This is the page where we recommend the other product to most people, so we will do that first. Proton Pass is free with no item limit, it is open source, it has been audited by Cure53, and it runs everywhere. If any of that decides it, stop reading and use Proton Pass. What follows is for the smaller group it does not decide.
Three reasons, and that is all there are. We scored a ten round head to head against Proton Pass and lost it, five rounds to three. This page is not going to pretend otherwise.
Proton derives the key that protects your vault from a bcrypt hash of your password, with a hardened sign-in exchange on top. bcrypt is a respected function and it is not broken. It holds a fixed buffer of roughly 4 KB, which is the number that matters here. Zen Passwords uses Argon2id starting at 256 MB of memory for every single guess. Time can be bought cheaply by the rack. Memory cannot.
Proton keeps your encrypted vault on Proton servers in Switzerland. That is close to the best version of being a custodian: a company with a real record on privacy, in a legal home that helps. We are not a better custodian than Proton. We are not a custodian. Your vault sits in your own private iCloud, on your Apple ID, and there is no Zen server it could sit on instead.
Running well on Android, Windows, Linux and Apple at once is a real achievement, and it has a price: no single platform gets the app it would have got on its own. Ours only has to be right on three. That shows up as real Mac menus and a sidebar, and text that relays out properly when you make it bigger.
Five reasons, and they are the strongest set on any of these pages. We would rather write them down than have you find them somewhere else.
If none of those decide it, what is left is the key itself and who holds the file. Those are the two we win, and they are the two we would pick if we could only have two.
Zen Passwords and Proton Pass, side by side
| What is being compared | Zen Passwords | Proton Pass |
|---|---|---|
| Where it runs | iPhone, iPad and Mac | Apple devices, Android, Windows, Linux and browsers |
| Account | None. You never create one | A Proton account, held on their servers |
| What one guess costs an attacker | Argon2id, up to 256 MB of memory per guess | bcrypt, which holds a small fixed buffer source |
| Where the vault lives | Your own private iCloud, or on the device alone | Proton servers in Switzerland, end to end encrypted |
| Has anyone else checked | No. Closed source, and no independent audit yet | Open source, audited by Cure53, with a bug bounty |
| What is encrypted | Item contents, with titles and tags sealed separately | Everything, including web addresses and usernames |
| What you can store | Logins, passkeys, authenticator codes, payment cards, bank details, Wi-Fi, software licences and secure notes | Logins, notes, cards, identities and aliases |
| AutoFill | AutoFill for logins, one-time codes and passkeys in Safari and other apps, on iPhone, iPad and Mac, plus save-password prompts | AutoFill on mobile, plus browser extensions on desktop |
| Email aliases | None | Hide my email aliases, included free |
| Sharing | None. A personal vault only | Vault and item sharing |
| If you forget the master password | Nobody can reset your master password, including us, because we never receive it. You get a printable recovery key instead, or social recovery split across people you trust | Recovery through your Proton account |
| Free plan | Free for up to five active items, then Zen Premium for unlimited items. Apple shows the price and the billing terms before you buy. | Unlimited logins, notes and cards, on unlimited devices |
Facts about Proton Pass were checked on against their own site. Products change, so check theirs before you decide.
Under an hour, and there is one order of operations that matters. Read the last two steps before you start, because aliases are the part people get wrong.
Proton Pass cannot export from its mobile apps. The export lives in the settings, under the Export tab, in the web app or the browser extension. So even though you are moving to an iPhone app, the first step happens on a Mac.
Proton offers a PGP encrypted ZIP, a plain ZIP, and CSV. Choose CSV, because that is what an import can read. It is your whole vault in readable text, so keep it on the machine, out of any synced folder, and plan to delete it the same day.
Settings, then Import from other app, then the generic CSV source. A preview shows the row counts and anything that will be skipped before a single item is written.
Hide my email aliases are a Proton feature and they do not come with you. They keep working only while that Proton account does. Go through the sites you gave an alias to and change each one to an address you will still have, before you touch the account. This is the step that turns a tidy switch into a lost login six months later.
Save a printable recovery key, or set up social recovery across people you trust, because nobody here can reset your master password. Then leave the Proton account alone until every alias is moved and you have opened a few logins from the new vault. Delete the CSV when you are done.
For most people, you should not, and the head to head on this site says so. The narrow case is this: every device you own is an Apple one, and you care most about what a single guess against a stolen file costs. That is the ground we win on, and it is not wide.
No. It is a respected password hashing function and it is not broken. It was designed in 1999 to be slow, before graphics cards were the thing doing the guessing. Argon2id was designed to be slow and to need a lot of memory, and memory is the part a cracking rig cannot cheaply add.
For a lot of people it does, and we would rather say so plainly than argue around it. Zen Passwords is closed source and has had no independent security audit, so every claim on this page about our own product is currently our word. Proton has code anyone can read and an audit by Cure53.
Yes. We have nothing like them. If you rely on aliases, either stay with Proton Pass or move each one to a real address before you go, and keep the Proton account until you have.
Proton Pass does, five rounds to three with two draws, on our own scoring. We publish that rather than hide it. What we win are the round about the key itself and the round about who holds the file.
No. Zen Passwords runs on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Proton Pass covers Windows, Android and Linux, and if you need those it is the better tool.
A private vault for logins, cards, bank details, codes and notes on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Free for up to five active items.
Download on the App StoreNo account, an Apple only vault, and the three cases where you should stay put.
Read the comparisonOpen source and everywhere, against one platform built natively.
Read the comparisonWhat the built-in app has nowhere to put, and how to move just that.
Read the comparisonWhat to change before you switch, and why the old vault still matters.
Read the comparisonSame method, eight times the memory, and no bundle you did not ask for.
Read the comparisonTwo products that agree nobody should hold your vault. The difference is the key.
Read the comparisonThis page assumes you are leaving Proton Pass. If you are still weighing the two up, the verdict page answers that instead.
Zen Passwords vs Proton PassEvery feature, the screenshots, the privacy detail and the questions people ask most often.
Open the product pageEverything claimed about Zen Passwords here is what the app does today. Everything claimed about Proton Pass is limited to things that have been true of it for years, with no prices, because a price on a page nobody re-checks goes wrong in public. If you find something out of date, tell us and we will fix it.
