The Best Password Managers in 2024

and/or Vaultwarden as a selfhosted alternative.

Bitwarden + aegis for everything possible.

Authelia or authentik for self hosted stuff.

Corporate Headquarters

Bitwarden, Inc. 1 North Calle Cesar Chavez Santa Barbara, CA 93103 Bitwarden, Inc. is the parent company of 8bit Solutions LLC

Something tells me they'll enshitiffy too. It would make me uneasy storing all my passwords with a for profit corp, on their servers.

pass.

Prefer KeepassXC but let's be honest, the best password manager is the only you actually use and keep using.

I would only use KeepassXC

Nextcloud syncs my KeepassXC safe.

Been using that same setup and very happy with it.

Same for me

This is exactly my setup. How did you know? LOL.

Locally hosted bitwarden (vault warden) that is only accessible on your local network is the way to go. When a new sync is needed away from home, wireguard VPN to connect back in makes everything nice and secure. Otherwise most of the time the vault is cached to the device locally so you don't need to phone home to access passwords.

And they are really moving quickly with development. I feel like we're getting new features monthly

Same. The UI is pretty good and modern, they support TOPT and cards as well and the development is being done at a good pace.

My only complaint is the lack of passkey support. I just want to store my password and passkeys in one place.

For Keepass users: KeepassXC can read your keepass file just fine, but KeepassXC can also run on Linux, whereas Keepass runs only on Windows.

And I do keepassdx on Android, with a (phone-specific) database synced with syncthing

P.S. syncthing is fantastic: I hope more people consider hosting discovery servers and especially relays

And with Syncthing's Untrusted Device Encryption feature I can use my VPS as an extra node for synchronization without worrying touch if it becomes compromised without me knowing.

you could encrypt onedrive with cryptomator

It's not open source and they haven't had a security audit in a while AFAIK, I used to use it too but migrated to Proton Pass for these reasons https://discussion.enpass.io/index.php?/topic/404-security-audit/page/6/

Been using Enpass for something like a decade and it's been perfect. One time licenses can be found on stacksocial, I think.

I know they recently published the code for their clients, so that's a plus. But I can't find any independent audits for their architecture or clients.

While all mentioned options does have independent audits done.

Aslo more expensive than Bitwarden for example, should u want to pay for premium.

Dashlane’s app experience across platforms was hit and miss for me. 1Password has been much better.

Post-it notes on the monitor.

That's terrible practice

OneNote page

😱

I guess a bunch of things, as they are specialized apps:

• proper auth. I think with Firefox you can have a password, but a password manager will have multiple options for 2fa including security keys, and on phone fingerprint unlock etc. In general, password managers are more resistant to malicious users gaining access to your device.
• store all kinds of stuff. Not everything happens in the browser, and it's just convenient to have an app just for credentials. Many password managers allow to store and autofill credit cards too, for example.
• on the fly generation of aliases. Password managers have external integrations. For example proton and bitwarden can integrate with simplelogin.io to generate email aliases when you choose to generate a new username.
• org-like features. Password managers can be also convenient for sharing with family (for example). I do manage a bitwardes organization used by all my immediate family, which means I can share credentials easily with any of them. Besides the sharing I can also ensure my (not tech savvy mom) won't lock herself out (emergency breakglass access configurable) and technically enforce policies on password strength etc.
• as banal as it is, self-managing. I like to run my own services and running my own password manager with my own backups gives me peace of mind.
• another perhaps obvious point. More compatibility? I can use my password manager on whatever device, whatever browser. For some, it might not change anything, but it's a convenient feature.

As a personal addition, I would say that I simply want the cornerstone of my online security to be a product for a company that is specialized in doing that. I have no idea how much effort goes into the password manager from Mozilla, for example.

I need to enter passwords in lots of places that aren't a browser.

If Firefox's password keeper meets your needs, then I would endorse using that, for sure.

(I use KeepassXC)

I use the notes section alot. I can store all kinds of related info. For example on sites that still use a username to login, I can put the email I used to sign up in the notes section.

I'll also do security questions answers here. Using a pasphrase generator for those is good. No one is going to check if your first dog's name really was "consoling-roving-activator-earflap" and no one can find it on your over sharing grandma's Facebook.

I'll also attach any license keys/relevant files for software, now those stay encrypted and backed up with the database instead of in a random folder of text files.

I thought I read somewhere that the build in browser password saves are not very secure.

This was maybe 5 years ago so i am guessing they have improved it?

In addition to what the others have said, with those other password managers you dont have to do much if you decide to change browsers some day.

Yes! Been using it for a long time now! Never had any (major) issues!

No love for Nextcloud

Pretty much in general for me now. I gave it an honest go for six years but there were at least four instances where a server upgrade required nontrivial intervention to bring it back.

Syncthing + Keepass[DX] has been solid for me.

1Password supports passkeys btw. With aliases via Fastmail.

Proton Pass Pros: Aliases,

1Password technically does have aliases too but it requires a fastmail.com subscription. I use it and it works quite well though.

StrongBox is just a client that uses keepass databases. I think it integrates well when using Apple devices and you can still use your databases on other platforms.

Strongbox is great, but expensive. I settled on KeePassium instead mostly based on cost.

In a vacuum, maybe. But there is a difference between adding new features to a paid plan and removing features from a free plan.

I don't know if this is still the case, but we trialled LastPass enterprise around 10 years ago. They didn't have an API. They had no intention of ever introducing an API. So, the script could spin up a database, but couldn't store a break-glass su user into the vault without actually giving it to a human, first. Some enterprise solution. 🙄

We use it at work and im pretty happy with it.

Same. So far it's doing the job but I wonder if there's some reason I should switch to one of these others?