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Most "best free password manager" lists are old enough to be wrong. The free tier in this category changes often enough — one vendor killed its free plan entirely a year ago — that a roundup written even twelve months back can recommend something you can no longer actually get.

So on 28 October 2026 we checked each vendor's own pricing and help pages for the one detail every list promises and most skip past: does the free plan actually sync across more than one device, and if not, what exactly is it limited to. The answers split into three groups — unlimited, locked to one device or device type, and "free" in name only. A few of the vendors' own pages disagree with themselves on smaller points (vault counts, what's bundled into 2FA); where that happened, we say so instead of picking a number to sound confident.

Pick by what you need

• No catch, syncs everywhere, free forever — Bitwarden.
• Don't want to trust any company with your vault, even an encrypted one — KeePassXC. Nothing to sign up for.
• Want it bundled with encrypted email and cloud storage — Proton Pass.
• Only use one device and don't mind that staying true — LastPass, NordPass or RoboForm.
• Thought 1Password or Dashlane had a free plan — they don't anymore; see the bottom two entries.

At a glance

"Devices on free plan" is about predictability, not security — every entry here encrypts your vault either way.

The List

1. Bitwarden (free, account required) — The most generous free tier here: unlimited passwords and unlimited devices, with no sync restriction of any kind. Bitwarden's own plans page states this plainly rather than hiding it behind a device counter. What's gated: advanced two-factor methods (YubiKey, Duo), file attachments, vault health reports and emergency access all move to Premium, and sharing on the free plan is capped at one other person. Premium is $1.65/month ($19.80/year); Families is $3.99/month for up to six people.
2. Proton Pass (free, Proton account) — Logins, notes, cards and devices are all unlimited on free, and the sync works the same way across however many devices you install it on. The catches are smaller: 10 email aliases, and a vault limit that Proton's own pages don't fully agree on — the current pricing page lists 2 vaults free, while an older company blog post describes "multiple" vaults without a number. Pass's pricing page also lists the built-in authenticator (2FA code storage) as a paid feature, while a separate Proton support article implies free accounts can store a few 2FA items — we're flagging that disagreement rather than picking one. Pass Plus runs $2.99/month at the current discounted first-year rate.
3. KeePassXC (free, no account, open source) — Not a service at all: your vault is a single encrypted file on your own device, so there's no company-run sync to cap and nothing to subscribe to, ever. The project is GPLv3 open source, published on GitHub, and has had an independent security audit with no major issues found. The tradeoff is the one this list is about: syncing between your own devices is on you — most people put the file in an existing cloud-storage folder — so "unlimited devices" here means something different from everywhere else on this page.
4. LastPass (free, one device type) — Free gives you unlimited devices of a single type — all computers, or all mobile — not one device and not both types at once. That's a narrower rule than "one device," which is how some older write-ups still describe it, and it's been the rule since 16 March 2021, per LastPass's own change notice. You can switch your active device type a maximum of three times over the life of a free account; after that you're locked to whichever type you used last. Premium removes the restriction entirely. Sources we checked disagreed on the current Premium price, so check lastpass.com directly rather than trust a number here.
5. NordPass (free, one device) — NordPass's current plans page marks multi-device access as a feature the free plan does not include, and a support article describes free as one active device, one active session. That contradicts an older NordPass support page (which we could tell was years out of date) claiming both free and paid could install on unlimited devices — a good example of exactly the kind of stale claim this list exists to catch. Everything else — unlimited password storage, autofill, the password generator — is on the free plan. We couldn't confirm a current Premium price from a page recent enough to trust.
6. RoboForm (free, one device) — Unlimited passwords, a built-in TOTP authenticator, a password generator and a compromised-password scan, all on one device with no sync to a second. RoboForm's own pricing page states the single-device limit directly, alongside Premium at $2.49 for the first year, renewing at $29.88/year, and a Family plan at $3.98/month for up to five Premium accounts.
7. Keeper (free, one mobile device) — The thinnest free tier on this list: up to 10 passwords, on one mobile device. That's a real, permanent free plan — distinct from Keeper's separate 30-day free trial of the paid plans, which is a different thing entirely and not this entry. At 10 items, most people will hit the ceiling within a week of setting it up.

Two more, off the ranking because neither is actually free, even though both still show up on lists that say otherwise:

Dashlane — not free. Dashlane's own blog confirms it discontinued its Free plan on 16 September 2025, and a support article states plainly that Dashlane no longer offers or sells Free, Advanced, Essentials or Premium Plus as plans. Anyone still on the old free tier was moved to a Premium trial. If you're reading a "best free password manager" post from before late 2025 that includes Dashlane, that part of it is out of date.

1Password — not free. 1Password's current pricing pages describe a 14-day free trial for Individual, Families, Teams and Business — not an ongoing free plan. It shows up on free-tier roundups anyway, usually because older posts never got corrected after 1Password dropped the free plan it used to offer. Individual pricing currently lists around $2.99/month at a first-year promotional rate, rising to about $3.99/month afterward; Families runs roughly $4.49–$5.99/month for up to five people.

Keep the list on your own board

Save the comparison to your board in one go, so when a vendor changes its free tier again — and in this category, one of them will — you've got the live pages one tap away instead of searching for them again.

FAQ

What is the ranking based on?

How much the free plan actually gives you to sync and store, read off the vendor's own current pages, with the one genuinely free-forever, no-account option (KeePassXC) placed by what it trades away rather than by a feature count. Entries locked to one device sit below the unlimited ones; the two that aren't free at all sit outside the ranking rather than padding it.

Why 7, plus two call-outs?

Because seven vendors currently have a permanent free tier we could confirm from their own pages. Dashlane and 1Password don't — naming them anyway, off the ranking and marked "not free," is more useful than silently leaving them out, since they're exactly what a reader is likely to have seen elsewhere and assumed was still accurate.

Why no star ratings?

This list is about free-tier terms, not app quality, the same way our free-cloud-storage guide read. All nine have app-store listings if you want ratings separately — several with review counts in the hundreds of thousands, where the aggregate score moves depending on which store and country you check.

Is Dashlane really not free anymore?

Correct as of this post: Dashlane's own blog post and support documentation both confirm the Free plan ended 16 September 2025. There is no current free tier — only the 14-day Premium trial available to new signups.

Does 1Password have a free plan?

Not an ongoing one. 1Password's current pricing pages offer a 14-day free trial on every plan tier, not a permanent free option. If an older post lists 1Password as "free," it's describing a plan that no longer exists.

Where the vendor's own pages disagreed with each other, what did you do?

Said so rather than guessing. Proton Pass's pricing page and its own support pages don't fully agree on vault count or what's included in 2FA storage; NordPass's current plans page contradicts an older cached support page about multi-device access. We went with the most current, most specific source in each case and noted the conflict rather than smoothing it over.

How current is this?

Checked against each vendor's own pricing and help pages on 28 October 2026. This is a category where a company changing its free tier is routine — Dashlane's shutdown of its own free plan a little over a year before this post is the clearest example — so check the current page before you commit to one.

What is the board?

This list exists as a real, public SaveBoard board, so reading it and keeping it are the same action. Open it as-is, or copy it into your own account and add whichever one you actually pick.