In the digital age where our lives are increasingly spent in the online realm, the problem of remembering all your passwords has never been greater. A recent global study reports that the average internet user has over 240 accounts online that require a password1. With so many accounts and subscriptions to seive through, it’s no wonder people are facing a problem with remembering which passwords they use for which account.
And then there’s the pervasive issue of phishing scams going around. If you employ a “one password to rule them all” strategy and a scammer gets hold of that, then all your accounts could be compromised in just a matter of seconds.
Password managers offer a much needed solution to the above problems by helping you to create comprehensive “hard-to-crack” passwords and store all of them in a safe repository at the same time for easy retrieval. It goes without saying that when comparing password manager solutions, security should be the top consideration.
Both the names LastPass and 1Password are big players in this field and are one of the most popular choice in the market.
As a current user of both platforms, I will be making a deep comparison between the 2 based on a series of stringent criteria to provide a recommendation that will be best suited for you.
Table of Contents
How do Password Managers Work?
When it comes to features, all password manager platforms tend to operate in a similar manner. The main idea behind it is that they provide a secure vault that you can use to store all of your passwords inside instead of having to write them down or rely on memory. Because of this, you’re also able to create much more complex passwords with symbols and other special characters to make your password more secure.
With these platforms, the only password you need is the main password to your vaults (which should be a secure and hard to crack password).
Many password managers also have browser extensions that you can add to your browser to enable the autofill function which allows almost seamless logging in to accounts.
Ideally, you can also download thier corresponding mobile applications onto your Apple or Android phone to use on different devices to autofill your passwords.
This makes the process super convenient whilst operating in a secure environment where hackers or scammers cannot easily gain access to your passwords.
1Password vs Lastpass Comparison
1. Security
Our chief evaluation criteria is security on top of everything else. If a password manager cannot make the basic needs of securing all your passwords and are prone to security breaches, then it defeats the entire purpose of having them in the first place.
Multiple Breaches on LastPass
In 2022, LastPass experienced one of it’s biggest security breaches2 where hackers actually managed to get hold of customer’s encrypted vault backups. Based on my understanding, what this means is that they can essentially brute force the security key to decrypt the vault and gain access to customer passwords stored in the backup.
There was also theft of the company source code and technical information. Honestly, this is a huge red flag when it comes to a security software that’s main purpose is to protect all my passwords.
There have also been reports that hackers are getting round to cracking victim’s password and stealing their crypto wallets using seed phrase stored in LastPass.
If you have been using LastPass since 2022 onwards, I highly recommend that you change your passwords stored inside, especially for important accounts.
In contrast, 1Password has had no known security breach and so it definitely comes up on top on this factor.
2. Ease of Use
Both LastPass and 1Password are both user-friendly and easy to use. Their interface vary slightly when it comes to password management.
LastPass uses Folders that you can use to categorize and manage your passwords.
I feel like 1Password has sligthly better organization as you can create multiple vaults for different uses and share those vaults with others. Instead of folders, you instead have Tags that you can use to categorize and easily find your passwords.
You can still easily find your passwords using the search function for both.
Browser Extensions
LastPass and 1Password both have browser extensions that you can add to your browser. This will enable you to auto-fill your passwords on the login page, as well as save new passwords that you are creating.
LastPass Supported Browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Safari, Linux
1Password Supported Browsers: Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Microsoft Edge, Linux
🔑 Saving of new passwords – I actually much prefer LastPass’ feature when saving new passwords as it only triggers the prompt to save AFTER the password has been used on a successful login. 1Password allows for saving the password BEFORE the login process, so in the event that the login is unsuccessful (i.e. password rejected or doesn’t meet requirements) then you will have to change the password in your vault again.
Desktop Application
Both of them also have a desktop application that you can download and sync to all your browsers for easy management. I find it very helpful, especially if you’re like me and use multiple browsers at once, you can lock your 1Password browser extensions all at once with the app when you leave your desk.
For the Ease of Use factor, I think both LastPass and 1Password stack up pretty similar.
3. App Availability
Both LastPass and 1Password have their respective mobile applications on the App Store and Google Play store. This allows for easy access to your passwords and auto-fill feature when logging in to accounts on your phone. There is also seamless syncing between devices when when you save a new password on any of them.
I’ve tried both apps on both iPhone and Andriod and there’s not a lot of variance. Both are simple and quite straightforward to use.
4. Pricing
From the above table you can see that for the personal plans, both are very similar in monthly pricing. For the business plans, 1Password is more expensive when its comes to the Teams package, but the standard business package is just a dollar more than LastPass.
For a full comparison of the features you can see 1Password and LastPass. From my experience I don’t really bother too much about the features, I’m satisfied as long as security is taken care of and there is easy password sharing.
Since I’m using the software for personal use, I went for the US$4.99/month Families plan on 1Password which allows me to share the subscription with my wife as well as a shared vault where we can store all our shared passwords.
This works up to US$59.88 a year, which is roughly SGD $80.83 a year ($6.74 a month). Considering I have over 200+ passwords saved, I think it’s a small price to pay for security.
Also just a little bit of succession planning, in case something happens to me (touch wood!), my wife can easily access all my passwords with just one master password.
Conclusion – 1Password for Security
LastPass has experienced multiple security breaches over the years and seems to demonstrate a rather cavalier attitude towards customer’s privacy and safety. Because of this reason, I would have to recommend everyone to use 1Password instead – which has never experienced any known breaches.
I have been using LastPass paid subcription for a couple of years, but after the multiple breaches I have since transitioned over all my passwords to 1Password on the Family tiered plan.
It was a real pain to move and change all of the passwords to make sure hackers can’t access my accounts, but for me, security is the most important factor and something that should not be compromised.
- 1Password Sign-Up: If you are looking to explore 1Password for your personal or business use, they currently have a 14-day free trial that you can try out here.
- LastPass Sign-Up: You can click here to sign up for a LastPass account. LastPass does have a free plan that you can use, but there is a limit on sharing passwords with others.