zenproducts / head to head / reviewed 25 August 2026

Zen Passwords vs Dashlane

Ten rounds against a manager that got the method right and the number small. Zen Passwords takes four, Dashlane takes three, three are draws.

Zen Passwords

rounds won

draws

Dashlane

rounds won

Our scoring, of our own product against a competitor, so read it with that in mind. Every round below says exactly what it was scored on. Facts about Dashlane checked against their own published documentation on 25 August 2026.

The verdict

Zen Passwords wins four rounds to three, with three genuine draws. This is the closest comparison we have published.

Dashlane deserves credit that most comparisons skip. It uses Argon2, which puts it ahead of 1Password, Bitwarden's default, LastPass and Proton Pass on method. It has never been breached. It is audited. Its paid plan bundles a VPN, which is real value if you would otherwise buy one.

Where we part company is the size of the number. Dashlane's Argon2 is set to 32 MB of memory per guess with three rounds. Ours starts at 256 MB. That is eight times the cost for every single attempt at a stolen file, and it is the whole reason to prefer a memory hard method in the first place.

The other split is the free plan. Dashlane's holds 25 passwords on one device. Ours holds five items on all of your devices. Both are advertisements rather than homes, and neither of us should pretend otherwise.

What we would actually tell a friend

If you want a VPN bundled and you have a Windows PC, Dashlane is a reasonable buy and we would not talk you out of it. If every device you own is Apple and you care about what a stolen file costs an attacker, take Zen Passwords, because the same method at eight times the memory is the entire argument.

Download on the App Store

The scorecard

All 10 rounds at a glance

Then the same 10 in detail, with what each side actually does and why the round went the way it did.

Round	Zen Passwords	Dashlane	Winner
1. What one guess costs an attacker	Argon2id, up to 256 MB of memory per guess	Argon2d, 32 MB with three rounds	Zen Passwords
2. Which method it uses	Argon2id, the variant recommended for passwords	Argon2d, with PBKDF2 as a fallback	Draw
3. Where your vault actually sits	Your own private iCloud. We run no server	Their servers, encrypted, never breached	Zen Passwords
4. What it costs	Five active items free, on all your devices	25 passwords free, on one device	Draw
5. The devices it reaches	iPhone, iPad and Mac	Everything, plus every major browser	Dashlane
6. Sharing with the people you live with	Nothing	Sharing, and a Friends and Family plan	Dashlane
7. What you can actually keep in it	Seven kinds plus passkeys, with custom fields	Logins, payments, IDs and secure notes	Draw
8. What else comes in the price	A password manager and nothing else	A VPN and dark web monitoring bundled in	Dashlane
9. Getting back in when you have forgotten	A printable recovery key, plus trusted people who can help	Recovery through their account systems	Zen Passwords
10. How it feels on the device you actually hold	Built with Apple's own tools, for three devices and nothing else	One app that has to work everywhere	Zen Passwords
Final	4 rounds	3 rounds	Zen Passwords

Round 1

What one guess costs an attacker

Zen Passwords

Argon2id from the start, with no menu to find. New vaults work out what your phone can afford. They start at 256 MB of memory per guess and step down through 128 and 64, keeping the strongest setting that still unlocks in under a second.

Dashlane

Argon2d at 32 MB of memory, three rounds, two threads, according to their own security white paper. The method is right. The memory is the same as our oldest setting, the one we moved off two versions ago.

Winner

Zen Passwords. Zen Passwords. Eight times the memory per guess is not a rounding difference, it is the difference between a cracking rig fitting many attempts on a card and fitting few. Dashlane picked the right kind of method and then set it low.

Round 2

Which method it uses

Zen Passwords

Argon2id, which is the variant the standard recommends for password hashing because it defends against both kinds of attack at once.

Dashlane

Argon2d, with PBKDF2 as a fallback where Argon2 is not available. Argon2d is a real, respectable choice and is strong against the attack that matters most here.

Draw

Even. Even, and we will not oversell this one. You will read elsewhere that Argon2d is the wrong variant. For a vault file being attacked offline, the practical difference between the two is small. The memory number in round 1 is what matters, not the letter after the name.

Round 3

Where your vault actually sits

Zen Passwords

In your own private iCloud, on your Apple ID, scrambled so that it means nothing without your password. There is no Zen server holding your vault, because there is no Zen server.

Dashlane

On Dashlane's servers, encrypted, with a zero knowledge design and no breach on record. That is the price of syncing to every platform and they have handled it well.

Winner

Zen Passwords. Zen Passwords, narrowly and on structure rather than conduct. Their record is clean. But a company holding millions of encrypted vaults is a target that exists whether or not anyone ever gets in, and your own iCloud is a target only for you.

Round 4

What it costs

Zen Passwords

A free plan that keeps five items fully openable, on all of your devices, and you choose which five. Premium beyond that.

Dashlane

A free plan holding 25 passwords on a single device. Paid plans bundle a VPN and dark web monitoring.

Draw

Even. Even, and both free plans are advertisements. Twenty five is more than five. One device is fewer than all of them. Neither is somewhere to keep your life, and we would rather say that than dress ours up.

Round 5

The devices it reaches

Zen Passwords

iPhone, iPad and Mac. On a Mac it fills through the system, so Safari and apps are covered and Chrome is not.

Dashlane

iPhone, Android, and every major browser on every desktop system, with the web app as the main desktop experience.

Winner

Dashlane. Dashlane. One Windows laptop settles this round.

Round 6

Sharing with the people you live with

Zen Passwords

Nothing. Your vault is yours alone.

Dashlane

Item and folder sharing, and a Friends and Family plan that covers several people.

Winner

Dashlane. Dashlane. This is the biggest hole in our product and we are not going to score around it.

Round 7

What you can actually keep in it

Zen Passwords

Seven kinds plus passkeys: web logins, cards, bank accounts, identity documents, Wi-Fi, software licences and secure notes, each with custom fields you can add.

Dashlane

Logins, payment methods, personal information and identity documents, and secure notes, with strong form filling built around them.

Draw

Even. Even. We have Wi-Fi networks and software licences as proper kinds of item and they do not. Their form filling for addresses and payments is better than ours. Different strengths, no clear winner.

Round 8

What else comes in the price

Zen Passwords

A password manager. That is the entire product. We do not sell you a VPN, a monitoring service or an identity product alongside it.

Dashlane

A VPN and dark web monitoring are included in the paid plan, which is genuine value if you would otherwise pay for a VPN separately.

Winner

Dashlane. Dashlane. If you want those things, getting them in one bill is better value than buying them apart. We think a vault should be one thing done properly, but that is a preference, not a win.

Round 9

Getting back in when you have forgotten

Zen Passwords

A thirty two character recovery key you can print and keep in a drawer. It leaves out the characters people mix up, so there is no zero, capital O, one or capital I to type wrong. Nobody stores it anywhere, us included. Or you can use social recovery, which splits that key between people you trust. A few of them together can help you back in. None of them can get in alone.

Dashlane

Recovery runs through Dashlane's own account systems, which is convenient and means the way back in depends on a company account rather than on something only you hold.

Winner

Zen Passwords. Zen Passwords. Our recovery key is stored by nobody, and social recovery spreads the ability to help you across people you picked rather than a company.

Round 10

How it feels on the device you actually hold

Zen Passwords

Built with Apple's own tools, for iPhone, iPad and Mac and nothing else. Real Mac menus and a proper sidebar. Panels that slide the way you expect. Make the text bigger in your settings and the whole app lays itself out again properly.

Dashlane

One product that has to work on every system at once, with the desktop experience built around the browser rather than a native app.

Winner

Zen Passwords. Zen Passwords. Being on one platform is a limitation everywhere except here, where it is the whole advantage. We only have to be right on Apple devices, so we are.

So who should choose what

Recommended

Choose Zen Passwords

You want the same method at eight times the memory.
You would rather your vault sat in your iCloud than on a company's servers.
You keep bank details, Wi-Fi networks and licences, not only logins.
You want a way back in that does not run through a vendor account.

Choose Dashlane

For the three things we do not do

A Windows PC or an Android phone in your week.
Sharing with family. We have nothing.
A VPN you would otherwise pay for separately.

Before you pay for a bundle

Ask what you are actually buying

If you want a bundle, Dashlane is the better bundle.
If you want a vault, ask what one guess against it costs, and compare 32 MB with 256 MB.

Common questions

Is Argon2d worse than Argon2id?

In theory Argon2id is the recommended variant for password hashing, because it resists both side channel and time memory tradeoff attacks. In practice, for a vault file attacked offline, the difference between the two variants is small compared with the difference in the memory setting. We would rather you compared 32 MB with 256 MB than argued about the letter.

Has Dashlane been breached?

Not on record, and we are not going to imply otherwise. Round 3 goes to us on structure, because we hold nothing, and not on their conduct, which has been good.

Is a bundled VPN worth it?

If you would buy a VPN anyway, yes, and Dashlane is the better deal. If you would not, you are paying for something you will not open. That is the whole of round 8.

Can I move my Dashlane data over?

Yes. Dashlane exports to CSV and JSON, and our import reads both, alongside 1Password, Bitwarden, LastPass and Chrome files.

Has any of this been independently verified?

Dashlane's side comes from their own published security white paper and support pages. Ours comes from our own source code, and we have not had an independent audit. Dashlane has. That is a point in their favour and we are recording it here rather than burying it.

Same method. Eight times the memory. That is the whole argument.

Zen Passwords on the App Store

How every round was scored, and where the facts came from

Our scoring, of our own product against a competitor, so read it with that in mind. Dashlane's figures come from Dashlane's own security white paper and support pages, read on 25 August 2026.

Dashlane documentation, read directly: Everything attributed to Dashlane on this page was read from their own security, help and pricing pages on 25 August 2026, not from a third party summary. Where a claim of theirs could not be found in their own words, the round was drawn rather than scored.
Our own side: Item kinds, the Argon2id tiers and the one second calibration budget, the five item free tier, the recovery key, the health scan thresholds, social recovery and the import sources all come from our own source. Vault contents are sealed with AES-GCM and sync as ciphertext through a private database on your own Apple ID.

These are our own readings of our own implementation, current as of this writing, offered in the interest of transparency rather than as a substitute for independent review. Corrections and questions are welcome.

Keep comparing

Zen Passwords vs Apple PasswordsTen scored rounds. Zen takes five, Apple takes three, and two are honest draws.Zen Passwords vs 1PasswordBreadth against depth. Ten rounds, and the number that decides it if you are all Apple.Zen Passwords vs BitwardenFree and everywhere against the strongest settings out of the box.Zen Passwords vs LastPassSix rounds to two, and the 2022 breach is why.Zen Passwords vs Proton PassThe strongest rival we have, and the one number where we are ahead.Zen Passwords vs EnpassEnpass four, us three. Two products that agree on the important part.Zen Passwords in fullEvery feature, the screenshots on all three devices, and the questions people ask most often.

Everything claimed about Zen Passwords here is what the app does today. Everything claimed about Dashlane is limited to things that have been true of it for years, checked against their own documentation. 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.