1Password and Proton Pass both show up on every "best password manager for teams" list, and they sit in genuinely different parts of the market. 1Password is the polished, vertically-integrated incumbent with famously good UX and a premium price tag. Proton Pass, by contrast, is proton AG's password manager — Swiss-jurisdiction, open-source clients, full enterprise identity at a low per-seat price, with the rest of the Proton suite available as a bundle.
This comparison is written for the people actually making the call: founders, IT leads and ops folk at startups, agencies and small teams. No affiliate rankings, no "best of" filler — just the trade-offs that matter once more than one person touches the vault.
Quick verdict
Pick 1Password if small teams ≤10, or teams that want the most refined admin ux. Cheapest under 10 seats; steep jump after, but the polish is real.
Pick Proton Pass if privacy-conscious teams or anyone already on the proton ecosystem. Open-source clients, Swiss jurisdiction, SSO + SCIM at $4.49/user. Server stays closed.
Both are zero-knowledge and both have a defensible recent security story. The choice is almost never about cryptography — it's about collaboration model, governance, and how much per seat per month you want to spend.
Team pricing at a glance
| Feature | 1Password | Proton Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Smallest team planAll prices USD, billed annually unless noted. Verify on vendor sites before buying. | Teams Starter Pack: $19.95/mo flat (up to 10 users) | Pass Essentials: $1.99/user/mo (min 3 users) |
| Next tier for growing teams | Business: $7.99/user/mo | Pass Professional: $4.49/user/mo · Workspace Standard $12.99/user/mo (full Proton suite) |
| Free tier available | ||
| SSO (SAML / OIDC) | Business and above | Pass Professional (SAML) |
| SCIM provisioning | Business and above | Pass Professional (Okta, Entra ID) |
Collaboration model
| Feature | 1Password | Proton Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Shared vaults / collections | ||
| Per-item permissions | Vault-level roles; per-item sharing | |
| External / one-time secure share | Yes — Psst! (no-account link) | Yes — secure links (paid) |
| Group-based sharing | Pass Professional and above | |
| Activity / audit log | Pass Professional and above |
Security & transparency
| Feature | 1Password | Proton Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Zero-knowledge end-to-end encryption | ||
| Cipher | AES-256-GCM | AES-256-GCM (per-item keys) |
| Key derivation | PBKDF2-SHA256 + 128-bit Secret Key | bcrypt + SRP (Argon2 for local cache) |
| Open-source clients | Clients only (GPL-3.0) | |
| Self-hosting option | ||
| Published independent audit | Cure53 (2023), Recurity Labs (2026) | |
| Publicly disclosed vault breach | No customer vault breach | No customer vault breach |
Pricing for teams: where the real difference is
1Password's Teams Starter Pack is a flat $19.95/month for up to 10 users (about $2/user) — uncommonly cheap at that size. Past 10 seats it jumps to $7.99/user/month on the Business tier.
Pass Essentials is $1.99/user/month (min 3 users), Professional adds SSO/SCIM/audit logs at $4.49/user. Workspace Standard at $12.99/user bundles Mail, Drive, Calendar, VPN and Pass Professional — competitive if you'd buy any of those anyway.
For a fast-growing team, the slope matters as much as the starting price. Model it at the size you actually expect to be in 12 months — not the size you are today.
How teams actually share credentials
1Password. Shared vaults with mature per-item permissions, a real audit log on every paid tier, and Psst! — a no-account one-time secure share — make sharing feel like a polished SaaS workflow.
Proton Pass. Vault sharing (with any Proton account), per-item sharing via individual item keys, secure links and group sharing on Professional. No anonymous external sharing — recipients must have a Proton account.
The everyday question is: when a contractor joins on Monday and leaves on Friday, how much work is it to give them access to exactly the credentials they need, watch what they touched, and revoke cleanly? That's where the daylight between these two shows up.
Security architecture
1Password. 1Password layers a 128-bit Secret Key on top of the master password, so a stolen server-side blob is computationally useless on its own. Clients are closed source but the architecture is documented and regularly audited.
Proton Pass. All client code is open source under GPL-3.0 with per-item AES-256-GCM keys and bcrypt + SRP for user authentication. Two published audits (Cure53 2023, Recurity Labs 2026) and Swiss-jurisdiction hosting underpin the trust story; the server stays closed source.
If you're forced to choose on cryptography alone, modern AEAD ciphers (AES-GCM, XChaCha20-Poly1305) paired with a memory-hard KDF (Argon2id) are the bar. Both vendors are inside that range; the harder differences are open-source posture, audit history, and whether you can self-host.
Admin & governance for teams
Both products support some flavour of role-based access, forgotten-password recovery, and audit logging on the right tier. Where they diverge is on the boring-but-critical stuff: SSO, SCIM provisioning, and whether group policies can keep up with how your team actually grows.
SSO tier: 1Password — Business and above; Proton Pass — Pass Professional (SAML). SCIM tier: 1Password — Business and above; Proton Pass — Pass Professional (Okta, Entra ID).
If Okta, Entra ID or Google Workspace SSO is non-negotiable from day one, factor the tier price into the per-seat number — it's often the thing that flips the cheaper-on-paper option into the more expensive real-world bill.
1Password
Pros
- Cheapest possible option for ≤10-person teams (Starter Pack)
- Best-in-class UX for end users and admins
- Secret Key is a real defence-in-depth layer
- Mature reporting, policies and Watchtower breach alerts
Cons
- Per-seat price jumps sharply past 10 users
- No free tier — not even for individuals
- Closed-source clients; you have to trust the audits
- No self-hosting option
Proton Pass
Pros
- All client code open source under GPL-3.0
- Encrypts metadata (URLs, usernames, notes) — not just passwords
- SSO + SCIM at $4.49/user, well below Bitwarden Enterprise
- Swiss jurisdiction and strong privacy posture; bundled with Mail/VPN on Workspace plans
Cons
- Server is closed source — no self-hosting
- Vault-level permission model is less granular than 1Password
- External sharing requires recipient to have a Proton account
- Newer product (launched 2023) — smaller enterprise case-study base
A third option worth considering
The headline trap in any 1Password comparison is the seat-count cliff: cheap until you hit the threshold, then a sharp jump. Proton Pass sidesteps that with its own model, but neither lands at a price you can predict 18 months out without a spreadsheet. Pwdly keeps it boring: $2/user/month, flat, with SSO on the roadmap rather than behind a paywall.
- Per-project vaults. Most teams don't share "everything with everyone" — they share by client, repo or product. Pwdly makes that the primary unit, not an afterthought folder.
- $2/user/month, flat. No seat-count cliff, no SSO upsell on the cheapest paid plan. See the full pricing.
- XChaCha20-Poly1305 + Argon2id under the hood. The cipher explainer walks through why those defaults matter.
- Trade-offs we own. No breach monitoring (we literally can't read your data), no self-hosting yet, no browser extension on day one. The security page has the honest list.
If you're staring at a renewal quote that's tripled since onboarding, Pwdly is the "we just want predictable" answer.
Frequently asked questions
Is 1Password or Proton Pass better for a small team?
1Password fits best when small teams ≤10, or teams that want the most refined admin ux, while Proton Pass is the stronger choice when privacy-conscious teams or anyone already on the proton ecosystem. Model both at the seat count you expect in 12 months — the cheaper option at 5 seats isn't always the cheaper option at 25.
Which has stronger encryption — 1Password or Proton Pass?
1Password uses AES-256-GCM with PBKDF2-SHA256 + 128-bit Secret Key. Proton Pass uses AES-256-GCM (per-item keys) with bcrypt + SRP (Argon2 for local cache). Both are zero-knowledge. In practice the cipher choice is rarely the differentiator — KDF (Argon2id vs PBKDF2), open-source clients, and audit history matter more.
Does either support SSO and SCIM on the cheapest team plan?
1Password: SSO Business and above, SCIM Business and above. Proton Pass: SSO Pass Professional (SAML), SCIM Pass Professional (Okta, Entra ID). If SSO is non-negotiable, price it on the tier that includes it, not the entry tier.
Has either vendor had a vault breach?
1Password: No customer vault breach. Proton Pass: No customer vault breach. A clean record isn't a guarantee, but a known prior incident materially raises the cost of trust.
Keep comparing
- 1Password vs BitwardenTeam-focused, vendor-neutral breakdown.
- LastPass vs BitwardenTeam-focused, vendor-neutral breakdown.
- 1Password vs DashlaneTeam-focused, vendor-neutral breakdown.
- 1Password vs LastPassTeam-focused, vendor-neutral breakdown.
- Bitwarden vs DashlaneTeam-focused, vendor-neutral breakdown.
- Dashlane vs LastPassTeam-focused, vendor-neutral breakdown.
Also worth a read: The XChaCha20-Poly1305 explainer, our security model, and the free password generator.
Sources & further reading
- 1Password — Business pricing
- 1Password Security Design white paper (PDF)
- 1Password — KDF and Secret Key
- Proton Pass — Business pricing
- Proton Pass — Security model
- Proton Pass — Cure53 audit (2023, PDF)
- Proton Pass — Recurity Labs audit (2026)
- Proton Pass — GitHub
Worth fact-checking
- Vendor pricing for both 1Password and Proton Pass has changed more than once in the past 24 months — verify on the official site before purchasing.
- SSO / SCIM tier inclusion can change between plans; confirm with vendor sales for your exact seat count.
Last updated May 2026. Vendor pricing and features change frequently — always confirm on the official site before purchasing. Pwdly is not affiliated with 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass, or Dashlane.