The best password managers we’ve tested so far

Buying guide: choosing a password manager

Why a manager beats the system you have now

Almost everyone reuses passwords, because remembering unique ones is not something people can do at the scale modern life demands. Reuse is what turns a single breach at a company you barely remember signing up to into a break-in on your email, and from there on everything attached to it.

A password manager fixes that by making the passwords something you never have to know. Each account gets a long random string, the manager fills it in, and the only thing you memorise is one strong passphrase. The security benefit is not subtle — it removes the single most exploited weakness in ordinary people's accounts.

The catch is that it concentrates risk. One vault now holds everything, which is why how that vault is encrypted, and what happens if you lose access to it, are the questions worth being fussy about.

Zero-knowledge is the claim that matters

The important architectural property is that encryption and decryption happen on your device, with a key derived from your master password that the provider never receives. This is usually described as zero-knowledge or end-to-end encryption, and it means a breach of the provider's servers exposes ciphertext rather than your passwords.

It also means nobody can recover your vault if you forget the master password. That is not a flaw — it is the same property doing its job — but it does mean the recovery options a provider offers deserve a close look, because a recovery mechanism that works without your master password implies someone else can reach your data.

As with VPN audits, look for an independent security assessment with a published report, and check what it actually covered. A penetration test of a web front end is not the same as a review of the cryptographic design.

Free plans are where the real limits hide

Most managers offer a free tier, and the restriction is rarely the number of passwords. It is far more often the number of devices: unlimited passwords, but usable on one device at a time, which is close to useless when the point is filling passwords on both your laptop and your phone.

Other common limits are the absence of secure sharing, no emergency access for a family member, restricted two-factor options, and no encrypted file storage. None of those are unreasonable things to charge for. They are just worth knowing before you migrate a hundred accounts into a product on the assumption the free plan is enough.

Check that you can get your data back out

Before committing, confirm the manager offers a full export in a standard format such as CSV or an unencrypted JSON file you can import elsewhere. This matters for two reasons: it protects you if the company is acquired, changes pricing, or suffers a breach you are not comfortable with, and it means a lapsed subscription cannot hold your credentials hostage.

It is also worth checking what a downgrade actually does. Some providers put an expired vault into read-only mode, which is inconvenient but recoverable. Being locked out entirely would not be, so it is the sort of thing to establish while you are still choosing rather than at the point it matters.

Whichever product you land on, turn on two-factor authentication for the manager itself and write the recovery codes on paper. The vault is now the single most valuable account you own, and it should be the best defended.

Before you pay, check these

• Zero-knowledge encryption. Keys derived on your device; the provider never holds your master password.
• An independent security audit. Published in full, recent, and covering the cryptography rather than just the website.
• Device limits on the free plan. Unlimited passwords on one device is a common and easily missed restriction.
• A working export. Confirm you can take a full copy of the vault out in a standard format.
• Two-factor on the vault itself. Plus recovery codes stored somewhere offline.
• Browsers and phones you actually use. Extension quality varies far more between browsers than the feature grid suggests.

How we test

We buy the subscriptions at full price rather than accepting review copies, so everything below is based on actually using the product — including the parts that only show up after you've paid, like the renewal price and how hard the software is to cancel or remove.

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