden_dedup.csv"   # new file, without duplicates

seen = set()
rows = []

with open(input_file, newline="", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    reader = csv.DictReader(f)
    fieldnames = reader.fieldnames

    for row in reader:
        # key to consider entries "equal"
        key = (
            row.get("type", ""),
            row.get("name", ""),
            row.get("login_uri", ""),
            row.get("login_username", ""),
            row.get("login_password", ""),
            row.get("notes", ""),
        )

        if key in seen:
            continue

        seen.add(key)
        rows.append(row)

with open(output_file, "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    writer = csv.DictWriter(f, fieldnames=fieldnames)
    writer.writeheader()
    writer.writerows(rows)

print(f"saved {len(rows)} items without duplicates in {output_file}")

Usage

1. Export your Bitwarden vault to CSV (Settings → Export Vault)
2. Save the script as bitwarden_dedup.py
3. Make sure your export file is named bitwarden.csv (or change the input_file variable)
4. Run: python bitwarden_dedup.py
5. Import the cleaned file bitwarden_dedup.csv back into Bitwarden

What Gets Checked

The script considers two entries as duplicates if all of these fields match:

• Type (login, note, card, etc.)
• Name
• Login URI
• Username
• Password
• Notes

If even one field is different, the entries are kept as separate items.

Important Notes

Always backup your vault before doing any cleanup operations. Export your current vault before importing the deduplicated one, just to be safe.

If you want to check for duplicates based on different fields (like just username + URI), you can modify the key tuple in the code to include only the fields you care about.

The script uses Python’s built-in csv module and a set to track what we’ve already seen, making it pretty efficient even for large vaults.