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Best password managers for 2022
Memorizing multiple passwords can be a pain, but it’s downright dangerous to use the same one for everything, and online privacy is not the place you want to be cutting corners. With many employees still working remotely, it’s never been more essential to make sure that your online presence is secure and safe from prying eyes.
Unless you want to constantly safeguard a hard-copy list of all your passwords, you might want to consider a password manager. It can help you seamlessly oversee and handle all of your login credentials for any online account, and maintain airtight password security. They’re also handy when it comes to autofilling forms and syncing your data across Windows PCs and Macs, iPhones, iPads, Android phones and more.
A password manager is essentially an encrypted digital vault that stores secure password login information you use to access apps and accounts on your mobile device, websites and other services. In addition to keeping your identity, credentials and sensitive data safe, the best password managers also have a password generator to create strong, unique passwords and ensure you aren’t using the same password in multiple places.
Our best password security manager picks feature subscription options that let you sync your secure password login information across devices, share credentials with trusted family and friends, and get access to secure online storage.
And if transparency is important to you, several of our picks are open-source projects.
BEST FREE PASSWORD MANAGER Bitwarden
Bitwarden leads the list of the best password managers for 2022, thanks to both its open-source roots and its unbeatable — and unlimited — free version. This lean encryption software can generate, store and automatically fill your passwords across all of your devices and popular browsers — including Brave and Tor — with competitive security strength.
Its free version lacks some of the bells and whistles of our other picks, but its premium versions are just as featurerich. Just like its closest competitors, a Bitwarden premium subscription allows you to share passwords, logins, memberships and other items with trusted family and friends, use multifactor authentication through YubiKey and get 1 gigabyte of encrypted storage. Although it has fewer features than the premium version, Bitwarden’s free version also offers a one-to-one texting feature called Bitwarden Send which allows you to securely share login information with another person.
If you’re looking for a user-friendly free service with an excellent security reputation for password management, it’s hard to pass up Bitwarden, which made it into CNET’s Cheapskate Hall of Fame as the best free password manager. Plus it has a password sharing feature so you can share all your login info with another person.
BEST PAID PASSWORD MANAGER FOR MULTIPLE PLATFORMS 1Password
If you’re looking for a trusted password manager app to keep your login information private and secure, 1Password is the best password manager for the task, letting you access your accounts and services with one master password. It’s available for all major device platforms.
This nicely designed password manager lacks a free version, but you can check it out for 14 days before signing up. (Alas, that’s down from the earlier 30-day trial period.) An individual subscription runs $36 a year and comes with 1GB of document storage and optional two-factor authentication through YubiKey for additional security. A travel mode lets you remove your 1Password sensitive data from your device when you travel, then restore it with one easy click when you return so that it’s not vulnerable to border checks.
Biometric authentication can be used to access your password vault on Mac and iOS operating systems, you can use Touch ID to unlock 1Password, and on iOS devices you can use Face ID as well. For $60 a year, you can cover a family of five and access password sharing, credit card information and anything else among the group with a single password manager app. Each person gets their own password vault, and it’s easy to control who you share information with and what they can do with it.
You can also create separate guest accounts for password sharing to share Wi-Fi connection passwords, for example, or home alarm codes with guests.
BEST PAID PASSWORD MANAGER LastPass
The free version of LastPass once made it stand out as the best password manager in this category by giving you the ability to store passwords, user login info and credentials and sync all of it wherever you want, across both your mobile devices or your browsers. And while you can currently view and manage passwords across mobile and desktop devices, as of last March, you’ll have to choose to use the free version for either mobile or desktop.
That means if you choose mobile, you’ll be able to access your LastPass account across your phones, tablets or smartwatches, but not on your laptop or desktop app — unless you upgrade to Premium, for $36 a year, or Families, for $48 a year.
The Premium version of the password manager also allows you to share passwords, logins, memberships and other items with trusted family and friends, use multifactor authentication through YubiKey and get 1 gigabyte of encrypted storage.
Meanwhile, the Families plan gives you six individual accounts, shared folders and a dashboard for managing the family accounts and keeping an eye on your account’s security.
No, LastPass isn’t flawless: A vulnerability privately reported in September 2019 was a scary flaw that could potentially compromise passwords. But the company patched it before it was known to be exploited in the wild. It was one of several vulnerabilities that have been discovered in LastPass over the years.
More recently, however, privacy and security concerns emerged around LastPass’ Android app when a privacy advocacy project discovered seven web trackers within the mobile app. In light of these concerns and LastPass’ new restrictions on its free-tier service, we’re reevaluating LastPass’ rank in our list of top password managers.