Should 1Password’s Price Hike Push You to Apple’s Pas…

1Password is raising prices for the first time in ten years. With Apple’s free Passwords app maturing into a capable alternative, is it finally time to consider switching—or do 1Password’s features still justify its cost?

1Password has announced that prices for its popular password manager will increase for renewals made on or after 27 March 2026. In an email to users, the company said that 1Password Individual will increase from $35.88 per year ($2.99 per month, paid annually) to $47.88 per year ($3.99 per month), and that 1Password Families would increase from $59.88 per year ($5.99 per month) to $71.88 per year ($6.99 per month).

1Password also offers more expensive month-to-month subscriptions, but apart from an initial trial or someone who needs a little more time to transition, I can’t see any reason to pay more for them. (Annoyingly, 1Password referred to the price increase as an “update,” as in “We’re updating the cost of your subscription,” and “we’re updating pricing for Family plans.” My editorial advice for 1Password—call a spade a spade instead of trying to pussyfoot around the facts.) Although the new prices represent significant percentage increases—33% for the Individual plan and 20% for the Families plan—the previous prices hadn’t changed in a decade, when 1Password first offered a subscription option (see “1Password Introduces Individual Subscriptions,” 4 August 2016, for our coverage of that event, complete with responses from 1Password founder Dave Teare).

Adjusted for cumulative inflation of about 35% since 2016, the Individual plan costs almost exactly the same in real terms, and the Families plan has actually gotten cheaper. And yes, 1Password used to offer perpetual licenses; those haven’t been available since 1Password 8 shipped in 2022. Another reason the price hike may seem steep is that, in the intervening years, Apple’s Passwords has become a viable alternative for many people, free of charge.

The question arises: Is now the time to consider switching to Passwords? (Or to another password manager, but I leave that analysis as an exercise for the reader.) We can debate how well the two apps implement those features, but neither is seriously problematic. 1Password justifies its price with its significantly larger compatibility matrix and feature set, including: I’ll admit to a knee-jerk negative reaction to the 1Password price hike.

Is 1Password really delivering $72 worth of value for our family when Passwords has become so competitive? However, taking the time to go through the additional features 1Password provides has convinced me that it does. Although we don’t need the cross-platform capabilities that make 1Password a no-brainer, I do use and appreciate the additional item types, custom fields, tags, SSH agent, and time-expiring password shares.

After all that, 1Password sent another email today, apologizing for the first one because we had signed up for the Families Launch Special Plan, a legacy pricing tier that is apparently locked in for life. I hadn’t remembered that, but presumably someone did. So I’m happy—I get to keep using all the 1Password features without paying more. That said, if you and your family only use Apple devices and don’t take advantage of 1Password’s extra features, switching might be worth the effort.

You can export your 1Password vault to a CSV file using File > Export > vaultname > CSV, and Passwords on the Mac can import it using File > Import Passwords from File. The process is straightforward for passwords, though you’ll lose any attached files and custom fields—you’ll need to move that information manually or store it elsewhere. To 1Password’s credit, your data is never held hostage.

Even if you let your subscription lapse before exporting, your account will be frozen, but you can still view and export everything. 1Password just announced a 33% price increase, which I find to be staggeringly ridiculous. Time to switch. I currently use both the Apple Passwords app and 1Password simultaneously, the features that have kept me using 1Password are the multiple “vaults” (work passwords separated from personal, etc), generally better integration with 3rd party browsers (but I admit I haven’t looked yet at whether Apple Passwords can now work in Chrome, Brave, and so on), and to a lesser degree the ability to send a password to a colleague.

This is the first raise that I’ve had since 2018 on the family plan and it still represents pretty good value, slightly under the equivalent inflation amount (based on UK) and not ‘staggeringly ridiculous’. I gave up all third-party password managers a while ago, and advise my clients to do the same. Passwords in iOS and Mac OS is more than adequate. If you also work in Windows and Linux, then you’ll need a cross-platform tool.

Apple’s password management system won’t cut it. (FWIW, I use Firefox’s password-sync feature. It syncs my passwords across all my devices, regardless of operating system. But only with Firefox, not with other browsers.) I had ongoing issues with the 1Password extension failing with MacOS Safari for a long time, and last fall I switched for a few weeks to BitWarden. It’s… fine. But, it’s missing a lot of things that I like about 1Password.

Different vaults – I could never figure out a way to do this well with BitWarden, except with tags on individual items, to place them in folders, which just felt kludgy to me. I suppose perhaps you could pay another subscription for a second vault? I never looked into this. But I could perhaps live with these shortcomings. After switching back, I found that the 1Password Safari extension is suddenly fine.

Of course there is also Apple Passwords, and I might just switch to this, but no software licenses, no passports, no drivers license, no secure notes (well, I’d use the Notes app, I guess), no custom fields in password entries (I use this a lot.) I may just stay with 1Password – $4 a months is not terrible. But maybe switching back to BitWarden? I’m still deciding – I have until late August to decide.

BitWarden is fine, reliable, less expensive, though, for those that hate this, the Mac app is Electron rather than native (like 1Password), but I’m fine with that. Yes, and I really like it. I prefer a well-designed electron app to a poorly-designed native app, so being an electron app doesn’t matter to me. It may matter to others. I actually use Firefox’s password sync in addition to Apple Passwords and agree it is a good cross-platform solution.

Regarding cross-platform passwords, the iCloud Passwords for Windows app works well and supports most Windows browser by an extnsion. Unfortunately, it does not yet support passkeys. I guess here you will read about various “alternatives”, Bitwarden, Enpass, MacOS Passwords … SO I would recommend to make tests with these apps. Install them and work with “dummy” passwords. I use Bitwarden (as a former 1 Pwd user), and “happy” with it.

Works well with other browsers, sending is possible (but never done). But: User Interface is not nice, and some basic features are missing like #tags or additional item types (only passwords, notes, cards, SSH keys and personal available). The 1Password subscription model has worked well for me. I’ve gotten a steady stream of updates – both enhancements and bug fixes from 1Password over the term of my subscription.

My family runs it on all the computers (Mac and Linux) and iDevices we own (multiple iPhones and iPads). Moral outrage is reserved for others more deserving (cough.. Google, Meta, anyone else that sells my data ..cough). I’m also not that concerned about the cloud components of their service and their security model (I’ve reviewed their security papers. I’m aware of the recent ETH-Zurich research paper that’s describing a potential weakness in 1Password’s public keys as well as 1Password’s response to that in their blog).

Their approach to security is good enough for me (and evidently for their commercial customers as well). This is the first (subscription) 1P software price increase in many, many years. Costs have gone up everywhere so a price increase isn’t that surprising. It does seem like an excessive increase. It leads to the sinking feeling that this increase for family plan users is being used to subsidize development for their commerical customers.

I wonder if they’re not making as much as expected from what they thought was a lucrative market – and someone has to pay the bills. Welcome to the world of selling your soul to the venture capitalists, AgileBits. I also have mixed feelings about the all-too-common practice of paying a software company for fixing bugs of their own creation. That goes for both perpetual license and subscription software….

It’s a balancing act. If you accept the fact that prices will increase as time goes on, then you’re either going to have more, smaller increases or fewer, larger increases. Given the amount of time the price was flat prior to this increase, it looks like 1Password is taking the latter approach. The “death by a thousand cuts” method of incremental increases may not cause as much notice as the “rip the bandage off” method of fewer, larger increases.

But like the all-too-prevalent “shrinkflation” the erosion in value with the incremental increases does eventually get noticed. You can argue about which is worse, but in my mind gradual erosion eventually makes me think that I’m getting ripped off stealthily. Kind of like what’s been happening with my cable TV and Internet fiber bills. My increase is 20%, not 33%, on an annual plan whose price has not previously increased since I first subscribed four years ago.

Hardly staggering, in my opinion. I find 1Password much more useful than Apple’s Password app because of its ability to store all sorts of important records, not just passwords, and for its accessibility across various platforms and apps. I recently started using passkeys in 1Password, and that works great, too. If I ever had a significant problem using 1Password, I might consider switching, but I find it easy and convenient to use, so no.

The great thing about passkeys is that I can scan a QR code with my phone (which I always have) to authenticate, so it’s not a terrible burden. There is some support for iCloud Passwords on Windows (but not Linux or Android.) Set up iCloud Passwords in iCloud for Windows so you can manage and autofill your passwords on your PC. Use iCloud for Windows to manage your passwords on your PC with the iCloud Passwords app.

1P 6 was perfect, and I think it even still works for me. I’ve never seen any reason to start paying them to make it worse, so I switched to Apple Passwords. If it quits working, update it and sell the update. Then I can choose. I didn’t sign up for a coercive relationship. I payed for an app. 1Password just announced a 33% price increase, which I find to be staggeringly ridiculous. Time to switch.

You didn’t mention the fact that the current monthly price is $4 for an individual subscription and $6 for a family subscription. Yes, going from $3 to $4 is a 33% increase, but an extra $12 per year isn’t going to break anybody’s budget. Going from $3 to $4 is the smallest increase allowed by App Store rules. Seems that switching to annual would get you a lower % increase in addition to the discounted rate.

1P 6 was perfect, and I think it even still works for me. I’ve never seen any reason to start paying them to make it worse, so I switched to Apple Passwords. If it quits working, update it and sell the update. Then I can choose. I didn’t sign up for a coercive relationship. I payed for an app. Ditto 1Password 7. Which is why I stayed with it. My mandatory requirements are: 1. Standlone one-time purchase.

2. Local storage – absolutely no proprietary online server storage. 3. Local WiFi sync between my Mac and my iDevices. Seems that switching to annual would get you a lower % increase in addition to the discounted rate. For those of us already annual, the annual is also increasing by 33%. Well, slightly more, actually. $12 more per year more when the current price is $35.88. If it quits working, update it and sell the update.

Then I can choose. I didn’t sign up for a coercive relationship. I payed for an app. With the exception of open source software, all software sales could be considered a coercive agreement. Even with perpetual licenses. The ugly truth about software sales is you didn’t buy an app. You bought the rights to use an app according to the terms and conditions in the licensing agreement. By using the software, you’re agreeing to those terms.

Those software license agreements do not favor the purchaser. Which is why things like open source licenses (e.g. GPL) exist. 1Password has made the business decision to stop selling perpetual licenses. They have also stopped providing any kind of updates for older releases: Deprecation of 1Password 6 and older versions of 1Password 7 | 1Password Support It’s unlikely they’ll be selling an update to those deprecated stand-alone 1Password versions should a new iOS/iPadOS/macOS update break them.

Other than a 1Password 8 subscription, that is. Admittedly then you’d have to choose. It’s unfortunate that they’re forcing you to choose rather than making the decision on your own time line. 1Password’s Travel Mode lets you temporarily remove sensitive vaults from all your devices before crossing international borders. If a border agent demands access to your device, they’ll see only the vaults you’ve marked as safe for travel.

Once you’re through, you can restore your other vaults with a click. Nitpicking, but it’s more than a click. Travel mode is not exposed in the mobile or macOS app, so you need to log in with Safari to the website, and hopefully you’ve already logged out, so someone couldn’t simply force you to type in the password – the quickest way is to scan the QR code with another device, but if you don’t have another device, then you need to enter 1password’s secret key in addition to the password for your account.

Then it is two more clicks until you can toggle travel mode back off. It does seem like an excessive increase. It leads to the sinking feeling that this increase for family plan users is being used to subsidize development for their commerical customers. This doesn’t make sense to me. The real money is in commercial software, not consumer software, which is (at least a large part of?) the reason they pivoted so hard in the first place.

Also why they literally give it away for consumer use when you have an association to it through your job. I really, really don’t understand the “outrage” over a $12 increase a decade later. I am not outraged at all, but considering increasing my value by switching to a product that costs $20 per year instead, or one that costs me nothing. As I said, I did this once already, when I was having issues with 1p, so I may decide it’s better for me now that 1p wants to charge me more.

This also when subscriptions for everything are being increased. I don’t mind paying subscriptions for things that bring me value, but if another internet provider appeared who charged less per month, I’d consider that, too. Those people who got both their phone passwords and the phones themselves stolen in bars a while back found not only that they were locked out of their accounts, but the bad guys had access to the password manager as well.

That’s an argument for keeping the two things separate. Also an argument for not using your password manager for two-factor authentication. In case they would have increased the price yearly (to the price we will see end of March) the “protest” would have been far less. I wonder if people are upset because the ca. +30% – or about the price which a user has to pay from end of March? The question is: $3.99 per month – for what?

If this piece of software is important, safe/secure and you use it almost daily (well, a password manager is in use 24/7, even if it was not opened for some days; different to e.g. Photoshop). For me it would be ok to pay the $3.99 per month, but I use Bitwarden and here we also saw an increase of the price, ca. 50%, some weeks ago. To answer the initial question of this thread, I will continue with 1Password as it is the only way I can support my parents (remotely and on-site) by sharing vaults to enforce security across their devices and to share confidential data between us.

It saves me a lot of time and hassle. They are both over 80. Like others here, the size of the increase has given me pause for thought. If the Apple Passwords app ever includes credit cards, passports etc I think that would be the end of my long standing 1Password subscription. As Adam noted, inflation since 2016 has steadily lowered the effective price of 1P, and it seems now that they are just trying to get back to its dollar value then.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator it will take you $81.79 today to buy what $59.88 would in 2016. I will stick with 1P for several reasons. (1) It works for me. (2) I’m old and don’t see the point in replacing something that isn’t broken. (3) I’d likely continue to pay for it even if Apple Password was equal in quality out of appreciation for the years of service 1P has given me.

Scoff if you like, but I’ll be saving about two real bucks come March when renewal comes, and I won’t be wasting any of the time left to me changing something that works. Thank you, Adam, for posting a clear summary – this is definitely helping me clarify my thinking. Ouch! I promise you, I am not a media company making money from user clicks! “Overreaction” would have been a more fair criticism.

Sometimes a straw is just a straw, and sometimes it breaks a back – I think I’m still a little bit in shock after realizing (thanks again, Adam!) how many subscriptions I have, many of which have also been increasing prices. And as a newer customer of 1password, I was absolutely not aware of how long it’s been since they last increased prices (despite their brief mention of that – they could have lead with that fact and provided more detail).

So my new assessment is that a 33% increase is shocking but fair – though it still is pushing me towards moving to Apple Passwords exclusively. It sounds like most of my concerns are addressed – plus Keychain Access still exists for things like secure notes, and credit cards can be stored in Apple Wallet, so even some of the gaps that people have mentioned here have other solutions. I believe all this talk about inflation is completely out of touch with the basic facts.

IIRC, back in 2016, you were buying a perpetual license. If that’s wrong, then I’m wrong about the rest. But if I’m right, then the purchase price was spread over multiple years. Now you’re being charged per year. So do the math again, and you’ll find that they have raised the prices dramatically since 2016, way way way above the inflation rate. The ugly truth about software sales is you didn’t buy an app.

You bought the rights to use an app according to the terms and conditions in the licensing agreement. This is a modern invention that came into existence when the courts decided that “shrink-wrap licenses” could be legally binding. Where, by using the software (or sometimes, even opening the package), you agree to various terms just as if you had signed a contract. In the absence of such terms, or in jurisdictions where shrink-wrap/click-through licenses are not considered binding, only copyright law applies.

The purchaser of a copy (whether software or music or a book) has rights with respect to the specific copy he purchased. Less than those of the copyright holder, but not nothing and not simply what the copyright holder would wish him to have. IIRC, back in 2016, you were buying a perpetual license. If that’s wrong, then I’m wrong about the rest. Yes, sorry, but you are partially wrong. As I noted in the article, in 2016, you could buy a perpetual license, but that’s also when 1Password introduced then-optional subscriptions at the prices that then remained in effect for a decade.

I – actually “we”, my wife and I, through a shared vault – use 1PW for LOTS of information besides passwords, credit cards, passports, etc using secure notes. That way we both have quick and easy access on our computers, phones, and iPads to info on our cars, insurance policies, subscriptions, appliances, doctors, etc, etc. We “might” be able to do that using Apples Passwords and Notes apps, but it wouldn’t be as easy or as comprehensive as 1PW.

1Password has made the business decision to stop selling perpetual licenses. They have also stopped providing any kind of updates for older releases: Deprecation of 1Password 6 and older versions of 1Password 7 | 1Password Support It’s unlikely they’ll be selling an update to those deprecated stand-alone 1Password versions should a new iOS/iPadOS/macOS update break them. Other than a 1Password 8 subscription, that is.

That is true, but unlike, say, MacOS where Apple uses vast resources to keep legacy OS versions protected from major security vulnerabilities (they recently issued a security update for iPadOS 16.x, which I appreciated for my iPad Air 2 that’s now a weather station display using Teapot for Tempest)…1Password is a focused app whose entire reason for being is secure password and information storage.

Sometimes their current owners have made moves for apparent financial reasons, but on the whole they are laser-focused on security and compatibility. Keeping 1PW7 running in some versions is a bridge to 1PW8, but those still running 1PW6 because “I bought it in perpetuity and they should keep it running in perpetuity” should seriously consider whether a principle is more important than the information they are trying to protect.

You can’t share an encrypted note in the Notes.app, last time I checked. And trying to keep everything as a “login” in the passwords app doesn’t work great in my experience. That’s one of the areas where I think 1P is better. I’m also interested by the description above of how Apple Passwords is less secure, because it shares the passcode of your device. I hadn’t thought of that or read it anywhere else.

I have been using 1Password for a long, long time, and it has never failed me. I don’t use very many of the additional features, but some of the security-related features are important. I’ve always wondered about BitWarden. From what I understand and have read about, the company offers both free and paid versions of it. But ease of use/implementation is a possible concern. Would like to hear comments about it.

Also Adam, have you ever done a comparison here on Tidbits of available Password Managers for Macs? That would be useful and helpful. Then it’s fair to compare the subscription price back then to what the new subscription cost is. But it’s also a fair comparison to look at the Total Cost of Ownership over the last 10 years. 10 years ago you could get 1P for $70, and it lasted 10 years and counting.

10-year TCO: $70. Cost per year: $7 hen it’s fair to compare the subscription price back then to what the new subscription cost is. But it’s also a fair comparison to look at the Total Cost of Ownership over the last 10 years. 10 years ago you could get 1P for $70, and it lasted 10 years and counting. 10-year TCO: $70. Cost per year: $7 Just want to add that these types of comparisons are most accurate, especially when considering periods longer than a year or two, if the historical costs are adjusted for inflation and the future costs are adjusted for the time value of money.

In other words, under typical economic conditions, $70 from a decade ago is equivalent to a larger amount today while $48 from a future time is equivalent to a smaller amount today. I experimented today with Passwords (my subscription to 1PW will expire in June). Easy to import passwords with a CSV file, but passkeys have to be reset on the websites where they are used. Firefox is my default browser, so I enabled the iCloud Passwords extension.

So far so good. But I also run a Linux machine, which has a working 1Password extension. The iCloud Passwords extension can be enabled in the Linux version of Firefox, but it does not work. So I used a CSV file again to import all my 1PW passwords into Firefox on the Mac, but did not enable Firefox’s passwords feature, keeping the iCloud Passwords extension in charge. Going to my Linux machine, I opened Firefox and let it sync the passwords, and enabled Firefox passwords in the security settings.

This worked, but soon stopped as it downloaded the iCloud Passwords extension (via Firefox sync) and it put it in charge, uselessly. Back to the Mac and set Add-ons to not be synced. Now I can let the iCloud Passwords extension work on the Mac, and Firefox’s own password manager work on the Linux machine. The latter will have to be manually updated when new passwords are stored on the Mac, but the vast majority of those I use are now available on Linux.

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that Apple is using vast resources to support legacy OS versions. Their update model is to provide security updates only for the prior 2 versions of the OS. No other fixes. And the prior 2 versions don’t get all the security updates that the current one does. The situation that the prior poster asked for – “just fix 1P 6 to work on newer OS and sell it to us” is analogous to wanting Apple to support macOS Sequoia on hardware they’ll release next month.

Not happening in either case. And 1PW 6 will continue to work just fine as long as you run it on the OS releases it was supported on. Upgrade past that at your own risk. And in any case be prepared to live with any security problems that may be discovered if you decide to keep running it.

Summary

This report covers the latest developments in android. The information presented highlights key changes and updates that are relevant to those following this topic.

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