If you are searching for "1Password alternative pricing" or the real "password manager family plan cost", the headline monthly price is the least useful number on the page. This guide compares 1Password, NordPass, Dashlane and Bitwarden on the figures that decide value: the per-person cost of a family plan, what the price becomes at renewal, where the free plans stop working, and how small-team pricing steps up as you add people.
Billed annually ($71.88/year) for up to 5 members. New direct customers pay $4.49/mo in year one. No free plan — 14-day trial.
First-year price on the 1-year plan ($23.88). The standard rate is $2.99/mo ($35.88/year) — budget for that at renewal.
Billed annually ($89.88/year) for up to 10 members — the widest family cap of the four. No free plan since September 2025.
Free plan is permanent with unlimited passwords on unlimited devices. Premium is $19.80/year; Families (6 people) is $47.88/year.
| 1Password | NordPass | Dashlane | Bitwarden | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Best for | Households of up to 5 who share a lot | Individuals and families who want the lowest first-year bill | Households of 6–10, and anyone who values a bundled VPN | Anyone who wants a real free plan, open source, or self-hosting |
| Free option | None — 14-day trial only | Yes — unlimited passwords, but one active device session at a time; no health or breach tools | None — the free plan was discontinued in September 2025; trial only | Yes — unlimited passwords and devices; sharing limited to one other person |
| Individual paid plan | $3.99/mo billed annually ($2.99/mo in year one for new direct customers); $4.99/mo monthly | Premium $1.99/mo in year one on the 1-year plan; standard rate $2.99/mo | Premium $4.99/mo billed annually ($59.88/year); annual billing only | Premium $1.65/mo billed annually ($19.80/year); annual billing only |
| Family plan | Families: up to 5, $5.99/mo billed annually ($71.88/year); $4.49/mo in year one | Family: up to 6, $3.69/mo in year one; standard rate $5.99/mo ($71.88/year) | Friends & Family: up to 10, $7.49/mo billed annually ($89.88/year) | Families: up to 6, $3.99/mo billed annually ($47.88/year) |
| Family cost per person (all seats used, standard rates) | $14.38 / person / year | $11.98 / person / year ($7.38 in year one) | $8.99 / person / year | $7.98 / person / year |
| Adding people beyond the family cap | Yes — extra members at $1/person/mo | No — the 6-person cap is fixed | No — but the cap is 10 | No — the 6-person cap is fixed |
| Small-team entry | Teams Starter Pack: $24.95/mo flat for up to 10 people, billed annually | Teams: 10-user pack at $1.99/user/mo (1-year plan); Business from $3.99/user/mo, 5-seat minimum | Omnix Password Management: $8/user/mo billed annually | Teams: $4/user/mo billed annually; Enterprise $6/user/mo |
| Published security design | AES-256-GCM plus a device-generated 128-bit Secret Key; zero-knowledge; independent audits (incl. SOC 2 Type II) published | XChaCha20-Poly1305 with Argon2id key derivation; zero-knowledge; Cure53 audit and SOC 2 / ISO 27001 published | AES-256 with Argon2d key derivation; zero-knowledge; SOC 2 Type II / ISO 27001 published | AES-256 with PBKDF2 (600k iterations) or Argon2id; zero-knowledge; audits published, code open for inspection |
| Open source / self-hosting | Closed source · no self-hosting | Closed source · no self-hosting | Closed source · no self-hosting | Open source (clients and server) · self-hosting available |
| Trade-off to know | No free tier at all, and it is the most expensive family plan at standard rates for 5 people | The cheap first year renews at the standard rate; the free plan's one-device limit bites immediately | Most expensive individual plan here, and there is no free plan to fall back on | Interface and sharing model take more learning; free sharing covers only two people |
Prices are USD, before tax, as published by the vendors in November 2026. "Standard rate" for NordPass means the undiscounted list price shown on its pricing page; NordPass does not label a separate renewal price, so treat the standard rate as the renewal planning figure and confirm at checkout. 1Password's first-year prices apply to new customers subscribing directly on its website, not through app stores. Plans change — always confirm the current price, seat caps and renewal terms on the vendor's site before you buy.
Headline prices are first-year, per-plan numbers. Households keep a password manager for years and fill family seats unevenly, so we ran the published prices three ways. All of it is arithmetic on the prices in the table above — no estimated or leaked figures.
Assumptions: annual billing, five family members, year one at the introductory price where one is published, years two and three at the standard rate. Dashlane publishes no separate introductory/renewal split, and Bitwarden publishes no separate renewal price, so their current annual prices are carried forward — if either vendor raises prices, their totals rise too.
| Family plan (seats) | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | 3-year total | Per person / year (5 people) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bitwarden Families (6) | $47.88 | $47.88 | $47.88 | $143.64 | $9.58 |
| NordPass Family (6) | $44.28 | $71.88 | $71.88 | $188.04 | $12.54 |
| 1Password Families (5) | $53.88 | $71.88 | $71.88 | $197.64 | $13.18 |
| Dashlane Friends & Family (10) | $89.88 | $89.88 | $89.88 | $269.64 | $17.98 |
Two lessons fall out of this. First, the order flips over time: NordPass is the cheapest first year of the four, but at standard renewal rates its three-year total passes Bitwarden's — the "cheap" plan depends on which year you look at. Second, Dashlane only looks expensive because five people are paying for a ten-seat plan. Fill all ten seats and its per-person cost drops to $8.99 a year, second only to Bitwarden. Family-plan value is a headcount question before it is a price question.
Bitwarden Free rarely limits an individual: passwords and devices are unlimited. Its limits surface in specific moments — you want to share with a third family member (free sharing covers one other person), keep two-factor codes inside the same app (the built-in authenticator is a Premium feature), or give a family member emergency access if you are locked out (also Premium). NordPass Free stores unlimited passwords but keeps you signed in on one device at a time: pick up your phone and your laptop session ends. For the normal phone-plus-computer routine, that limit is not a footnote — it makes Premium the practical starting point. 1Password and Dashlane have no free tier at all, so the decision arrives at the end of a short trial: pay, or export everything and move.
Team pricing looks per-person, but packs, minimums and flat tiers make the real bill step-shaped. On annual billing at published rates, a five-person team pays about $239–$240 a year on NordPass Business (5 × $3.99/mo) or Bitwarden Teams (5 × $4/mo), $299.40 on 1Password's flat Teams Starter Pack, and $480 on Dashlane Omnix Password Management (5 × $8/mo). At ten people the picture reshuffles: NordPass's fixed 10-user Teams pack is $238.80 a year — the same as at five people — 1Password's flat pack is still $299.40, Bitwarden Teams is $480, and Dashlane is $960. And watch the eleventh seat: 1Password's Starter Pack is built around 10 included members (extra seats are offered up to 20), after which the Business plan at $8.99/user/mo is the comparison to make. If your team needs single sign-on, re-run the numbers on the tier that includes it (for example Bitwarden Enterprise at $6/user/mo, NordPass Enterprise at $5.99/user/mo, 1Password Business at $8.99/user/mo) rather than the entry tier.
1Password is the sharing-first option: every member gets a private vault, shared vaults are unlimited, and a family organizer can help recover an account when someone locks themselves out. Individual is $3.99/mo billed annually ($4.99 monthly), with a $2.99/mo first-year price for new customers buying directly. Families is $5.99/mo billed annually ($71.88/year) for up to five members, $4.49/mo in year one — and it is the only family plan here that keeps going past its cap, at $1 per extra member per month. There is no free plan, only a 14-day trial. On the published security side, vaults use AES-256-GCM encryption combined with a 128-bit Secret Key generated on your device, under a zero-knowledge design; the code is closed source, and the company publishes independent audit results including SOC 2 Type II. Its Watchtower feature flags weak, reused and exposed passwords.
NordPass, from Nord Security (the NordVPN company), competes on entry price. Premium is $1.99/mo for the first year on the 1-year plan ($23.88), and Family covers up to six people at $3.69/mo in year one ($44.28). The catch is in the fine print of every NordPass comparison: those are introductory prices. The standard rates — $2.99/mo for Premium, $5.99/mo ($71.88/year) for Family — are the figures to budget with, and over three years a family of five pays $188.04, not the ~$133 a first-year price suggests. Paid plans add a Data Breach Scanner, Password Health reports, email masking, secure sharing and emergency access. The free plan stores unlimited passwords but allows only one active device session at a time, which most multi-device users will feel on day one. Published security design: XChaCha20-Poly1305 encryption with Argon2id key derivation and a zero-knowledge architecture; closed source, with a Cure53 audit and SOC 2 / ISO 27001 certifications published.
Dashlane is the premium-priced, extras-bundled option. Premium is $4.99/mo billed annually ($59.88/year) for one person, including unlimited devices, dark web monitoring, phishing alerts and a bundled VPN provided by Hotspot Shield. Friends & Family is $7.49/mo billed annually ($89.88/year) and covers up to ten members, each with a private vault — at ten people that is $8.99 per person per year, competitive with Bitwarden; at three people it is $29.96 per person, the most expensive option here. Note that on the family plan the bundled VPN covers the plan manager only. Dashlane discontinued its free plan in September 2025 — older articles describing a free tier with a password cap are describing a product that no longer exists — so a short trial is the only way in before paying. For teams, the Omnix Password Management plan is listed at $8/user/mo billed annually, at the top of this group. Published security design: AES-256 encryption with Argon2d key derivation, zero-knowledge, closed source, with SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 published.
Bitwarden is built the other way round from the other three: the free plan is a complete password manager — unlimited passwords, unlimited devices, sync, passkey support and sharing with one other person, with no expiry. Premium ($19.80/year) adds the built-in two-factor authenticator, encrypted file attachments, emergency access and vault health reports. Families ($47.88/year) covers up to six people at $7.98 per person with all seats used, and because Bitwarden publishes no introductory/renewal split, it is also the cheapest three-year family total in our worked example ($143.64 for five people, assuming current prices hold). For teams, Teams is $4/user/mo and Enterprise $6/user/mo billed annually, the latter adding single sign-on and self-hosting. Published security design: AES-256 encryption with PBKDF2 or Argon2id key derivation and a zero-knowledge architecture — and uniquely here, the client and server code is open source and the server can be self-hosted, with independent audit reports published. Note the January 2026 price rise: Premium used to be $10/year, so older comparisons understate it.
Family value is headcount math. Five or fewer: compare 1Password, NordPass and Bitwarden. Six: NordPass or Bitwarden. Seven to ten under one roof (or one extended family): Dashlane's 10-seat plan is the only one that fits without add-ons — 1Password can stretch past five at $1 per extra member.
Write down the standard rate for every candidate — NordPass Family at $71.88/year, not $44.28 — and multiply out three years the way we did above. The plan that wins year one is not always the plan that wins year three.
If you live on one device, NordPass Free may genuinely be enough. If you switch between phone and computer all day, it isn't — and Bitwarden Free is the only $0 option with unlimited devices. Sharing with more than one other person ends the free ride at both.
All four publish zero-knowledge designs and independent audits. Beyond that, the verifiable differences are structural: Bitwarden's code is open and self-hostable; 1Password adds a device-held Secret Key to its key derivation; NordPass and Dashlane are closed source with published certifications. Pick the model you can check, rather than a claim you can't.
It depends on headcount and horizon. On published prices for a family of five over three years, Bitwarden Families totals $143.64, NordPass Family $188.04 (cheap first year, standard rate after), 1Password Families $197.64 and Dashlane Friends & Family $269.64. For a household that actually fills ten seats, Dashlane's per-person cost falls to $8.99/year and the order changes. The full workings are in "The math most comparisons skip" above.
For one person, it can be. Bitwarden's free plan covers unlimited passwords on unlimited devices indefinitely. The limits that push people to pay are specific: sharing beyond one other person, a built-in two-factor authenticator, emergency access for family, and — on NordPass Free — being signed in on more than one device at a time. Also consider the password managers built into your phone and browser (such as Apple Passwords or Google's), which cost nothing and may cover a single-ecosystem household; they are not part of this comparison because they are not cross-platform family plans in the same sense.
Introductory pricing. NordPass advertises a first-term price ($1.99/mo Premium, $3.69/mo Family on the 1-year plan) against a higher standard rate ($2.99 / $5.99), and 1Password offers new direct customers a first-year discount ($2.99 Individual, $4.49 Families) against its regular $3.99 / $5.99. Dashlane and Bitwarden do not publish an introductory/renewal split. Always budget on the standard rate and confirm the renewal figure at checkout.
We don't rank that, and you should be wary of comparisons that do based on algorithm names alone. What can be checked from public information: all four publish zero-knowledge architectures and independent audits or certifications; they differ in published encryption design (AES-256 variants at 1Password, Dashlane and Bitwarden; XChaCha20 at NordPass), in whether the code is open source (Bitwarden only), and in extra published mechanisms such as 1Password's Secret Key. Those are the facts to weigh — an algorithm name by itself does not settle which service is safer, and no password manager can promise that a breach is impossible.
The vendors sell these as household plans, and in practice the members are accounts you invite — the published terms, not this page, are what govern who may be invited, so check the plan terms for the vendor you choose. Two structural points from the published specs: Dashlane's ten seats make it the natural fit for extended family, and on Dashlane's family plan the bundled VPN covers only the plan manager, not every member.
That differs by vendor and is worth checking in each vendor's help pages before you commit, because your vault is involved. The structural point this comparison can make: with 1Password and Dashlane there is no free tier to fall back to, while a lapsed Bitwarden account falls back to a still-functional free plan, and NordPass has a free tier with a one-device limit. Wherever you land, every manager here supports exporting your data — do a test export before you need it.
Because this guide is compiled from the vendors' published pricing and specifications, not from hands-on testing, and it does not invent experience it doesn't have. Where a judgment appears — for example, that a renewal jump changes which plan is cheapest — it is arithmetic on the published prices, shown in full above so you can verify it yourself.