Proton Pass Review: More Than a Passing Grade

Proton Pass is a password manager from Proton, the Switzerland-based company famous for its secure email service Proton Mail and other products. In a very short time, the product has grown into a simple but powerful program that can compete with any of the entries in our best password managers roundup. The price is also right, especially when bundled with other Proton products. That said, there are some issues with daily use you may want to keep in mind.

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What Does Proton Pass Do?

Proton Pass is a password manager, an application that stores and organizes passwords for you. Like most password managers, Proton Pass offers the ability to generate and autofill passwords as you go, meaning they improve your browsing experience as well as your online security.

Proton Pass Apps and Clients

Proton Pass is available on most platforms. Your day-to-day interactions will be mainly via the browser extension, and Proton covers all the bases with modules for Chrome, Safari, Edge, Brave, and Firefox. I like how there are custom extensions for private browsers like Brave and Firefox.

The browser extension is where you will quickly look over your passwords and other entries—Proton Pass also stores credit cards and notes, for example—while you browse on your laptop or desktop computer. On mobile, this is handled by the mobile apps for iPhone and Android (screenshotted below).

These extensions and apps are meant for daily use, but as you can see, the screens are rather small. Like 1Password, for example, Proton Pass also offers clients that simplify organizing your entries and settings. There is a web app that runs in your browser, as well as clients for Windows, Mac, and Linux (Debian and Fedora).

Functionally, there is almost no difference between the web app and the desktop clients, except that the latter offer offline access. I prefer the desktop client myself, so I use that most of the time, and it’s where I took my screenshots. I run Linux Debian on my home machine, but it seems to run identical to the Windows app.

Using Proton Pass

Overall, Proton Pass runs pretty smoothly. Though at first this cornucopia of apps, clients, and extensions is confusing, you do get used to it pretty quickly, and it makes sense to run the program in your browser but organize entries on your desktop. You may sometimes get annoyed when you want to quickly change a simple setting, but it’s no more than that: a minor annoyance.

Most importantly, generating and auto-filling passwords works pretty well. Proton Pass does well suggesting new passwords, and usually, a pop-up will appear at the top right of your screen offering to store the new login. However, sometimes, it won’t, meaning you’ll have to enter it manually. It gets on your nerves a bit, I have to say, though it seems to be happening less often as the team behind it is working on the program.

Much the same goes for the autofill feature, which works most of the time, but sometimes you will have to copy and paste your details manually. Again, not a huge deal, but if you’re unlucky and it happens a few times in a row, you may wonder why you have Proton Pass installed. That said, none of the other password managers I reviewed were perfect in this regard, though of the top contenders, Pass seems to have the most issues at time of writing.

Proton Pass Features

Besides the basics, Proton Pass also offers a few things that few others do. Of these, I like aliases the best. These are essentially fake email addresses that you can use when signing up for an online account. Any emails sent to them will arrive in your regular mailbox, but the service you sign up with won’t know your real email address. It’s a nice bit of extra protection when dealing with dodgy services.

The integrated 2FA authenticator is nice, too. As important and safe as two-factor authentication is, it can get a little annoying to use, especially if you frequently need to sign in to services. Proton Pass automates this process to a degree, making logging in even with 2FA enabled almost seamless.

Speaking of seamless, Proton Pass also offers passkeys, which do away with passwords entirely. I like how they have been implemented here, and I’ve been using them for a while now. Though passkeys won’t kill passwords completely, they do make life a lot easier.

Proton Pass Price

Proton offers three plans. The free plan, which you can get by creating a Proton account, gives you access to all of Proton’s products. Proton Pass is a great part of this plan as it offers a lot for free, including unlimited password entries and access to all apps. Few competitors offer this much at no cost, making Proton Pass one of the best free password managers.

The Pass Plus plan is a direct upgrade. It costs $5 per month when going month-to-month or just under $24 if you sign up for a year. At $60 per year, it’s a terrible option, but $24 puts it below the market average. For example, 1Password (1Password review) is $36 per year, while Dashlane is $60 per year. However, as you can read in our Dashlane review, it throws in a VPN for that price.

For $24, Proton Pass offers some very nice upgrades, like a built-in 2FA authenticator and some advanced sharing options. It also removes the few caps the free plan has, like letting you add as many credit cards as you like.

Finally, there’s the Proton Unlimited plan, which bundles Proton Pass with all of Proton’s other products—Mail, Calendar, Drive, and VPN. This is a great deal at $13 per month or $120 per year if you’re in the market for a suite of secure products. If you’re not, though, it’s a bit on the pricey side.

If you want to save some cash, you can also check out our Bitwarden review. It's a very capable password manager that costs only $10 per year.

Note that at times (especially around Black Friday and Christmas) Proton also offers special deals bundling only two of its products. I’ve seen Mail and VPN offered, for example. Keep an eye out for these if this is something that may interest you, though do keep in mind that there’s no guarantee these are released.

Proton Pass Security

Naturally, as a repository for the login information of all your online accounts, a password manager needs to be safe. Proton Pass has you covered here, using end-to-end encryption, like all other Proton apps. This type of encryption makes it so your data is scrambled when leaving your system and then not unscrambled until it arrives back to you, say when you log in.

This means that Proton can never see the data you’ve put into Proton Pass, making it safe from snooping by company employees or anybody who has gained access. This is a real issue, too: competitor LastPass has had several breaches (you really need to stop using LastPass) that all followed this pattern, where hackers made off with users’ passwords. With end-to-end encryption, this problem disappears.

In addition, Proton has a reputation as a safe and private solution. It’s based in Switzerland, thus benefiting from some of the best privacy laws in the world, and thus far, it has never been faced with any serious security issues. Though there are never any guarantees for the future, I feel pretty safe with Proton, and I see no reason you shouldn’t either.

I really like Proton Pass. Though there are some issues with saving passwords, I’m happy to put up with them considering I get a good password manager for a very reasonable price—especially when bundled with Proton’s other apps.

That said, if you don’t really care about Proton Mail or Proton VPN, then there are other options worth considering. Bitwarden is a solid contender at a much lower price, while readers with a few bucks to spend may want to check out 1Password or Dashlane. The user experience with these is a bit better, and the price may be worth it.