Best password managers 2024: Protect your online accounts

Dashlane has always been a close contender with LastPass, so after the latter’s big data breach, it’s great to know that users still have Dashlane. A full-service password manager, Dashlane offers easy access to your logins, secure notes, payment data, and other information, all through its elegantly designed web portal or via one of its browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Opera, or Safari. Most importantly, its password game is strong, making it easy to generate and store complex, unique passwords and safely keep sensitive payment and personal data at your fingertips. With autofill deployed, Dashlane doesn’t just ensure you use best password practices, but that doing so is practically effortless.

Dashlane is free for a single device, but if you want syncing across multiple devices you’ll need a paid plan: The Advanced plan costs $33 annually or $2.75 per month, and adds dark web monitoring, to alert you whether your personal data is being used nefariously. The Premium account subscription costs $59.88 per year or $4.99 per month and includes all the features of the previous tiers and adds a VPN. The Friends and Family plan extends Premium plans to up to 10 accounts for $89.88 per year or $7.49 per month. These prices are a little higher than some of the competitors (indeed, that was one of LastPass’s small advantages), but Dashlane offers a premium product and has provided a reliable service for years.

Arguably, the value champion is Bitwarden—which not only reigns as our pick for best free password manager, but also somehow manages to offer a ton of features for just $10 per year. But Bitwarden’s one weakness is its more utilitarian interface. That’s how NordPass swoops in with an edge, offering an attractive, streamlined password manager that successfully balances simplicity with flexibility. It’s a better match for us normies, who need a smoother guiding hand when using an app.

NordPass is not without its own weakness, however. For starters, its login process requires two separate passwords: One to gain access to Nord Security’s overall ecosystem (which grants access to other subscriptions you may have with the company, like NordVPN), then another to unlock your NordPass vault. If you have more than a couple of devices, the initial setup can be cumbersome because of this.

Available for all major browsers, Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and Linux, NordPass lets you quickly create vault entries without being overwhelmed by multiple form fields, while still having the option to add custom fields if you need. And its premium features include email masks, which can help preserve your privacy and thus bolster your security in this age of constant data breaches.

Still, if you snag the service at $36 for two years (the current ongoing sign-up promotion), you’re coming out far ahead of competing services that charge double that for just one year.

It’s a consumer’s market when it comes to password managers. While we have our clear favorite above, Keeper is a very strong contender in its own right. It emphasizes security more so than many other password managers. For instance, it eschews an automatic password update feature as even this process would require temporary access to your credentials.

While Keeper’s security-above-all-else mindset makes it one of the best, in the past it has come at the expense of things some consumers prize such as ease-of-use and aesthetics. To its credit, Keeper seems to recognize this and has taken strides to continuously update its interface to be more modern and user-friendly. While security-minded users stand to get the most out of Keeper’s robust features set, even the everyday user will be safer for using it.

While most password managers require a master password to access your password vault, LogMeOnce relieves you of having to remember even that. It uniquely offers the option of a PIN, biometric, or photo login to access your vault. This feature gives LogMeOnce a unique edge over other password managers.

Other than this distinctive feature, LogMeOnce operates similarly to its peers. It allows you to store and sync passwords and credit cards across your devices with end-to-end encryption. It also includes other features such as dark-web and cyberthreat monitoring, but these will come at a bit of an additional cost. Its unique features make LogMeOnce one of the most convenient password managers we’ve tested.

Bitwarden continues to offer a generous free plan that makes it a great option for users on a budget. It doesn’t charge you a penny to save unlimited vault items or sync your vault across all of your devices. This is a refreshing change from other password managers that place heavy restrictions on free users.

While it may lack some of the advanced features offered by the paid services and its no-frills interface isn’t the most user friendly, you can’t argue against Bitwarden’s price—it allows you to upgrade your security for free after all. It also offers an ultra-affordable paid tier with more advance features, but its free tier includes so much that you might not need anything else.

Free password managers come in all sorts of different flavors. Check out our roundup of best free password managers for more information.

KeePass is the password manager for those who like to control and tweak everything. It’s an open-source program, and lacks the sort of polished, comprehensive UI other password managers offer, and thus may put off the average user. But tech-savvy tinkerers will love all of the customizable settings. It is functionally a very solid program on its own, but to truly realize its potential you will need to have some technical proficiency to take advantage of add-ons. Another big plus for the security-minded, is that KeePass doesn’t store your data on the cloud. Everything is stored locally, so you don’t have to worry about the security protocols of an online service (ahem, LastPass) to keep your personal data safe. A savvy user will make the file accessible to other devices by using a private cloud account. If you relish the idea of a highly customized, DIY password manager that is free and unconstrained by a third-party’s policies and practices this is the product for you—and if you end up finding it too overwhelming, a simpler alternative like KeePassXC may fit the bill just as nicely.

While most password managers focus solely on passwords, IronVest sets out to not only safely store your passwords, but make your entire online experience more secure. IronVest offers an intuitive and straightforward way to keep your passwords, identity, credit cards, email addresses, and other sensitive information protected while shopping online. Still a relatively new company, IronVest impressed with its ability to obfuscate personally identifiable information and block trackers in addition to just being solid password management software. It does this by masking your information when shopping. When you enter your email address, credit card, or other information on a site, IronVest creates and submits a masked version to the vendor so that they never see your actual information. It’s a neat feature that helps IronVest stand out from the competition.

Some features of the service are still in beta, so you can expect minor tweaks and changes before the full release. Even though the application is still in its infancy, the feature set is solid and trustworthy. Besides, it’s currently free to test out, so it costs nothing to give this unique and innovative service a try.

While nothing can be said to be 100 percent safe and secure, password managers do a great job of providing enhanced security features that you wouldn’t otherwise have. Generally speaking, password managers encrypt all of the data you store with them. While cybercriminals might be able to somehow hack the password manager, it is highly unlikely they will be able to decrypt your data to see the contents.

Nevertheless, much of the security of your password manager comes down to the strength of your one master password. If you are concerned about the safety of this one password, then it would be worth it to choose a password manager that stores your master password on a different server from the rest of your encrypted passwords—adding an additional layer of security.

This will come down to what features you need in a password manager. Free services typically are limited to one device on which to save and sync your passwords. They will generate strong passwords for use, offer basic compromised-password alerts, and will store saved credit card and address information. 

Premium password managers, which you have to pay to use, offer all of the same features as their free counterparts, but also allow you to sync and store passwords and data across multiple devices—or even between family members. They also have additional special features such as dark web scanning and emergency contact access, among others. 

If you only have one device and don’t need any of the fancy additional features, then there really isn’t a need to pay for a premium service. However, premium password managers are only a few dollars per month so they won’t break the bank if you ever decide to switch.

If you suspect that you have been hacked, it is important to first figure out if it’s just you or if your password manager’s database has been compromised. Reputable password managers should put out some form of public release if they have been hacked. You can figure this out with a simple Google search. If they are not claiming to have been hacked, then it may be that your own data has been compromised some other way.

If it turns out your password manager’s database has been hacked, it’s up to you whether to continue with that service. Thankfully, all your passwords will be encrypted so hackers won’t be able to see the contents even after they have been stolen.

It can seem a little disconcerting to entrust the security of all your passwords to one master password on a password manager. It’s true that the strength and safety of your master password can determine the security of your password manager itself. Therefore it is ideal to create a very strong master password.

The good news is that password managers typically store your master password and your other encrypted passwords and data on separate servers. This isn’t foolproof, but it does add an additional layer of security.

Passkeys are a new form of account authentication. It’s a system that uses a set of encrypted keys, with a private one that you keep and a public one given to a website. To log in, you have to approve the attempt to see if the keys pair. Major tech companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft are pushing to see passkeys widely adopted across the web, as they’re simpler and more secure than passwords.

While most mentions of passkeys talk about storing them on a smartphone, you can store them in other ways, too, like on a hardware key or (as you might have guessed) a password manager. Multiple password managers have added support for passkeys, with , , and just a few of the services that can now store them. And while passkeys seem to be the future of online security, passwords likely will stick around for a while. Using a service to keep track of both kinds of authentication will be very useful.