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Zen Passwords · reviewed

Zen Passwords vs 1Password

1Password is the better choice for most households, because most households are not all Apple and most of them share something. Zen Passwords is the better choice in one specific case: you own only Apple devices, the vault is yours alone, and you would rather no company held it.

These two are not really competing for the same person, which is why a straight feature race misreads the decision. What follows is the decision the way it actually splits, with the cases where 1Password wins stated first because there are more of them.

Download on the App Store Already decided to switch
the short answer

Choose Zen Passwords if

  • Every device you own is an iPhone, an iPad or a Mac
  • The vault is yours alone, with nothing shared to a partner or a team
  • You want no account with us, and no vault of yours on a server we run
  • You still want AutoFill for logins, one-time codes and passkeys across iPhone, iPad and Mac
  • You are comfortable that a forgotten master password cannot be recovered by anyone

Choose 1Password if

  • Anything you use runs Windows, Android or Linux
  • You share logins with a partner, a family or colleagues
  • You want to reach your vault from a machine you do not own
  • You want a recovery path if you lose your credentials, including family recovery
find yourself here

6 situations, one answer each

Read the one that sounds like you and stop. Where 1Password is the better answer, it says so.

Zen Passwords

You have an iPhone and a Mac, and that is the whole estate

This is the case Zen Passwords is built for. Native on all three Apple devices, no account, and optional sync through your own iCloud rather than through anybody else.

1Password

You have an iPhone and a Windows laptop for work

Zen Passwords does not run on Windows at all, so half your day would be uncovered. This is not close.

1Password

You and your partner share the household logins

Zen Passwords is a personal vault. There is no shared vault and no family plan, so a shared list is a job it does not do.

Zen Passwords

You want no company holding your passwords, including the one selling you the app

There is no Zen Passwords account and no vault server we run. Sync, if you turn it on, uses your own private iCloud under your Apple ID.

1Password

You travel and sometimes need a vault from a borrowed computer

Web access to your vault is a function of the hosted account. We do not have one, so we cannot offer it.

Either one

You keep a lot that is not a login: cards, bank details, licences, documents

Both handle this. 1Password has done it for years, and Zen Passwords is built around it. On this point alone there is no reason to switch either way.

what decides it

Three differences that actually decide it

The rest of the feature list will not change your mind. These three will.

The account is the product, or there is no account

Almost everything 1Password does that we do not, including sharing, web access and recovery, exists because your vault lives on their service. Removing the account removes those features. That is a trade rather than an improvement, and which side of it you want is the actual decision.

One platform or every platform

Zen Passwords covers iPhone, iPad and Mac and nothing else. If your life is entirely on those three, a native app is a real advantage. If it is not, this is a hard blocker rather than a preference.

Whether anyone can rescue you

1Password has recovery paths, including through a family organiser. We have none, because we hold nothing to recover from. Weigh this properly before switching, and keep your master password somewhere physical if you do.

honest limits

What neither of them fixes

Two well-built vaults with the same three exposures. Both companies would rather talk about their encryption than about these.

  • A master password you have used somewhere else. Both products are exactly as strong as that one string, and no amount of engineering underneath changes it.
  • A Mac already running something hostile. A vault has to decrypt to be useful, and whatever is watching the machine at that moment sees what you see.
  • The moment of handover itself. Every migration between password managers passes through a plain text file, and that file is the least protected copy of your passwords that will ever exist.
questions

Choosing between the two

Is Zen Passwords a full replacement for 1Password?

Only if you are Apple only and your vault is personal. If you use Windows or Android, or you share vaults with anybody, it is not a replacement and we would rather you knew that before installing it than after.

What do I lose by switching?

Cross-platform apps, shared and family vaults, web access to your vault, and any recovery path if you forget your master password. Those are the four, and they all trace back to the same thing: there is no account.

What do I gain?

A native Apple app, a vault built to hold cards, bank details, licences and notes as well as logins, and the fact that no company holds a copy of it. Whether that is worth the four losses above depends entirely on which of the situations further up this page is yours.

Does AutoFill still work if I leave 1Password?

Yes, on iPhone, iPad and Mac. Zen Passwords registers as an AutoFill provider on all three, so logins, one-time codes and passkeys are offered in Safari and in other apps, and it offers to save a new password when you create one. What does not carry over is 1Password's desktop browser extension on Windows and Linux, since the app does not run on either.

I have decided. How do I move my vault across?

The export, the import and the things that never carry over cleanly are written up separately on our 1Password alternative page.

the handover

Moving from 1Password

The export, the import and the parts that never carry across cleanly are written up separately, so this page can stay about the decision.

Read the handover
keep comparing

The other two decisions

comparison

Zen Passwords vs Apple Passwords

Free and built in against a fuller vault. Most readers should keep what Apple gave them.

Read the verdict
comparison

Zen Passwords vs Bitwarden

The better default against the narrower fit. Bitwarden wins more of the cases.

Read the verdict
product

Zen Passwords in full

Every feature, the screenshots on all three devices, the privacy detail and the questions people ask most often.

Open the product page
how this page is written

Everything claimed about Zen Passwords here is what the app does today. Everything claimed about 1Password is limited to things that have been true of it for years, checked on against their own site. There are no prices on this page, because a price nobody re-checks goes wrong in public. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.