Bitwarden vs 1Password vs Proton Pass (UK 2026)

Three password managers - three different bets on what a password manager should be. Bitwarden is the open-source workhorse with the best free tier. 1Password is the polished premium pick that families end up choosing. Proton Pass is the Swiss-jurisdiction newcomer that bundles email aliases and 2FA codes into the price. This guide helps you pick the right one for how you'll actually use it - not on which has the loudest marketing.

This comparison weighs six factors that decide whether a password manager actually gets used day-to-day: free-tier usability (because the free tier is where most people start, and a too-limited free tier creates the friction that breaks the habit), family sharing (because most password breakdowns happen in households), platform coverage and autofill reliability (where 90% of the actual usage lives), jurisdiction and audit history (because you are trusting an external party with the keys to your digital life), price at the renewal cliff rather than the headline rate, and the bonus features each one bundles in.

Bitwarden and Proton Pass are open source - the apps, browser extensions, and crypto implementations are public on GitHub and have been independently audited. That doesn't make them automatically more secure than 1Password, but it does mean security researchers can review the implementation directly rather than relying on the vendor's claims.

1Password is closed source, but their security record is unusually strong: SOC 2 Type II audits, a public bug bounty programme, and a long history of clear post-mortems on the rare issues they've had. The threat model and crypto are documented in detail; you just can't see the implementation.

If your threat model includes "I don't trust closed-source crypto on principle," Bitwarden and Proton Pass clear that bar and 1Password doesn't. If your threat model is "keep my passwords safe from the average attacker," all three are comfortably above the bar - and the gap between any of them and a browser's built-in password manager is much bigger than the gap between them.

Two of the three have free tiers worth using. Bitwarden Free is the most permissive in the category - unlimited passwords on unlimited devices with no nag-screens. The deliberate gaps are 2FA code generation, secure sharing of items to non-Bitwarden users, and the emergency-access feature. For a single person who only wants "a password manager that works," the free tier is genuinely sufficient indefinitely.

Proton Pass Free is almost as generous on the core features but includes 2FA code generation and one email alias - two features that Bitwarden gates behind Premium. It's the better free choice for someone who'd otherwise also pay for Authy and a hide-my-email service.

1Password has no free tier. The 14-day trial is a real trial, and the pricing is the most honest of the three at the monthly tier (no surprise renewal hikes), but if "free" is a hard requirement, 1Password is the wrong pick.

This is the category that decides who ends up with which tool in practice. The friction of sharing the Netflix password with your partner, the cleaner's keypad code, and your kid's school login is what drives most households from "we keep meaning to set this up" to "we have a password manager."

1Password Families is the gold standard. Five family members, separate private vaults, clean shared-vault flow for the family-level items, and recovery via the family organiser if someone forgets their primary password. $71.88/year (around £53) for five people after the March 2026 price rise works out to roughly £11/year each. The bookkeeping is genuinely effortless.

Bitwarden Families is six members for around £36/year ($47.88, since January 2026) - the cheapest of the three. The setup flow is more functional and less hand-holdy than 1Password, but for anyone who'd happily configure a Synology, that's a non-issue. The share-an-item flow to a non-member is the rough edge.

Proton Pass families is folded into the broader Proton Unlimited Family plan (~£8/month for four users, but with the rest of the Proton suite included). It only makes financial sense if you'd otherwise be paying for Proton Mail or Proton Drive separately. As a standalone family password manager, the price-per-feature lands behind the other two.

Each one bundles something the others don't.

1Password's Travel Mode lets you mark vaults as "unsafe for travel" - those vaults are removed from the device entirely when Travel Mode is on, and reappear when you turn it off. The use case is border crossings where you don't want sensitive credentials physically present on the device being searched. Journalists, activists, and frequent international travellers find this genuinely useful; for most other people it's a feature that sounds cool and never gets switched on.

Proton Pass's email aliases are the differentiator. Every time you sign up for something, Pass can generate a new [email protected] address that forwards to your real inbox. Cancel the alias and the spam stops without you having to migrate your real address. This is built into the password-save flow, so you don't have to remember to do it. SimpleLogin (also Proton-owned) is the same feature unbundled; having it inside the password manager removes the friction.

Bitwarden's extra is self-hosting. If you have a Synology, an old Raspberry Pi, or any always-on device, you can run a Bitwarden-compatible server (Vaultwarden) and keep every password under your own roof. The client apps work identically - only the backend changes. For a tiny minority of users this is the deciding factor.

Headline pricing is mostly honest across all three, but the 3-year cost picture for a typical household is worth doing:

Bitwarden: Free for one person indefinitely. Premium at around £15/year ($19.80, since a January 2026 price rise). Families at around £36/year ($47.88, six people). Three years, six-person household: around £108.

1Password: Families at $71.88/year (around £53) for five people, after a March 2026 price rise. Three years: around £160. No free fallback if you want to cancel.

Proton Pass: Plus at around £2.20/month per person (US$2.99, cut from $4.99 in March 2026) = roughly £27/year per person. Or Proton Unlimited Family at ~£8/month bundling the entire Proton suite for four users: £96/year. Three years: £288 (but you'd also be replacing Proton Mail, Drive, Calendar, and VPN spend).

If you only need a password manager and want the cheapest path, Bitwarden wins by a clear margin. If you'd be paying for several Proton tools anyway, the bundle makes the Pass spend functionally free. If you want the no-thinking-required family experience, 1Password's roughly £160 over three years for five people is good value for what it removes from your life.

The honest short version, by who you are:

You want a password manager that's free, robust, open source, and that you could self-host if you ever wanted to - Bitwarden. Pay the roughly £15/year Premium upgrade if you want 2FA codes in the same app; the free tier is fine without.

You're setting up password management for a household and want the polish that makes adoption stick - 1Password Families. Of the three, this is the one that non-technical family members will actually use without complaining. The £160 or so over three years is buying the absence of "can you reset my password again" conversations.

You already use Proton Mail, or you want email aliases as a first-class feature - Proton Pass. The free tier is the most generous on per-person features, the Swiss jurisdiction is a real bonus, and the ecosystem bundle gets more compelling the more Proton tools you use.

One non-answer to call out: any of these three is much better than your browser's built-in password manager. Browser-native password managers are convenient but sit inside your browser's threat model - a malicious extension or a session-hijacking attack puts everything at risk together. A separate password manager keeps the keys in a different layer of your security stack. Pick on the use case; the worst of these three is still meaningfully better than no manager at all.