1Password vs Bitwarden

Pick Bitwarden unless you're buying for a family and need one person able to restore a member who forgets their password. Bitwarden publishes more independent security testing, its apps are open source, its free plan has no device limit, and Premium costs $19.80 a year against 1Password's $47.88. Pick 1Password if a family organizer who can restore a member's access on the spot is worth $71.88 a year to you, against $47.88 for Bitwarden Families, or if you want its Secret Key, which keeps a vault stolen from the company's servers out of reach of password guessing.

Bitwarden scores 9.6 and 1Password 7.4. The two tie on platforms and passkeys; Bitwarden wins on security evidence, price and recovery, and 1Password on family features. Price alone accounts for 1.4 points of the 2.2-point gap, but Bitwarden would still lead without it: with no points for either free plan, it scores 8.8 to 1Password's 7.4, and moving all of Price's weight to Sharing still leaves Bitwarden 0.4 ahead. This page uses the same criteria and scores as our ranking of the best password managers, where Bitwarden is No. 1 and 1Password No. 5.

Security: more public testing against a stronger key design

Bitwarden scores 9.5 and 1Password 7.5, and the gap is about what each company lets you read, not about a known breach. Neither has had an incident that exposed customer vault data.

• Published testing. Bitwarden's audit page links full 2025 reports from Cure53 (browser extension, desktop app, web vault, core app, cryptography library), Unit 42 (mobile apps), Fracture Labs and ETH Zurich. 1Password's most recent openly published independent report is ISE's from 2020; since November 2025 it distributes pentest reports through its Trust Center, where they sit behind an access request (1Password's security assessments page).
• A stolen vault. 1Password mixes your account password with a 128-bit Secret Key that is never sent to 1Password, so a vault copied from its servers can't be cracked by guessing the password. Bitwarden relies on the master password alone, stretched with PBKDF2 at 600,000 iterations by default or Argon2id if you choose it (Bitwarden's key derivation page). A long, unique master password closes most of this gap; a short one doesn't.
• Open code. Bitwarden's apps are open source. 1Password's aren't.

Both were examined by ETH Zurich and USI researchers who assumed the company's own servers had turned hostile. The full version of their study, revised in August 2026, reports 12 attacks on Bitwarden and six on 1Password; across the study, most of the attacks recover passwords in that scenario. Bitwarden, in its response to the study, says it was tested on ten attacks, which the researchers later split into 12, and that seven are resolved or being fixed and three are accepted as design decisions. 1Password, in its response, says the paper adds no new attack vectors beyond limitations it already documents, and acknowledges there is no reliable way for users to verify that a public key belongs to the person they're sharing with. The counts aren't a like-for-like score: the researchers chose targets partly by how much client source code they could read, and all of Bitwarden's is public. We don't score the study on this page, to stay consistent with our ranking, where it covered only four of the nine tools.

Price: Bitwarden costs less than half

Plan	Bitwarden	1Password
Free	Unlimited passwords and devices	None (14-day trial)
One person, billed yearly	$19.80 a year	$47.88 a year ($35.88 the first year)
Family, billed yearly	$47.88 a year for six people	$71.88 a year for five people ($53.88 the first year)
Monthly billing	Yearly billing only	$4.99 a month (one person), $7.99 (family)

Prices from Bitwarden's pricing page and 1Password's pricing page, checked in October 2026. Both companies raised prices in 2026, and two of the four AI answers we sampled in October 2026 still quoted $10 a year for Bitwarden Premium. The 1Password first-year prices are a 25% discount for new customers buying directly; renewals are at the full price.

Bitwarden's free plan covers one person on every device but limits sharing to one other user and two collections (Bitwarden plan comparison); emergency access, file attachments and built-in two-factor codes need Premium.

Families and sharing: 1Password's clearest win

1Password scores 10 and Bitwarden 8. Both family plans give each person a private vault and let the household share vaults (Bitwarden calls them collections), and both can send an item to someone outside the plan: 1Password with an expiring link, Bitwarden with Send.

The difference is what happens when a family member forgets their password. In 1Password Families, an organizer can restore their access right away, with no setup for each member. In Bitwarden Families, the organizer can't: admin account recovery is limited to Enterprise organizations. Because Families gives every member Premium, a parent can get a member back in only if that member named the parent for emergency access in advance; the parent then waits out the delay the member chose, and a takeover sets a new master password and removes the member's two-step login. A member who set up no route at all loses their private vault. If you're the person who will get the phone call, this is the reason to pay 1Password's extra $24 a year. Bitwarden Families does cover six people to 1Password's five.

Recovery: Bitwarden has more routes, 1Password the simpler one

Bitwarden scores 10 and 1Password 7. Bitwarden can't reset your master password and has no recovery code, but you can log in with a passkey that unlocks your vault or with approval from another device you're still signed in on (Bitwarden's forgotten password page), and on a paid plan you can name an emergency contact who can view or take over your vault after a wait you choose. 1Password gives you a recovery code, if you generated one in advance, and, on Families, the organizer, but has no emergency access for a trusted contact.

If you might die or be incapacitated with nobody knowing your password, Bitwarden's emergency access is the more complete plan. If you're more likely to forget it yourself, 1Password's recovery code is simpler, because it doesn't depend on keeping a device or a passkey. Either way, set it up the day you start.

Platforms and passkeys: a tie

Both score 10. Each has native apps for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android, extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge (1Password downloads, Bitwarden downloads), and stores and syncs passkeys. Bitwarden adds a self-hosting option and a command-line tool; 1Password also has a command-line tool.

The two, scored

Bitwarden

Bitwarden is the better choice for most people: it wins on published security testing and recovery routes and costs less than half as much, with a free plan that covers the core of a password manager. Its weak spot is family recovery, where an organizer can't restore a member's access.

1Password

1Password is the better choice for a family that values an organizer who can restore access and expects to need it, and for anyone who wants the Secret Key's protection against a stolen vault. It costs $47.88 a year for one person and $71.88 for five, has no free plan, and publishes less independent testing openly.

Which should you choose?

• One person, any budget: Bitwarden. Start free; upgrade to $19.80 a year for emergency access.
• A family where someone will forget their password: 1Password Families, whose organizer can restore them without any setup. With Bitwarden Families, each member would have to name you for emergency access in advance.
• A family of six: Bitwarden Families covers six; 1Password covers five.
• You want to read the audits yourself: Bitwarden.
• You worry most about the company's servers being breached: 1Password's Secret Key gives a stolen vault more protection than a master password alone; with Bitwarden, use a long random passphrase and Argon2id.

Switching between them

Each imports from the other. 1Password takes an encrypted Bitwarden JSON export, but passkeys and items in shared collections won't be imported, and you must switch Bitwarden's key derivation to PBKDF2 before exporting if you use Argon2id. Bitwarden takes a 1Password .1pux export; you re-upload attachments by hand (Bitwarden's 1Password import guide), and the guide doesn't list passkeys among what comes across. Delete the export file afterward, because it holds your passwords.

Passkeys are the main loss in either direction when you move by export file. On iPhone and Android, the two apps can instead transfer directly through the FIDO Credential Exchange standard: Bitwarden imports this way on iOS 26 and Android 14 or later (Bitwarden's import guide), and Dashlane lists both 1Password and Bitwarden among the apps that support it (Dashlane's Credential Exchange guide).

How we scored

Neither app was used hands-on. We read both companies' pricing, download, help and security pages in October 2026, the audit reports they publish, and the ETH Zurich and USI paper, and scored both against anchors written before scoring. How we scored the best password managers lists every score with its source and date; this page and the ranking share it. We don't score ease of use or autofill, because we found no independent test with a published method that covers both. For the full field of nine tools, see the best password managers; for what to check before you buy any of them, see how to choose a password manager.