Comparison — from the record, 2026-08-27
Proton Pass vs 1Password: the $2.99 is a first-year price
OUR PICK
Our pick: Proton Pass — it has a real free tier, its yearly price is the recurring price rather than a first-year rate, and paying annually cuts 40% against 1Password's 25%.
Read from both vendors' own pages on 2026-08-27 with every billing switch clicked. 1Password Individual advertises $2.99 a month, but the page states 'Promotions are limited time discounts available for new 1Password customers only for the first year' and strikes through $3.99 — so year one is $35.88 and year two is $47.88, a 33% rise. Proton Pass Plus is €2.99 a month billed yearly at €35.88, printed with no first-year restriction anywhere on the page. Proton also lists a genuinely free tier at €0.00 in the same table; 1Password offers a 14-day trial and no free plan at all.
The other way: Pick 1Password if you are buying for a team of about ten and want one predictable line item: its Teams Starter Pack is a flat $24.95 a month billed annually covering ten people, rather than a per-seat rate that moves every time someone joins. 1Password is also the more transparent of the two about currency — its business page publishes USD, CAD and EUR side by side instead of localising silently — and it is available through distributors like Pax8 if you buy software that way. Watchtower breach monitoring and a longer track record on desktop apps are real, if unpriceable, advantages.
How to read this page: every number below was read from the vendor’s own public pricing page on the date shown, and the pages are re-checked daily. Currencies differ because that is what each vendor showed an EU visitor. Some links on this page are affiliate links — if you subscribe through one we earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. Per
our method, that never changes a number or a verdict. Source links always point to the vendor’s plain page.
The two pricing pages, side by side
Proton Pass — EUR, read 2026-08-27
| Plan | Price | Contacts | What the page says |
|---|
| Proton Free | Free | 1 user | A genuinely free tier, not a trial. Listed at €0.00/month in the same table as the paid plans. |
| Pass Plus | €4.99/mo (€2.99 annual) | 1 user | The password manager on its own. Page states 'Billed at €35.88 every 12 months.' Yearly billing is 40% below twelve months at the monthly rate — the widest annual discount of any plan on either of these two pages. |
| Pass Family | €6.99/mo (€4.99 annual) | Family plan with an admin panel | Page states 'Billed at €59.88 every 12 months.' Adds an admin panel for the family. |
| Proton Unlimited | €12.99/mo (€9.99 annual) | 1 user | Not a password manager plan — the full Proton suite, with Mail, VPN, Drive and Calendar alongside Pass. Page states 'Billed at €119.88 every 12 months.' |
| Pass Essentials (business) | €1.99/mo annual | Per user | €1.99 per user per month on the business page. The monthly-billed equivalent was not readable in the same view and is deliberately not inferred. |
| Pass Professional (business) | €4.49/mo annual | Per user | €4.49 per user per month on the business page. |
| Proton Business Suite | €10.99/mo annual | Per user | €10.99 per user per month. A further €12.99 per user per month tier and a €875.52 every-12-months figure also appear on the business page; the plan each attaches to was not unambiguous in the rendered view and is not assigned here. |
Source: https://proton.me/pass/pricing · read 2026-08-27 (UTC) · Two separate pages: personal plans at proton.me/pass/pricing and business plans at proton.me/business/pass/pricing. Both carry a Monthly / Yearly switch that opens on Yearly, so the figures shown first are the discounted per-month equivalents with the twelve-month total printed underneath. Proton also sells Pass inside Proton Unlimited, which bundles Mail, VPN, Drive and Calendar for one price — so on this page a password manager and a five-product suite sit in the same table. Read in a browser on 2026-08-27 with the switch clicked both ways on both pages. Prices returned in euros from an EU address.
1Password — USD, read 2026-08-27
| Plan | Price | Contacts | What the page says |
|---|
| Individual | $4.99/mo ($3.99 annual) | 1 person, 1GB storage | Advertised at $2.99/mo, but that is a first-year rate for new customers only — the page struck through $3.99, which is what it renews at. Password generation, autosave and autofill, secure sharing, all devices, breach alerts. |
| Families | $7.99/mo ($5.99 annual) | 5 family members included, 1GB storage each | Advertised at $4.49/mo first year for new customers only; renews at the struck-through $5.99. Everything in Individual plus up to 5 members, unlimited shared vaults, admin controls. |
| Teams Starter Pack | $29.95/mo ($24.95 annual) | Flat price including 10 members | Not per-seat — one price for the first 10 people. Published in three currencies on the page: USD $24.95/mo or $299.40/yr, CAD $29.95/mo or $359.40/yr, EUR €21.95/mo or €263.40/yr. |
| Business | $10.99/mo ($8.99 annual) | Per user | Per user per month. The page states plainly: '1Password Business costs $8.99 per user per month when billed annually, or $107.88 per user per year.' A separate seat rate of $4.99 USD / €4.49 / CAD $6.25 per seat per month is also listed on the same page. |
| Enterprise | Custom | Contact sales | Has its own pricing page with no published figure. Also described as available through distributors such as Pax8 and Renaissance. |
Source: https://1password.com/pricing/personal · read 2026-08-27 (UTC) · 1Password splits its pricing across three separate pages — Personal, Business and Enterprise — each with its own ladder, and a Monthly / Annually switch on the first two. The switch opens on Annually. The headline personal figures it shows are promotional: the page's own small print reads 'Promotions are limited time discounts available for new 1Password customers only for the first year', and the higher price beside each is struck through in the markup. The standing annual rates are therefore $3.99 and $5.99 per month, not $2.99 and $4.49. Enterprise publishes no price. All figures read in a browser on 2026-08-27 with both switches clicked and all three pages visited.
What the record says
Start with the number both companies want you to compare, because one of them is not what it looks like. 1Password's personal page shows $2.99 a month for Individual and $4.49 for Families. Directly beside each, in the page's own markup, sits a struck-through $3.99 and $5.99. At the foot of the plan cards the reason is spelled out: 'Promotions are limited time discounts available for new 1Password customers only for the first year.' The advertised price is an introductory rate. The standing price is the struck-through one.
That makes the two-year arithmetic straightforward and unflattering. 1Password Individual costs $35.88 in year one and $47.88 in every year after — a 33% increase you agree to when you sign up. Families runs $53.88 then $71.88. Proton Pass Plus is €35.88 a year, printed on the page as 'Billed at €35.88 every 12 months', with no first-year language anywhere on it. We are not claiming Proton's price can never change; we are reporting that one page restricts its headline rate to the first year in writing and the other does not.
The second structural difference is the free tier. Proton lists Proton Free at €0.00 a month in the same table as its paid plans — a standing free account, not a trial. 1Password publishes no free plan on any of its three pricing pages; what it offers is 14 days free on the personal plans. For a password manager, that difference decides whether you can move your whole family onto it before anyone pays, and whether you can leave a rarely-used account running at no cost.
The annual discounts are also not comparable, though both are presented the same way. Proton Pass Plus is €4.99 monthly against €2.99 monthly-equivalent when paid yearly — a 40% cut, the widest we have recorded in this category. 1Password Individual is $4.99 monthly against a standing $3.99 annually, which is 20%; even measured against the promotional $2.99 it is 40% in year one only, reverting after. If you intend to pay monthly, the two are near-identical at $4.99 and €4.99. Almost all of the gap between them opens up when you commit to a year.
Both companies sell to businesses on pages their personal pricing never mentions, and this is where a comparison built only on the page you landed on goes wrong. 1Password has three separate pricing pages — Personal, Business and Enterprise. Business is $8.99 per user per month billed annually, stated on the page as $107.88 per user per year, or $10.99 billed monthly. Alongside it sits the Teams Starter Pack: a flat $24.95 a month annually covering ten people, which is a different shape of pricing entirely. Enterprise has its own page with no figure on it.
Proton's business plans sit at proton.me/business/pass/pricing, again invisible from the personal page, and start at €1.99 per user per month with tiers at €4.49 and €10.99. The ladders are steep in opposite directions: Proton's entry business seat is far below 1Password's, while 1Password's Starter Pack gives a small team one fixed number instead of a per-head rate. Which is cheaper depends entirely on headcount, and neither page will tell you that.
One plan on Proton's table is not a password manager and should not be read as one. Proton Unlimited at €9.99 a month yearly, €119.88 for twelve months, bundles Mail, VPN, Drive and Calendar alongside Pass. It appears in the same table as Pass Plus, which invites a comparison against 1Password's $3.99 that is not like-for-like — you are pricing a five-product suite against a password manager. It only becomes the right comparison if you were going to pay for a VPN and mail service anyway, in which case it replaces several bills at once.
A caveat on the figures themselves, because it affects how you should read them. Proton returned euros to us and 1Password returned dollars on its personal page; both localise by visitor. We have not converted between them and you should not either — the exchange rate is not the point, and the structural differences above hold in any currency. 1Password's business page is the better-behaved of the two here, publishing USD, CAD and EUR side by side rather than quietly picking one for you.
Beyond the price tag
The advertised price and the recurring price
1Password's $2.99 and $4.49 are first-year, new-customer rates — its own small print says so and the markup strikes through the standing $3.99 and $5.99. Year two costs 33% more: $47.88 against year one's $35.88 on Individual. Proton Pass Plus prints €35.88 every 12 months with no first-year restriction on the page.
A free tier, or a trial
Proton lists Proton Free at €0.00 in the same table as its paid plans — a standing account, not a countdown. 1Password publishes no free plan on Personal, Business or Enterprise; it offers 14 days free on the personal plans. Paying monthly the two are level at €4.99 and $4.99; the gap opens on annual, where Proton cuts 40% and 1Password's standing discount is 20%.
Business pricing lives on pages neither personal page mentions
1Password splits across three pages: Business is $8.99 per user per month annually ($107.88 per user per year), or a flat $24.95 a month for ten people on the Teams Starter Pack; Enterprise publishes no price. Proton's business page starts at €1.99 per user per month with tiers at €4.49 and €10.99. A comparison drawn from the personal pages alone misses all of it.
Questions people actually search
Is 1Password really $2.99 a month?
For the first year, if you are a new customer. The page's own small print reads 'Promotions are limited time discounts available for new 1Password customers only for the first year', and $3.99 is struck through beside it in the markup. So Individual is $35.88 for year one and $47.88 a year afterwards. Families is $53.88 then $71.88.
Does Proton Pass have a free plan?
Yes. Proton Free is listed at €0.00 a month in the same table as the paid plans — an ongoing account rather than a trial. 1Password has no free plan on any of its three pricing pages; it offers a 14-day free trial on Individual and Families.
Which is cheaper for a small business?
It depends on headcount, and the answer is on pages neither personal pricing page links prominently. Proton's business plans start at €1.99 per user per month. 1Password Business is $8.99 per user per month billed annually, but its Teams Starter Pack is a flat $24.95 a month covering ten people, which is a much lower per-head figure at exactly that size. Below or above roughly ten users the comparison changes shape.
Is Proton Unlimited a fair comparison to 1Password?
No, and it is easy to make that mistake because it sits in the same table. Proton Unlimited at €9.99 a month yearly includes Mail, VPN, Drive and Calendar as well as Pass. Compared against a password manager alone it looks expensive; compared against a password manager plus a VPN subscription it often is not. The like-for-like plan against 1Password Individual is Pass Plus.
How much does paying annually actually save on each?
Proton Pass Plus is €4.99 monthly or €2.99 monthly-equivalent paid yearly — a 40% cut, and the widest annual discount we have recorded in this category. 1Password Individual is $4.99 monthly against a standing $3.99 annually, which is 20%. If you pay monthly the two are effectively level; the difference is almost entirely in what committing to a year buys you.
THE VERDICT, ONE MORE TIME
Our pick: Proton Pass — it has a real free tier, its yearly price is the recurring price rather than a first-year rate, and paying annually cuts 40% against 1Password's 25%.
Read from both vendors' own pages on 2026-08-27 with every billing switch clicked. 1Password Individual advertises $2.99 a month, but the page states 'Promotions are limited time discounts available for new 1Password customers only for the first year' and strikes through $3.99 — so year one is $35.88 and year two is $47.88, a 33% rise. Proton Pass Plus is €2.99 a month billed yearly at €35.88, printed with no first-year restriction anywhere on the page. Proton also lists a genuinely free tier at €0.00 in the same table; 1Password offers a 14-day trial and no free plan at all.
Every figure above was read from each vendor's own pricing pages in a browser on 2026-08-27, with the billing switch clicked in both directions and all pages visited — Proton's personal and business pages, and 1Password's Personal, Business and Enterprise pages. The first-year restriction on 1Password's personal plans is quoted from that page's own small print, and the struck-through standing prices were confirmed in the page markup rather than inferred from layout. Proton returned euros and 1Password returned dollars for its personal plans; both localise by visitor and we have not converted between them. Some figures on Proton's business page (€12.99 per user per month, €875.52 every 12 months) rendered without an unambiguous plan label and are deliberately not attributed to a plan. We hold no affiliate relationship with either company and no tracking link appears on this page. The method →
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