zenproducts / head to head / reviewed 25 August 2026

Zen Passwords vs Proton Pass

Ten rounds against the rival that argues from the same place we do. Proton Pass takes five and we take three, so the reasons to choose them are stated first and in full. What is left after that is a real difference, and it is about the key itself.

Zen Passwords

rounds won

draws

Proton Pass

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 Proton Pass checked against their own published documentation on 25 August 2026.

The verdict

Read this part first, because it decides most of it. If you are not entirely on Apple devices, or an independent audit is something you weigh heavily, use Proton Pass. It is free, open source, audited by Cure53, and genuinely good. Still here? Then you are all Apple, and the difference narrows to what one guess against a stolen vault costs: Proton derives your key with bcrypt, which holds a fixed buffer of about 4 KB. Ours uses Argon2id starting at 256 MB of memory per guess.

Proton Pass is the strongest competitor in this series and the only one that argues from the same place we do. It encrypts everything including web addresses and usernames, not just passwords. It is open source, so anybody can read it. It has been audited by Cure53. Its free plan holds unlimited logins, notes and cards on unlimited devices, on every platform. It gives you hide my email aliases, which we do not have at all.

Four of those are things we do not do, and we would rather write them down than have you find them. We are not open source. We have not had an independent audit. We are Apple only. We have no sharing and no email aliases. None of those is closed by arguing, and if any one of them decides it for you, Proton Pass is the better buy and you should stop here.

We win three rounds and they are the ones we would pick if we could only have three. Proton turns your password into a key using bcrypt. We use Argon2id at up to 256 MB of memory per guess, which is a different order of cost to attack. Your vault sits in your own iCloud rather than on anybody's server, because we do not run one. And on an Apple device ours is a native app rather than one shape of a product that must work everywhere.

So the split is clean rather than close. Proton Pass is the better product for more people, because more people are not all Apple and because open code checked by outsiders is worth something we cannot yet offer. On the narrower ground this site is actually built for, every app we make is Apple only, the vault key itself is ours by a wide margin, and that is the thing that decides what a stolen file is worth.

What we would actually tell a friend

If you are not all Apple, or an independent audit is something you weigh heavily, use Proton Pass. It is free, it is open, it has been checked by people who are not us, and it is good. Take Zen Passwords if every device you own is an Apple one and you want the vault key itself to be as expensive as possible to attack.

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	Proton Pass	Winner
1. What one guess costs an attacker	Argon2id, up to 256 MB of memory per guess	bcrypt, which is far cheaper in memory	Zen Passwords
2. What is actually encrypted	Item contents, and titles and tags sealed separately	Everything, including web addresses and usernames	Draw
3. Where your vault actually sits	Your own private iCloud. We run no server	Proton's servers in Switzerland, end to end encrypted	Zen Passwords
4. Whether anyone else has checked	Neither. Closed source, and no audit yet	Open source, and audited by Cure53	Proton Pass
5. What it costs	Five active items free, on all your devices	Unlimited logins, notes and cards, free, unlimited devices	Proton Pass
6. The devices it reaches	iPhone, iPad and Mac	iOS, Android, Windows, macOS, Linux and five browsers	Proton Pass
7. Sharing with the people you live with	Nothing	Secure sharing and a family plan, on paid tiers	Proton Pass
8. Hiding your real email address	Nothing	Hide my email aliases, ten on the free plan	Proton Pass
9. Getting back in when you have forgotten	A printable recovery key, plus trusted people who can help	Account recovery phrase and recovery file	Draw
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	3 rounds	5 rounds	Proton Pass

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.

Proton Pass

Proton's own security model describes encrypting the user key with a bcrypt hash of the key password and the account salt, with a hardened Secure Remote Password exchange for signing in. bcrypt is a respected password hashing function, and it uses a fixed and very small amount of memory compared with Argon2id.

Winner

Zen Passwords. Zen Passwords. This is the round we are proudest of and the reason to choose us over a product that beats us elsewhere. bcrypt was designed in 1999 and it is not broken, but it was never built to make a cracking rig run out of memory. Argon2id was.

Round 2

What is actually encrypted

Zen Passwords

Item contents are sealed, and list titles and tags are sealed separately from the body, so the list itself is not readable either.

Proton Pass

Everything, explicitly including usernames, web addresses and notes, so that Proton cannot tell which services you use. They say so directly and they are right to make a point of it.

Draw

Even. Even, and both of us are doing this properly. This is the round LastPass failed, and it is worth saying that Proton took it as seriously as we did.

Round 3

Where your vault actually sits

Zen Passwords

In your own private iCloud, on your Apple ID. There is no Zen server holding your vault, because there is no Zen server.

Proton Pass

On Proton's servers in Switzerland, end to end encrypted, under a company with a genuine record on privacy and a legal home that helps rather than hurts.

Winner

Zen Passwords. Zen Passwords, narrowly and on structure rather than trust. Proton is about as good as a custodian gets. We just are not a custodian, and the safest data to hold is none.

Round 4

Whether anyone else has checked

Zen Passwords

Nobody. Zen Passwords is closed source and has not had an independent security audit. You are taking our word for the things this article claims about us.

Proton Pass

Open source, so anyone can read the code, plus an independent audit by Cure53 and a public bug bounty.

Winner

Proton Pass. Proton Pass, completely and without qualification. This is the single biggest thing we are missing, it is the fair objection to everything else on this page, and we would rather write it down than have you notice it yourself.

Round 5

What it costs

Zen Passwords

A free plan that keeps five items fully openable, and you choose which five. Premium beyond that.

Proton Pass

Free, with unlimited logins, notes and cards on unlimited devices, on every platform, plus ten hide my email aliases and alerts for weak and reused passwords.

Winner

Proton Pass. Proton Pass, outright. Unlimited items on unlimited devices for nothing is an offer our five item plan does not compete with and is not trying to.

Round 6

The devices it reaches

Zen Passwords

iPhone, iPad and Mac. No Android, no Windows, no browser add on.

Proton Pass

iOS, Android, Windows, macOS and Linux, with add ons for Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge and Brave, and a web app.

Winner

Proton Pass. Proton Pass, by a distance. One Android phone in the house settles it.

Round 7

Sharing with the people you live with

Zen Passwords

Nothing. Your vault is yours alone.

Proton Pass

Secure sharing and a family plan covering several people. Sharing is a paid feature rather than a free one.

Winner

Proton Pass. Proton Pass. Theirs costs money and ours does not exist, which is not a close call.

Round 8

Hiding your real email address

Zen Passwords

Nothing at all. If you want a throwaway address for a signup, you will make one somewhere else.

Proton Pass

Hide my email aliases, ten of them on the free plan and unlimited on paid, generated as you sign up so the site never sees your real address.

Winner

Proton Pass. Proton Pass. This is a genuinely good feature that we do not have in any form, and for anybody who signs up to a lot of services it may be the whole decision.

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.

Proton Pass

A recovery phrase and a recovery file tied to your Proton account, which is a well built system used across their whole product family.

Draw

Even. Even. Both of us give you something to keep that nobody else holds. Ours adds social recovery, theirs is battle tested across a much larger user base. No meaningful gap.

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.

Proton Pass

One product that has to be itself on ten systems at once, which is an achievement and a constraint at the same time.

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

Choose Zen Passwords

The vault key itself is what you care about

Every device you own has an Apple logo on it, which is who this whole site is built for.
You want Argon2id at up to 256 MB rather than bcrypt.
You would rather no company held your vault at all.
You want an app built for Apple devices rather than adapted to them.

Recommended

Choose Proton Pass

It is free, with no item or device limit.
It is open source and independently audited. We are neither.
It runs on Android, Windows and Linux, which we do not.
Hide my email aliases, which we have nothing like.

If you are still weighing it

Ask what you weigh most

An independent audit and open code: Proton Pass, without argument.
The cost of a single guess against a stolen file: ours, by a wide margin.

Common questions

Why publish a comparison you lose?

Because the alternative is publishing nine we win and hoping nobody asks about the tenth. Proton Pass is the strongest privacy first competitor there is, and anybody seriously comparing managers will find it. We would rather be the ones who told you.

Is bcrypt insecure?

No. bcrypt is a respected password hashing function and Proton's implementation is described as a strong one. It simply uses a small, fixed amount of memory, and memory cost is what makes a modern cracking rig inefficient. That is the whole of round 1 and it is the reason we chose Argon2id.

Will Zen Passwords be audited?

We want one and we have not had one. Until we do, round 4 stays lost, and every claim we make about our own code is a claim you are taking on trust. We will publish the result when there is one, whatever it says.

Will you add email aliases?

Not today, and we are not going to promise a date. Right now if you want aliases, Proton Pass has them and we do not.

Is my data on a Zen server?

There is no Zen server. Your vault syncs as encrypted data through your own private iCloud, on your Apple ID. The industry term for this is zero knowledge, which means the company cannot read what it stores for you. We take it a step further, because there is nothing on our side to read in the first place.

We lost this one five to three. You should probably read the winner's page too.

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. We lost this one and published it anyway. Proton's figures come from Proton's own security model page and pricing pages, read on 25 August 2026.

Proton Pass documentation, read directly: Everything attributed to Proton Pass 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 DashlaneFour rounds to three. Same method, eight times the memory.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 Proton Pass 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.