A password manager is a security product, so the ranking weights what can be verified rather than what is claimed: published audits, an open source client, a recovery model that does not depend on the vendor, and a breach history.
Convenience matters too, because a manager nobody uses protects nothing.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry
says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a
vendor. How that works.
In short
What password managers do
A password manager stores credentials and secrets encrypted with a key only the user holds, fills them into applications, and lets an organisation share access without sharing the password itself.
In this order: setup effort, what it really costs, how your data comes back out, whether
you can leave, and who each password manager is built for. One rule sits on top of those tests:
Places 1 to 3 go to challengers, vendors outside the best-known brands in a category, wherever the category has them; the established names follow from place 4 in their ranked order. Why those five, and why there is no
score out of ten, is on the how we work page.
Free plan for one user on one device type; business plans per user per month, published
Yes
An organisation already deployed on it and managing the migration cost
Any new deployment with a free choice
Country is where the vendor is headquartered or contracts from, which is a
different question from where your data is hosted. Where the two tell different stories, the
entry says so.
Psono answers a requirement rather than a preference: some organisations may not put credentials in someone else’s cloud, and for them the choice narrows to self-hosted tools.
Psono is a serious one — open source, end-to-end encrypted, with the sharing, groups and audit logging a team needs. The price is comfort and effort. Browser extensions and mobile apps work but feel a generation behind 1Password, and every upgrade, backup and certificate renewal is yours.
What stands out
Self-hostable
Open source
German vendor
Where it costs you
Interface and mobile apps lag the commercial tools
You run and patch the server
Right for
An organisation whose policy forbids third-party credential storage
Wrong for
A team that wants a polished app on every device
GermanyFree self-hosted community edition; hosted plans published
Ranked #2 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingAsia-Pacific
Zoho Vault does what a team password manager should — shared folders, role-based access, provisioning from the directory, audit trails — at a price well below the specialists. For an existing Zoho customer that is an easy decision.
For a buyer whose selection criteria start with published security audits, the picture is different: the specialists in this category publish more frequent third-party assessments and have more transparent architecture documentation, and in this category that history is the product.
What stands out
Cheapest team option
Zoho directory integration
Published price
Where it costs you
Less independent audit history than the specialists
Little reason to choose it outside Zoho
Right for
A company already running Zoho that needs shared credentials
Wrong for
A security-led buyer comparing audit reports
IndiaFree for personal use; paid per user per month, published, low
Credential management as part of an identity security platform
Ranked #3 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Pricing on requestNorth America
CyberArk's core business is privileged access, the credentials that administer the infrastructure, and workforce password management extends that governance to everyone else. The product is now sold by Palo Alto Networks as part of its Idira identity platform, with a cloud or self-hosted vault.
For a security team that already runs the platform, one policy engine and one audit trail across both populations is a real simplification. For everyone else this is the wrong shape of purchase: the licence is quoted, the deployment assumes a security function, and the day-to-day experience for ordinary staff is not the reason anyone chooses it.
What stands out
Identity platform
Privileged access
Enterprise controls
Where it costs you
Only makes sense as part of the wider platform
Quoted enterprise pricing
Right for
An enterprise already running CyberArk (now Idira) for privileged access
Wrong for
A company that simply needs a shared team vault
United StatesQuoted per organisation; part of a wider platform
Ranked #4 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourceSelf-hostablePublished pricingNorth America
Bitwarden is the only major manager whose clients and server are both open source and independently audited every year, and you can host the server yourself if the vault is too sensitive to leave the building.
Teams is listed at $4 and Enterprise at $6 per user per month, billed annually; that is not the lowest entry price here, and self-hosting and SSO sit in Enterprise. The admin console is plainer than Keeper's or 1Password's, and the polish gap is real if adoption depends on how the product feels.
What stands out
Open source
Self-hostable
Annual audits
Where it costs you
The admin console is plainer than Keeper or 1Password
Polish trails the commercial leaders
Right for
A team that wants audited open source and an option to self-host
Wrong for
A company that will choose on interface alone
United StatesFree personal tier; business plans per user per month, published
Ranked #5 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Free tierOpen sourcePublished pricingEurope
Proton Pass combines audited open source clients with Swiss data protection law and built-in email aliasing, which is a genuinely strong package for a team that treats privacy as a requirement. Integration with the wider Proton suite is clean.
It is the youngest product here. The business administration features are now listed: SSO, SCIM provisioning, enterprise policies, activity logs and SIEM integration, all on the Professional plan, not on Essentials.
What stands out
Swiss privacy law
Open source apps
Email aliases
Where it costs you
The youngest product here
SSO, SCIM and enterprise policies need the Professional plan
Right for
A privacy-sensitive team that wants Swiss jurisdiction
Wrong for
A buyer who wants a long track record in business deployments
SwitzerlandFree tier; paid per user per month, published
Ranked #6 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Dashlane's admin reporting on weak, reused and breached credentials is the most actionable in this group, which matters when IT has to demonstrate improvement to someone rather than just fix things.
Passkey support is ahead of most competitors. It is priced above Bitwarden for a closed-source product with no self-hosting, so the case rests on that reporting being worth the difference.
What stands out
Admin risk dashboard
Dark web monitoring
Passkey support
Where it costs you
Priced above Bitwarden for a closed-source product
Fewer deployment options
Right for
An IT team that must show credential risk going down
Ranked #7 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Cheap and unusually good at filling awkward legacy web forms, which is a real problem in some industries. The interface and the sharing model both feel a decade behind.
What stands out
Cheapest
Strong form filling
Long track record
Where it costs you
The interface and sharing model feel a decade behind
Smaller ecosystem
Right for
A team fighting awkward legacy web forms
Wrong for
A company that wants modern secrets sharing
United StatesFree tier; business plans per user per year, published
A vault you store wherever you like, with no subscription
Ranked #8 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Published pricingAsia-Pacific
Enpass takes a different position from every subscription product in this list: there is no vendor vault. The encrypted file lives in your Dropbox, your NAS or your OneDrive, and you can buy the software once instead of renting it. For privacy-minded individuals and very small teams that is genuinely attractive. It also means the sync layer is not the vendor's responsibility and conflicts occasionally happen.
The Business edition is more complete than that suggests: an admin console with policies, groups, SSO, Entra ID provisioning, a security audit dashboard and event logs with SIEM integration, while the vaults stay in the company's OneDrive, SharePoint or Google Workspace and an Enpass Hub server, which can be self-hosted, holds only encrypted keys and metadata.
What stands out
Your own storage
One-off licence available
Offline capable
Where it costs you
Sync reliability depends on your own storage
Business vaults live in your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, so their availability is yours to manage
Right for
An individual or small team that wants to own the vault file
Wrong for
A company that wants the vendor to host and run the vault
Ranked #9 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Self-hostablePublished pricingNorth America
1Password is the manager people keep using after the first month, which for a security product is the metric that matters most.
The two-secret key derivation means a stolen vault is useless without the local secret key, a meaningfully stronger position than a master password alone. It is closed source and there is no self-hosting option at all, which rules it out for some security reviews.
What stands out
Best interface
Secret key model
Developer tooling
Where it costs you
Closed source
No self-hosting option at all
Right for
A team where adoption is the whole battle
Wrong for
An organisation that requires source availability
CanadaPer user per month, published; flat-price Teams Starter Pack for up to 10; 14-day trial
Ranked #10 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingEurope
NordPass is quick, clean and cheap for a small team, with XChaCha20 encryption and a Cure53 audit cited. For a company that wants credentials under control without a project, it does the job.
Teams is sold only as a ten-user pack, and SSO with Entra ID or Okta and user provisioning are Enterprise features. There are fewer integrations and no real secrets-management story for engineers, and the parent company sells a wide range of adjacent products which some buyers weigh in their assessment.
What stands out
Modern cipher
Breach scanning
Simple admin
Where it costs you
Fewer integrations and a thinner secrets story
Parent company sells many adjacent products
Right for
A small team that wants something clean and cheap
Wrong for
A company needing secrets management for engineers
LithuaniaFree personal plan for one user; business plans per user per month, published; Teams sold as a 10-user pack
Ranked #11 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Published pricingNorth America
Keeper's certification list, including FedRAMP High, is why regulated organisations choose it, and the policy engine offers the most granular control here over who can share what with whom. Entry pricing is low, with a Business Starter plan for 5 to 10 users.
SSO and SCIM provisioning sit in Enterprise, and Secrets Manager, BreachWatch, advanced reporting and compliance reports are separately priced add-ons, so the listed price and the useful price can differ substantially.
What stands out
FedRAMP High
Secrets manager add-on
Granular policy
Where it costs you
SSO and SCIM need Enterprise; BreachWatch, Secrets Manager and reporting are add-ons
Costs add up quickly
Right for
A regulated organisation that needs the certification list
Wrong for
A team that wants one price with everything included
United StatesPer user per month, published; add-ons extra
Ranked #12 of 12 in Best Password Manager for Business in 2026.
Free tierPublished pricingNorth America
Still competent software with a large installed base, but the 2022 breach exposed encrypted vaults and unencrypted URLs, and that is a fact a security review has to address rather than move past.
What stands out
Wide adoption
Familiar
SSO apps in Business
Where it costs you
The 2022 breach exposed encrypted vaults and unencrypted URLs
Trust has not fully recovered
Right for
An organisation already deployed on it and managing the migration cost
Wrong for
Any new deployment with a free choice
United StatesFree plan for one user on one device type; business plans per user per month, published
A password manager stores credentials and secrets encrypted with a key only the user holds, fills them into applications, and lets an organisation share access without sharing the password itself. The differences that matter are rarely in the feature list, so this is
the order we would work through them.
01
Decide whether you need a published price
11 of the 12 tools here publish what they cost; the other 1 quote per organisation. The ones you can compare without a sales call: Psono, Zoho Vault, Bitwarden, Proton Pass, Dashlane, RoboForm, Enpass, 1Password, NordPass, Keeper, LastPass.
02
Decide how much the jurisdiction matters
These 12 vendors are established in 6 countries across 3 regions (North America 7, Europe 3, Asia-Pacific 2). That decides whose disclosure law applies to what the vendor holds, wherever the servers are.
03
Consider whether you want the source
3 of these are open source: Psono, Bitwarden, Proton Pass. Hosting one yourself trades a subscription for maintenance.
Who holds the keys, and what happens when someone leaves
Every product here encrypts the vault with a key the user holds, which is the point. The business question is recovery: when an employee leaves without handing over their vault, what can the administrator reach?
Account recovery, shared vaults and break-glass access are the features that separate a business plan from a personal one, and they are where the architectures genuinely differ.
Ask what an administrator can and cannot recover, precisely.
Test the offboarding flow in the trial with a real test user.
Check whether shared credentials survive the departure of the person who created them.
Open source is checkable, and that is the argument
Bitwarden, Proton Pass and Psono publish their client source, and Bitwarden publishes its server as well, which means the encryption claims can be inspected rather than believed.
In a category whose entire value rests on cryptography that is a substantive difference, not a badge. Bitwarden and Psono go further and can be self-hosted, so the vault never leaves your infrastructure.
Ask whether the client is open source and when it was last audited.
Read the most recent third-party audit, not the summary of it.
If self-hosting matters, check which plan or edition includes it and what it omits.
Jurisdiction is the second question after cryptography
Proton Pass is Swiss, Psono German, NordPass Lithuanian. Where the company is established decides who can compel it, which is a different question from where the data sits and from whether the encryption holds.
For a vault this is the sharpest version of that argument anywhere in software: the company holding your credentials is the company a court would order.
Check the country of establishment, not only the hosting region.
Ask what the vendor can technically produce under a lawful order.
Get the sub-processor list if any part of the service is outsourced.
Rollout fails on the browser extension, not on the policy
Password managers succeed or fail on whether filling a password is faster than the old habit. If the extension fights your internal applications or the mobile autofill is unreliable, people go back to the spreadsheet and the project is over. Test with your worst internal login, not with a public website.
Test autofill against your most awkward internal application.
Check mobile autofill on the phones your staff actually carry.
Plan the import from wherever passwords live today, including the spreadsheet.
What goes wrong most often when buying password managers
Choosing on features rather than on the recovery model, which is the only thing that differs when something goes wrong.
Buying a personal plan for a team and discovering shared vaults are the business feature.
Rolling out without testing autofill on internal systems, which is where adoption dies.
Ignoring where the vendor is established in a category built entirely on trust.
If you are choosing on jurisdiction rather than on features
Password managers are the category where establishment carries the most weight, because the vendor holds the keys to everything else you own. A subpoena served on the company that stores your vault is a different risk from a subpoena served on the company that stores your invoices, even when both vaults are encrypted.
This list ranks on the same five tests as every other guide here, so the 3 European vendors in it — Psono, Proton Pass and NordPass — earned their places rather than their passports.
European Purpose sorts the same market the other way round and covers Passbolt, heylogin and Uniqkey alongside them: three European managers this ranking has no room for and that a jurisdiction-led shortlist should probably see.
A sister site, published by the same company as this one. Nobody buys a place on it and nobody paid for this link. It is here because the two lists answer the same question from opposite ends, which is the only reason anything is linked from one of these pages.
07
Frequently asked questions
8 answers
What are the best password managers in 2026?
Psono leads our ranking of 12. It exists for organisations whose policy forbids storing credentials with a third party, and it does that job with an auditable open source codebase.
The interface and the mobile apps are noticeably behind the commercial products, and you own the operations.
Which password managers publish their pricing?
11 of the 12, with the pricing model each one publishes:
Psono: Free self-hosted community edition; hosted plans published.
Zoho Vault: Free for personal use; paid per user per month, published, low.
Bitwarden: Free personal tier; business plans per user per month, published.
Proton Pass: Free tier; paid per user per month, published.
Dashlane: Per user per month, published.
RoboForm: Free tier; business plans per user per year, published.
Enpass: One-off licence or per month, published.
1Password: Per user per month, published; flat-price Teams Starter Pack for up to 10; 14-day trial.
NordPass: Free personal plan for one user; business plans per user per month, published; Teams sold as a 10-user pack.
Keeper: Per user per month, published; add-ons extra.
LastPass: Free plan for one user on one device type; business plans per user per month, published.
The other 1 quote per organisation.
Is there a free password manager?
Psono, Zoho Vault, Bitwarden, Proton Pass, RoboForm, NordPass, LastPass offer a free tier or a free self-hosted edition.
Where are these password manager vendors established?
In 6 countries across 3 regions: North America 7, Europe 3, Asia-Pacific 2.
Psono: Germany.
Zoho Vault: India.
Idira Workforce Password Management (formerly CyberArk): United States.
Bitwarden: United States.
Proton Pass: Switzerland.
Dashlane: United States.
RoboForm: United States.
Enpass: India.
1Password: Canada.
NordPass: Lithuania.
Keeper: United States.
LastPass: United States.
Which password managers are open source?
Psono, Bitwarden, Proton Pass.
Which password managers can you host yourself?
Psono, Bitwarden, 1Password. The other 9 are hosted by the vendor only.
What should you use instead of Psono?
Zoho Vault and Idira Workforce Password Management (formerly CyberArk) are the next two on this page.
Zoho Vault is for a company already running Zoho that needs shared credentials; Idira Workforce Password Management (formerly CyberArk) is for an enterprise already running CyberArk (now Idira) for privileged access.
Who should not buy Psono?
A team that wants a polished app on every device. Interface and mobile apps lag the commercial tools.
If your password managers product belongs among these 12, tell us what it does and who it is for. Inclusion is an editorial call; what a listing is and is not is set out under software advice.
