Password managers: the price is settled, so compare year two and the free tier instead
Consumer password managers have converged: the paid tiers sit within a few pounds of each other, the family plans all pay from the second person, and the feature lists have stopped differing in ways most people will notice. What still differs is what you pay in the second year, whether there is a genuine free tier or only a trial, and how wide the annual discount really is. This guide sets out those three, and is explicit about the vendors we cannot price at all.
This is a category where price comparison has stopped being useful. The individual tiers cluster tightly, the family tiers all cost less than two individual licences so the crossover is at the second person in every case we hold, and the differences that remain in the feature grids are mostly differences in vocabulary. If you are choosing on the headline monthly figure you are choosing on a distinction the market has already competed away.
The first thing that still varies is what happens in the second year. 1Password's advertised personal annual rate is a limited-time discount for new customers covering the first year only; its own small print says so and the standing price sits struck through beside it in the page's markup. The standing rate is a third higher on both personal tiers. Nothing is hidden — the higher figure is on the page, in the markup, next to the one in large type — but a comparison table quoting the advertised number is quoting year one, and most of them do.
Proton Pass is the useful counterweight, and our record says so in as many words: no first-year-only language appears on its pricing page. Its paid tier is £3.99 a month, its family tier £5.59, and those are the rates that continue. It also has the widest genuine annual discount in the category by some distance — around forty per cent off the monthly rate for paying yearly, against the sixteen or seventeen per cent that a conventional 'two months free' offer produces. When a vendor's annual discount is more than twice the category norm and carries no first-year condition, that is worth more than a small difference in the headline.
The second thing that varies is whether free means anything. NordPass publishes a free tier and prices its paid tier at £1.09 a month with a family plan at £1.89. Proton Pass lists a free plan at zero in the same table as its paid ones rather than as a trial, which is a meaningful distinction: a plan in the price table is a destination, and a trial is a countdown. 1Password, by contrast, has no free plan on any tier — only a fourteen-day trial. For a category whose whole value depends on you actually moving your credentials into it, the difference between a permanent free tier and a two-week evaluation is a difference in how reversible the decision is, not just in price.
LastPass sits in the middle on both counts, with an individual tier at £2.6 and a family tier at £3.4. Its business ladder runs above those, and here the record hits a limit worth admitting: its per-seat business rates are held in a field our pages cannot resolve into a figure, so they are not quoted here. That is our constraint rather than the vendor's — the rates are published on its page — and we would rather say so than quietly present a personal-tier comparison as though it covered the business ladder.
For teams, the same seat arithmetic applies as everywhere else, and 1Password's business pricing shows it plainly. Its Teams Starter Pack is a flat monthly rate covering ten people, which works out cheaper per head than its per-seat Business tier until roughly three users — so a two-person team pays less on the ten-person pack than on the plan that charges by the person. That is the same inversion the seat guide works through on other ladders, and it recurs because a flat pack and a per-seat rate always cross somewhere.
Three of the eight password managers in our record carry no captured pricing at all, so Dashlane, Keeper and RoboForm are absent from our comparisons rather than present with estimated figures. If you are shortlisting on price, the honest position is that this guide covers five of eight and says nothing about the other three. That is a smaller claim than most comparison sites make about this category, and it is the one our reading supports.
So the shortlist to run is not about the monthly figure. Ask whether the advertised annual rate continues into the second year or resets to a standing price. Ask whether the free tier is a plan or a countdown, because that determines whether you can test the migration properly before committing. Ask how wide the annual discount is, since the spread in this category runs from about a sixth to about two fifths. And if you are buying for a team, price the flat pack against the per-seat tier at your actual headcount before assuming the per-seat one is for smaller buyers.
The advertised annual rate is not always the standing one
One major manager's personal annual price is a first-year offer for new customers, with the standing rate a third higher and struck through in its own page markup. Both figures are published; only the lower one usually reaches a comparison table.
A free plan in the price table is not a trial
Proton Pass lists a free tier at zero alongside its paid plans and NordPass publishes one too. 1Password has none on any tier, only a fourteen-day trial. In a category built on migrating your credentials, that difference decides how reversible the trial actually is.
The annual discount varies more than the price does
One vendor's yearly discount is around forty per cent off its monthly rate, against the sixteen or seventeen per cent a conventional two-months-free offer yields. The spread on the discount is wider than the spread on the headline figure it applies to.
Family tiers pay from the second person, everywhere
Every family plan we hold in this category costs less than two individual licences, in every market we price it in. The crossover is at two people rather than four or five, and it does not depend on how many people the plan actually covers.
A flat team pack can beat a per-seat tier
1Password's ten-person Teams Starter Pack works out cheaper per head than its per-seat Business tier until roughly three users. Flat packs and per-seat rates always cross somewhere, and the crossing point is rarely where the plan names suggest.
We can price five of eight
Three records in this category hold no captured pricing at all. Those vendors are absent from our comparisons rather than represented by an estimate, which means our coverage of the category is partial and says so.
Questions people actually search
Which password manager is cheapest?
On the individual tier the answer changes with the market and by amounts too small to decide anything, which is why this guide argues for comparing the second-year price and the free tier instead. If the headline figure is genuinely your constraint, note that the cheapest advertised annual rate in this category is also the one most likely to be a first-year offer, so compare standing rates rather than advertised ones.
Is a free tier enough for one person?
Often, and it is the best way to find out whether you will actually use one. The point of a free plan here is not to save a few pounds but to let you migrate your credentials and live with the thing before you commit, which a fourteen-day trial does not really allow. Two of the vendors in this guide publish a permanent free tier; one publishes none.
Why do you not list business or enterprise prices?
Partly because one vendor's enterprise page publishes no price at all, and partly because another's per-seat business rates sit in a form our pages cannot turn into a figure. The first is the vendor's decision and the second is our limitation. Both are stated rather than papered over, and neither is filled with an estimate.
Should I pay annually?
In this category the annual discount is unusually wide, so probably yes — but check whether the annual rate you are quoted is a first-year rate before committing, because one major vendor's is. Where the discount is around forty per cent and carries no first-year condition, paying yearly is close to the clearest saving available in consumer software.
Do you earn a commission from any of these?
No. We hold no affiliate relationship with any password manager named on this page, and this page carries no affiliate links. Our method, including why a figure is sometimes described rather than quoted, is on the method page.
Prices resolve from dated vendor records at build time and appear in each edition's own currency; the records cited were read on 2026-09-03, except Bitwarden's, which is not quoted here. Where a figure is described rather than quoted — 1Password's rates, the width of an annual discount, a flat team pack — it is because the record holds it in a form that cannot be resolved into a figure for every edition, and a figure that could only be shown correctly in one market is not shown at all. Three vendors in this category hold no captured pricing and are not represented above. This page carries no affiliate links. Related: is that price per seat?, why a renewal is not the sticker price and what free actually means. The method →
Found a price that no longer matches the vendor’s page? Tell us — corrections are dated and stay on the page.