1Password vs Dashlane: Price, Features and Security Compared

1Password's cheapest personal plan is $2.99 a month and Dashlane's is $5.42 a month, both billed annually — but price alone does not tell the whole story. Dashlane bundles a VPN and AI-powered scam alerts that 1Password does not offer, while 1Password adds a Secret Key, Travel Mode and developer tooling that Dashlane leaves out. Neither company currently offers a standing free plan; both give new users a 14-day free trial instead.

This guide compares 1Password's current pricing and Dashlane's current pricing plan by plan, lines up what each subscription actually includes, and checks the encryption and audit claims each company makes about its own security. If you're also weighing Bitwarden and Proton Pass, our Bitwarden vs 1Password vs Proton Pass comparison covers that three-way match-up separately — this piece focuses specifically on the 1Password-versus-Dashlane pairing, which is a different and increasingly common search than the three-way match-up.

1Password vs Dashlane pricing, plan by plan

Both companies price their personal plans per month but bill annually, and both currently run promotional pricing for new customers that reverts to a higher "regular" rate after the discount period. Here's what each plan actually costs today, according to each company's own pricing page.

On a pure per-seat basis, 1Password's Individual plan is the cheaper way into a password manager. Dashlane's Friends & Family plan narrows the gap for households: $8.13 a month covers 10 separate accounts, which works out to well under a dollar per person if you actually fill all ten seats, versus 1Password Families covering up to 5 people for $4.49 a month total. Which one is cheaper per person depends entirely on how many people you're actually signing up.

What each price actually includes

1Password's Individual and Families plans are built around the same core feature set — the Families tier just adds seats and admin controls. According to 1Password's plan comparison table, every personal plan includes:

• Apps for macOS, iOS, watchOS, Windows, Android and Linux, plus browser extensions for Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox and Brave
• 1GB of encrypted storage per user for documents, not just logins
• Developer tooling: SSH agent workflows, Git commit signing, and CLI/SDK access
• Sign-in via third-party providers including Apple, Google and Facebook
• Travel Mode, which hides selected vaults entirely when crossing a border
• Watchtower alerts for weak, reused or breached passwords and sites that support passkeys

Dashlane's Premium and Friends & Family plans, per its own pricing comparison, include:

• Unlimited stored passwords and unlimited devices
• AI-powered scam protection that flags suspicious sites and messages in real time
• Dark web monitoring for leaked credentials
• VPN for Wi-Fi protection on Premium (one seat, via Dashlane's Hotspot Shield partnership) — Friends & Family members get "everything but VPN"
• 1GB of encrypted Secure Notes storage, plus password history
• Passwordless login, currently limited to new users
• Live chat support

The practical difference: Dashlane's single Premium subscription is closer to a bundled security suite, folding in a VPN and scam-detection layer that most competitors sell separately. 1Password keeps its scope narrower — vault and secrets management plus Travel Mode and developer tools — and expects you to pick your own VPN if you want one. If you'd rather shop for a standalone VPN anyway, our ExpressVPN vs Surfshark vs Proton VPN comparison breaks down pricing for that separately.

Security and encryption compared

Both companies publish their own account of how they protect vault data, and both describe a zero-knowledge model where the company itself cannot read your stored passwords.

1Password's security page describes a "dual-key" model: your account is protected by a password you choose (which 1Password says it never stores) plus a 128-bit Secret Key that's generated on your device. The combination, not the password alone, is what derives your encryption key, so 1Password says "even we can't see exactly what you've saved." Data in transit is additionally protected using the Secure Remote Password protocol. The company says it holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification, publishes independent third-party security audits, and runs what it calls "the industry's largest bug bounty" program through HackerOne.

Dashlane's security page states that vaults are encrypted using AES256-CBC-HMAC for confidentiality and integrity, with Argon2d used for GPU-resistant key derivation from your master password. Vaults are "encrypted and decrypted locally on user devices," and Dashlane says it "can never view or access user credentials." Dashlane also cites 8 granted patents (with 6 more pending) covering its zero-knowledge architecture, and says it uses AWS Nitro Enclaves — hardware-isolated confidential computing — for some sensitive operations. For specific compliance certifications, Dashlane points to its own Trust Center rather than listing them directly on the security page, and it maintains a vulnerability disclosure and bug bounty program for security researchers.

Neither company's self-published security page is a substitute for independent testing, and this comparison is based only on what each company states about its own architecture — not on any hands-on penetration testing of either product. Both describe comparable zero-knowledge designs; the clearest documented difference is that 1Password's page is more specific about a named compliance certification (SOC 2 Type 2) and points directly to published audit reports, while Dashlane's page emphasizes patented cryptography and defers certification specifics to a separate Trust Center page.

Family and multi-user plans

If you're shopping for more than one person, the two companies structure their household plans differently. 1Password Families covers up to 5 family members under one $4.49/mo subscription, with each member getting a private vault plus access to unlimited shared vaults, and the admin can add, remove or help recover members. Guest accounts (5 of them) let you share individual vaults with people who aren't full family members.

Dashlane's Friends & Family plan is built for a larger group from the start: $8.13 a month covers 10 separate accounts under one subscription, with a "Friends & Family Dashboard" for the plan manager. There's a trade-off, though — the plan manager gets the full Premium feature set, but the other nine members get everything except the VPN. If a VPN matters to everyone on the plan, 1Password Families doesn't include one for anybody, so neither plan fully solves that for every member; you'd be adding a separate VPN subscription either way for anyone beyond Dashlane's single included seat.

Both companies also let you try before you commit a whole household to one app. 1Password offers a 14-day free trial on either plan with no credit card required, and Dashlane's download page offers the same 14-day window on Premium. Since switching a family's passwords between managers later is tedious — every member has to re-import and re-share vaults — it's worth running the trial with at least one other household member before paying for the multi-user tier, rather than testing solo and assuming the shared-vault experience will feel the same for everyone.

Platform and device support

Both companies support the devices and browsers people actually use day to day. 1Password lists native apps for macOS, iOS, watchOS, Windows, Android and Linux, with extensions for Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox and Brave — notably including watchOS and Linux, which not every competitor covers. Dashlane advertises unlimited devices on every current plan, with apps across desktop and mobile platforms and browser extensions for the major browsers. Device-count limits were a bigger differentiator among password managers a few years ago; today, unlimited devices is the norm for the mainstream paid tier of both products, so it's not a meaningful reason to pick one over the other unless you specifically need watchOS or native Linux support, where 1Password has the edge.

Autofill and vault-browsing behavior also differ in ways a spec sheet doesn't capture well. 1Password's own product page walks through Watchtower's security-score dashboard, which rates your overall vault health and lists weak, reused and breached passwords in one view, plus one-click autofill for logins, cards and two-factor codes stored alongside the credential. Dashlane leans on an always-on Password Health score with similar intent — flagging weak and reused passwords — but pairs it with its scam-detection layer, so alerts about a risky login and alerts about a suspicious site or message show up in the same place rather than in separate tools.

Which one should you choose

Pick 1Password if: you want the lowest solo entry price, you regularly cross borders and want Travel Mode to hide sensitive vaults at the border, you write code and want SSH/Git tooling built into your password manager, or you specifically want a named SOC 2 Type 2 certification and published third-party audit reports to point to.

Pick Dashlane if: you want one subscription that also covers a VPN and real-time scam alerts instead of buying those separately, you're setting up a plan for a larger group (Friends & Family covers 10 people, not 5), or you want built-in dark web monitoring and passwordless login as part of the core product.

If price is the only factor, 1Password Individual's $2.99/mo promotional rate is the cheapest way into either product for a single user. And whichever manager you choose, pairing it with two-factor authentication on your most important accounts closes a gap that a password manager alone doesn't — see our guide on setting up an authenticator app for two-factor authentication for the setup steps.

Switching between them, or adding a third option

Both 1Password and Dashlane support importing an existing vault from a competing password manager, typically via a CSV or encrypted export file, so trying the other product does not mean starting from zero. The more time-consuming part is usually re-establishing shared vaults and re-sharing individual items with other people on a family plan, since shared-access permissions generally don't carry over automatically during an import. If neither 1Password nor Dashlane feels like the right fit after a trial, a lower-cost open-source option like Bitwarden, or Apple and Google's own built-in password managers, are worth a look before you commit to an annual plan.

What's next

Both companies run frequent promotional pricing, so the exact numbers above — $2.99 and $4.49 for 1Password, $5.42 and $8.13 for Dashlane — are current list prices rather than fixed forever, and it's worth checking each company's own pricing page before you subscribe, since promotions are tied to new-customer, first-year, direct-purchase terms. Watch for whether either company changes its free-trial length, adds a built-in VPN to the other's lineup, or shifts its dark web monitoring and scam-protection features between tiers, since those have been the fastest-moving parts of both products' feature lists this year.

Written bySana Qureshi

Sana Qureshi runs the security and privacy desk. She reports on actively exploited vulnerabilities, vendor patches and data breaches, and covers the password managers, VPNs and authentication tools readers use to protect themselves. Her alerts cite vendor advisories, CISA and the CVE record directly.

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