If you need more convenience, protection, and cross-platform integration than you can get with your browser’s autofill, you need a premium password manager like 1Password or Bitwarden. I recently reviewed both and put together this comparison to help you decide which one is best for you.
Levels and prices
1Password is only available as a subscription, but Bitwarden has a very good free version. If you don’t want to pay an annual fee to use a password manager, Bitwarden is a great choice.
If you want more than the basics, you’ll need a subscription. Bitwarden is remarkably affordable, starting at just $10 per year for an individual account. 1Password’s cheapest plan for individuals is $36. Although it’s more than three times as much, it’s still inexpensive and offers a set of features you might prefer.
If you want to share a large number of passwords with others, both password managers offer subscription savings for groups. 1Password’s Family plan costs $60 per year for five people, while Bitwarden Families costs a little less, supporting six members for $40 per year.
You can try 1Password for 14 days before paying, and Bitwarden offers a seven-day free trial to briefly test out its Families plan.
Both services offer business plans. 1Password offers a Teams plan for 10 people for $20 per month. For groups of at least six people, it’s cheaper than Bitwarden’s Teams plan, which costs $4 per person per month.
For more advanced administrative controls, 1Password’s $8 Business plan and Bitwarden’s $6 Enterprise plan will be more appropriate.
Features
Dedicated password managers like 1Password and Bitwarden go beyond the basic autofill of your browser and operating system, adding organizational features and reporting on weak and compromised logins so that You can close old accounts, remove duplicates, and clean out your vault for better security and easier access. .
Both work on all your devices with apps and extensions for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. 1Password even has a watchOS app, so you can unlock the vault with your Apple Watch. There is no Wear OS solution.
The 1Password extension supports the most popular web browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari and Brave. Bitwarden goes further by adding Vivaldi, Opera, Tor and DuckDuckGo. From any device and most browsers, you can access your credentials, notes and credit card numbers encrypted with either password manager.
1Password and Bitwarden can autofill two-factor authentication (2FA) codes as well as passwords. Both also work with passwords and are easy to use once setup is complete.
Another key feature of a password manager is sharing logins with others. With Bitwarden’s free and individual plans, you can share with one other person, and the Families plan extends sharing to six people.
1Password easily surpasses this with unlimited sharing, even with people who don’t have a 1Password account. You can set the link to expire in an hour, a day, a week, or more, and limit viewing to once if you are concerned the link will be reshared.
In general, 1Password seems simpler and more user-friendly, while Bitwarden is more technical. This makes sense given that Bitwarden is an open source project built by a team of programmers.
Support
1Password and Bitwarden offer subscriber email support as well as community forums and social media accounts that might help you more quickly. You can expect same-day responses if you encounter an issue that you can’t resolve by going through the help center documentation.
Both services are highly rated in Trustpilot customer service reviews. Bitwarden averages 4.3 stars with 136 reviews, a surprisingly small number, while 1Password boasts an impressive 4.7 stars with over 12,000 reviews.
Privacy and Security
Security shouldn’t be an issue with 1Password or Bitwarden since each performs annual third-party security checks and uses the best end-to-end encryption available: AES-256. Neither company has suffered a breach and both protect your privacy within the legal limits.
Bitwarden cannot access your data without the master password, which you keep. 1Password also uses a master password, but takes it a step further by adding a high-entropy secret key to its encryption. The secret key is stored on your devices, acting as another authentication factor for added security.
Bitwarden allows you to self-host your password vault, keeping all data on your own server. To do this, you need to know how to configure and manage a server and be sure that your own security surpasses that of Bitwarden.
Which password manager is best?
If you are a programmer, Bitwarden’s user interface and open source development will seem appealing. Being able to examine the code of your security software can help alleviate any problems.
1Password also has no answer for the free version of Bitwarden. Cost isn’t the only important detail, but if you use antivirus software like Bitdefender or Norton, you may already have access to a bundled password manager.
When it comes to ease of use and login sharing, 1Password has the edge. 1Password also provides additional security with its unique secret key which makes it very unlikely that your data will be breached. Hackers would need access to one of your devices, as well as your master password. Without any of these keys, decryption is not practical, even with quantum computing.
Both are among the best password managers available and the subscription prices are affordable, but 1Password will be a better solution for most people.
Editors’ Recommendations