1Password vs Bitwarden in 2026

The Short Version

1Password and Bitwarden come up together in almost every password manager shortlist, and for good reason: both encrypt your vault end to end, both have apps for every major platform, and both have business plans with SSO and automated provisioning. They differ in almost everything else.

1Password is a paid product, without a free plan, built around easy apps and an extra secret, the Secret Key, that protects your account alongside your password. Bitwarden is open source, has a real free plan, costs less on every paid tier, and is the one you can run on your own servers.

In one line: pick 1Password if you want the smoothest apps and an all-in-one business plan, and pick Bitwarden if price, open code or self-hosting matter more to you. The rest of this page explains where that line comes from, plan by plan.

This is a researched comparison. We did not run our own hands-on tests. Prices and features come from each vendor's own pricing pages, help centers and security pages, checked on October 17, 2026.

Side-by-Side Overview

Pricing, Plan by Plan

Personal plans

1Password has no free plan. Every plan starts with a 14-day free trial that does not need a card.

• 1Password Individual: $3.99 per month billed yearly ($47.88 a year), or $4.99 billed monthly. New customers who subscribe directly at 1Password.com pay $2.99 per month for the first year on annual billing ($35.88), then the regular price.
• 1Password Families: $5.99 per month billed yearly ($71.88 a year) for 5 people, or $7.99 billed monthly. The first-year promo is $4.49 per month on annual billing. Families can share unlimited vaults and add 5 guest accounts.

Bitwarden starts at zero.

• Bitwarden Free: unlimited passwords and devices, passkey storage, Bitwarden Send, and sharing with one other person.
• Bitwarden Premium: $19.80 a year ($1.65 per month). Adds a built-in authenticator for TOTP codes, file attachments, emergency access and security reports.
• Bitwarden Families: $47.88 a year ($3.99 per month) for up to 6 people, with unlimited sharing and collections.

Bitwarden shows annual prices only, excluding tax. For one person, Bitwarden Premium costs less than half of 1Password Individual's regular annual price, and Bitwarden Families covers one more person than 1Password Families for $24 a year less than 1Password's regular rate.

Business plans

• 1Password Teams Starter Pack: $24.95 per month billed annually ($299.40 a year) for up to 10 members. Add up to 10 more seats at $4.99 per seat/month on annual billing, to a maximum of 20 users. No SSO or provisioning.
• 1Password Business: $8.99 per user/month billed annually ($107.88 per user a year), or $10.99 per user/month billed monthly. One-user minimum. Adds SSO, provisioning, custom policies, SIEM streaming and a free Families plan per user.
• 1Password Enterprise Password Manager: quote-based.
• Bitwarden Teams: $4 per user/month billed annually. Sharing, event logs, directory sync and SCIM.
• Bitwarden Enterprise: $6 per user/month billed annually. Adds SSO, policies, custom roles, admin account recovery, self-hosting, Access Intelligence and a free Families plan per user.

Both vendors give a 14-day free trial on business plans.

What 10, 20 and 50 seats cost per year

All figures use annual billing. On monthly billing, 1Password Business for 50 users is $549.50 a month, or $6,594 a year.

Two things stand out. For a team of 20 or fewer that does not need SSO, 1Password's Teams Starter Pack is actually cheaper than Bitwarden Teams. Once you need SSO, or pass 20 people, Bitwarden Enterprise costs about a third less than 1Password Business: $1,794 a year less at 50 seats.

Security Model: Secret Key vs Open Source

Both tools use zero-knowledge, end-to-end encryption: your vault is encrypted on your device and the vendor cannot read it. The difference is in how each one adds trust on top of that.

1Password: the Secret Key

When you create a 1Password account, you get a 128-bit Secret Key. It is stored on the devices you sign in on and in your Emergency Kit, and 1Password says it has no record of it. Your vault is encrypted with a key derived from both your account password and the Secret Key, which 1Password calls Two-Key Derivation. Sign-in uses the Secure Remote Password (SRP) protocol, data is encrypted with AES-256, and 1Password says neither your account password nor your Secret Key is ever sent to it.

The practical benefit: if someone stole 1Password's encrypted data, they would also need each user's Secret Key, so guessing a weak account password would not be enough. The cost is a little friction. Signing in on a new device needs the Secret Key as well as the password, and 1Password cannot recover a lost Secret Key, so the Emergency Kit has to be kept somewhere safe. On business plans, account recovery by an administrator covers this case.

Bitwarden: code anyone can read

Bitwarden does not use a second secret. Your vault is protected by your master password, plus two-step login if you turn it on. What Bitwarden offers instead is transparency: its whole codebase is public on GitHub under AGPL v3 and the Bitwarden License, so researchers and customers can inspect exactly how encryption is done. The trade-off is that a strong master password matters more with Bitwarden, because there is no Secret Key behind it.

Audits and certifications

1Password's main apps are not open source (a 1Password staff member has said some code is public on its GitHub, but not the full product). It holds a SOC 2 Type II report, publishes the results of independent security audits on its security site and runs a public bug bounty on HackerOne.

Bitwarden lists a long series of audits: Cure53 (2018 to 2025), the applied cryptography group at ETH Zurich (2025), Unit 42 (2025), Fracture Labs, IOActive (2024), Mandiant (2024) and Insight Risk. It holds ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3, and lists GDPR, CCPA and HIPAA compliance. It also runs a bug bounty program.

For most buyers the security question comes down to preference: an extra secret plus published audits, or open code plus a long audit list.

Self-Hosting

This is the clearest difference. 1Password is cloud only. Its pricing pages list no self-hosted option. You choose a data region through your billing currency (USD, CAD or EUR).

Bitwarden can be self-hosted. The server runs in Docker on Linux or Windows. Bitwarden's install guide asks for Docker Engine 26 or later, an x64 machine, at least 2 GB of RAM and 12 GB of storage. Self-hosting itself is free, but some features need a license file, and organizations need a Families or Enterprise license. For a business, that means Bitwarden Enterprise at $6 per user/month.

Self-hosting is worth it if policy, regulation or customers require the vault to stay on your own infrastructure. Otherwise the cloud version saves you the work of patching, backups and uptime.

SSO, SCIM and Admin Controls by Plan

The split is different on each side. 1Password puts all identity features in one jump, from Teams Starter Pack to Business. Bitwarden gives SCIM provisioning on the cheaper Teams plan, which is useful if you want accounts to follow your directory but are happy for people to unlock with a master password. SSO unlock needs Enterprise.

For audit trails, Bitwarden's event logs cover more than 50 event types with timestamps, client type, IP address and user, kept indefinitely on both business plans, and its public API can manage members, collections, groups, event logs and policies. 1Password Business adds custom reports and streams events to common SIEM tools.

Sharing and Account Recovery

Both tools share through containers you control. 1Password uses vaults, with role-based vault permissions on Business. Bitwarden uses collections, which can hold any number of items and be assigned to users or groups.

Sharing outside the company is easier in 1Password: it can share an item with anyone, even people who do not use 1Password. Bitwarden's tool for this is Send, which shares information through a link. Send is on the Free plan, and business plans can send both text and files.

For recovery, 1Password includes account recovery on both business plans, so a team administrator can help a locked-out user set a new password. Bitwarden includes admin account recovery only on Enterprise. On Teams, users rely on their own master password, with emergency access (included in Premium features for all business users) as a backup.

Secrets Management and Developer Tools

Both companies sell to developers, but in different ways.

1Password builds developer features into its main plans. 1Password Developer covers an SSH agent and SSH key management, Git commit signing, a CLI and SDKs, and is listed on personal and business plans. For machines, service accounts let apps, infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines read secrets without a personal account, with up to 100 service accounts and usage reports. 1Password Connect servers are offered as an alternative to service accounts.

Bitwarden sells Secrets Manager as a separate product. The free tier covers 2 users, 3 machine accounts and 3 projects. Teams is $6 per user/month and Enterprise $12 per user/month, billed annually, with 20 or 50 machine accounts and $1 for each extra one. Bitwarden also has a CLI for the password manager.

If your developers already use 1Password for SSH keys and Git signing, staying in one tool is convenient. If you want a dedicated, open source secrets product with its own pricing, Bitwarden Secrets Manager is the cleaner fit.

Apps, Browsers and Passkeys

1Password has apps for macOS, iOS, watchOS, Windows, Android and Linux, and browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox and Brave. Personal plans include 1 GB of storage per user. Travel Mode, included with every subscription, hides chosen vaults while you cross a border. 1Password can save, sign in with and share passkeys, and unlocking 1Password itself with a passkey is rolling out.

Bitwarden has desktop apps for Windows, macOS and Linux, mobile apps for iOS and Android (including on F-Droid), a web vault, a CLI, and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, DuckDuckGo and Tor Browser. It stores and syncs passkeys, and you can log in to the web app and extension with a PRF-compatible passkey. Business users get 5 GB personal plus 5 GB organization storage.

Bitwarden covers more browsers, including Opera, Vivaldi and Tor Browser. 1Password covers Apple Watch and has Travel Mode. How each interface feels is best judged by your own users during the trials.

Password Health, Breach Alerts and Risk Reports

Both tools tell you when passwords are weak, reused or exposed, but they package it differently.

1Password Watchtower checks for breached, weak and reused passwords, sites where two-factor login is available but not turned on, and sites that support passkeys. These reports are on both business plans. On Business, Watchtower also sends team-wide alerts, so an administrator sees problems across the company instead of each person seeing only their own vault, and custom reports let you pull this into regular reviews.

Bitwarden gives every paid user vault health reports, including on both business plans. Enterprise adds Access Intelligence, which Bitwarden describes as a way to uncover shadow IT, prioritize critical applications, guide employees to update passwords and measure improvement over time.

For a small team, both are enough to clean up the worst passwords in the first month. For a security team that wants company-wide risk reporting, compare 1Password Business with Bitwarden Enterprise, since the team-level views sit in those tiers.

Family Plans for Employees and Support

Both vendors give business users a free family plan, which helps keep personal logins out of the work vault. On 1Password it comes with Business (not Teams Starter Pack). On Bitwarden it comes with Enterprise (not Teams), and each user can share it with five friends or family members.

Support differs too:

• 1Password: Business adds phone support. Organizations with 101 or more users get a customer success manager and training.
• Bitwarden: both business plans include priority 24/7 email support. Qualified Enterprise customers get a dedicated engagement manager and help with onboarding, implementation and training.

If live phone help matters to your IT team, that tips toward 1Password Business. If round-the-clock email is enough, Bitwarden's support comes at a lower price.

Import and Migration

Moving between the two is straightforward.

• Into 1Password: 1Password's import guides cover Bitwarden (encrypted JSON export), LastPass (through the desktop app; passkeys do not come across), Dashlane (CSV) and Keeper (CSV; attachments are not imported).
• Into Bitwarden: Bitwarden imports from 1Password, LastPass, Dashlane, Keeper, browsers, KeePass and many more, in CSV or JSON formats.

Whichever way you go, check attachments, passkeys and shared items after the import, and delete any unencrypted export file when you are done.

What About Dashlane, Keeper, NordPass and LastPass?

If neither tool fits, these are the main alternatives, priced per user/month on annual or 1-year plans:

• Dashlane: Omnix Password Management at $8 includes SSO and SCIM. A separate Credential Protection package adds phishing detection and credential risk monitoring.
• Keeper: Business Starter $2 (5 to 10 users), Business $4, Enterprise $6 by quote with SSO and SCIM. Many paid add-ons, plus FedRAMP High and GovRAMP for its government cloud.
• NordPass: Teams $1.99 (10-user pack), Business $3.99, Enterprise $5.99 with Entra ID and Okta SSO and provisioning. Monthly and 2-year terms too.
• LastPass: Teams $4.25, Business $7, Business Max $11. In 2022 an attacker copied a backup of customer vault data, with URLs unencrypted, according to LastPass's own notices.

Who Should Pick Which

Pick 1Password if:

• You want an all-in-one product for non-technical staff and family members, with sharing to people outside 1Password.
• You like the idea of a Secret Key protecting your account on top of your password.
• You want one business plan with SSO, provisioning, policies, SIEM streaming and admin recovery together.
• Your developers will use the SSH agent, Git signing and service accounts.
• You run a team of 20 or fewer without SSO, where Teams Starter Pack is cheaper than Bitwarden Teams.
• You travel and want Travel Mode.

Pick Bitwarden if:

• You want a free plan, or the cheapest paid personal plan.
• You prefer open source code you can inspect.
• You must self-host.
• You need SSO for a larger team at the lowest list price ($6 against $8.99).
• You want SCIM provisioning without paying for a top tier.
• You want a separate secrets product with a free tier.

Final Verdict

For most businesses, 1Password is the safer default. Its Business plan covers identity integration, policies, reporting, recovery and developer tooling in one price, and the Secret Key gives it a security property Bitwarden does not have. You pay more for that, especially past 20 users.

Bitwarden is the better choice when cost, transparency or control decide it. Its free and Premium plans are the best value for individuals, Enterprise brings SSO and admin recovery at two thirds of 1Password's Business price, and nothing else here lets you run the server yourself.

Both offer 14-day business trials, and both can import from each other, so the cheapest way to decide is to run the same small team on each for a week.