Best European Alternatives to 1Password
Looking for a European alternative to 1Password? While 1Password has a good security reputation, it's a Canadian/US company without EU data residency.
European password managers offer similar features with data stored in Europe and better regulatory protection.
How we rank these tools — 4-step process
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1
European ownership, verified
The company is headquartered and incorporated in the EU, EEA or Switzerland, and processes customer data in Europe. A US parent company disqualifies a tool from this page regardless of where its servers are.
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Category fit and hands-on review
What the tool actually does, who it suits, and where it falls short — checked against the vendor’s own documentation, changelog and pricing page rather than its marketing copy.
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Compliance and pricing check
GDPR posture, hosting location and the prices quoted on this page are verified against the vendor’s public pricing before publication, and re-checked when we revisit the category.
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Position on this page
Placement on this page can be paid, and that can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. It never buys a good review: a tool that fails the checks above is not here at any price, and payment does not change the shortcomings we write about. A vendor can ask us to correct a factual error — not to remove a criticism.
Vendors can pay for visibility on this page. It never changes what an entry says about a product, including the criticism, and we earn nothing when you click through to a vendor. Paid placement can affect which tools appear here and the order they appear in. Editorial policy
3 European Alternatives to 1Password
Proton Pass
Swiss-hosted password manager with encryption
Key takeaways
- 1Password is Canadian, not American, so the CLOUD Act argument that carries most of this site does not apply here at all.
- Canada's adequacy decision covers commercial organisations only; Switzerland's carries no such limit, which is the one legal edge Proton Pass has.
- Version 8 deleted local vaults and the standalone licence that cost $64.99 in 2018, and Passbolt is the only tool on this page that gives that back.
- 1Password has no free plan — fourteen days and then $3.99 a month — where two of the three European options here do.
- The EU region is picked when the account is created and tied to your billing currency; existing accounts do not move by themselves.
Why people leave 1Password
The first thing to clear up is the accusation that is usually made and is simply false. 1Password is not American. AgileBits Inc., trading as 1Password, is registered at 4711 Yonge St in Toronto. The CLOUD Act does not reach a Canadian company, Canada holds a European adequacy decision, and there is a European data region you can pick at sign-up. If someone has told you 1Password is a compliance problem, they were wrong.
The reason people leave is narrower and more concrete. Version 8 removed the option to keep your vault as a file on your own machine, and the perpetual licence — $64.99 when it was last listed, in 2018 — went with it. What was once software you owned is now an account you rent, and the vault only exists on someone else's server.
The second reason is the shape of the bill. There is no free plan at all, only a fourteen-day trial, and Business runs at $8.99 per user per month — roughly three times what a Danish or Luxembourgish equivalent charges for the same job.
- The local vault is gone Until version 8 you could keep your passwords in a file, sync it however you liked, and never have an account. That option was removed, and the standalone licence was discontinued with it. Nothing about that is a security flaw — but it means the only copy of your credentials that exists in a form you control is an export, and exports are exactly what nobody keeps current.
- Adequacy for Canada is narrower than for Switzerland The Commission's adequacy decision for Canada covers commercial organisations only, a sectoral limit it shares with the United States framework and not with Switzerland, Japan or the United Kingdom. In practice a password manager is a commercial organisation and the transfer is lawful. It is still a thinner legal basis than a Swiss or intra-EEA provider gives you, and if your DPO asks the question, this is the answer you will have to give.
- The European region is a sign-up decision, not a setting You choose United States, Canada or European Union when the account is created, and the choice is tied to the currency you are billed in. 1Password states that data stays in the region you picked and is never automatically moved between them. An account opened in dollars years ago is therefore still hosted where it started, and the fix is a new account rather than a toggle.
- There is no free tier, and the business price is the market ceiling Individual is $3.99 a month billed annually, Families $5.99, the Teams Starter Pack $24.95 a month for ten members with extra seats at $4.99, and Business $8.99 per user per month. There is a fourteen-day trial and nothing beyond it. Proton Pass and heylogin both have free tiers you can stay on, and Uniqkey sells the business product for about €3 per user.
What you have to replace, not just match
Decide first which of the two 1Passwords you are on, because they are sold together and they are not the same product.
One is the personal vault: autofill, a generator, Watchtower, secure notes, and sync between your laptop and your phone. The other is what 1Password has been building since it raised $620 million in 2022 — an access platform, with admin policies, provisioning, device checks and reports about which SaaS applications your staff signed up for.
If you are replacing the personal vault, Proton Pass is the like-for-like swap and it costs less. If you are replacing the access platform, Uniqkey is the European product aimed at the same buyer. If what you actually want is the vault file that version 8 took away, neither of those helps and Passbolt is the answer.
The alternatives compared
| Position | Tool | Headquarters | Pricing | Jurisdiction |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | Proton Pass | Geneva, Switzerland | Free tier / from about €1.99/month (Pass Plus) | Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA) |
| #2 | Uniqkey | Copenhagen, Denmark | From about €3/user/month | EU (Denmark) |
| #3 | Passbolt | Luxembourg City, Luxembourg | Free Community Edition / from about €4/user/month (Pro) | EU (Luxembourg) |
How each alternative compares to 1Password
- Which law reaches it. Switzerland (adequacy decision, outside the EEA). 1Password is operated from Canada, outside the EU and without an adequacy decision, so transfers rest on contractual safeguards rather than on the data staying inside the EEA.
- Where the data sits. Switzerland, Germany.
- Source code. Open source, where 1Password is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: People replacing 1Password Individual or Families rather than a business deployment
The vendor here is Proton AG, based in Geneva, holding data in Swiss and German facilities. Against 1Password the legal gain is modest and specific: Swiss adequacy carries none of the "commercial organisations" wording that qualifies the Canadian decision, and the vault never leaves Europe at all rather than leaving it by permission.
The bigger differences are ordinary product ones. Proton Pass is open source and independently audited, where the 1Password clients are not published, and that matters more here than in most categories because the client is what handles your key. It has a free tier, which 1Password abolished along with the perpetual licence, and Pass Plus is about €1.99 a month against $3.99 for 1Password Individual.
It is also a younger product and you will feel it. Launched in 2023, it has no travel mode, no emergency access, thinner enterprise controls than 1Password Business, and autofill that still stumbles on complicated sign-in pages. If you administer fifty seats, read the Uniqkey entry below instead.
What Proton Pass does better than 1Password
- A permanent free tier, where 1Password gives you fourteen days and then asks for a card
- Open source clients that have been independently audited, against closed-source 1Password apps
- Swiss adequacy with no sectoral limit, where Canada's decision is written for commercial organisations
- About €1.99 a month for Pass Plus against $3.99 for 1Password Individual
- Email aliases generated in the same dialogue as the password, which 1Password has no equivalent of
Where Proton Pass is a step down from 1Password
- No travel mode and no emergency access, both of which 1Password has had for years
- Enterprise administration is thin next to 1Password Business
- Released in 2023, so the browser extension is less reliable on awkward login forms
- No local vault either, so it does not answer the version 8 complaint
Standout against 1Password. It is the only option here that makes the username disposable as well as the password, which 1Password has never offered at any price.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Denmark). 1Password is operated from Canada, outside the EU and without an adequacy decision, so transfers rest on contractual safeguards rather than on the data staying inside the EEA.
- Where the data sits. Denmark (EU).
- Source code. Closed source, as 1Password is.
- Independently checked. Zero-knowledge, GDPR by design.
Best for: European IT managers who have to prove who could see which credential
Uniqkey ApS is in Copenhagen and stores everything in Danish data centres, so there is no region to choose and no transfer to document. It sells to businesses only, at about €3 per user per month against $8.99 for 1Password Business, and the pricing is per user with volume discounts rather than a starter pack with a seat count baked in.
The feature list is written for an audit rather than for a household: SCIM provisioning, an audit log, access restrictions and SSO alongside the vault.
Uniqkey does not publish the detail behind those headings, so ask what the audit log actually records and what the access restrictions can be scoped to before you sign. 1Password Business has policies and reporting too; what it does not have is a Danish processor and a supervisory authority in the same jurisdiction as your own.
The trade is that there is no consumer side. No individual plan and no family plan, and although there is a trial, the published route to a price is a quote request rather than a checkout, and the clients are closed source, so the encryption has to be taken on trust rather than read.
What Uniqkey does better than 1Password
- About €3 per user per month against $8.99 for 1Password Business
- Data held exclusively in Danish data centres, so no region choice and no transfer analysis at all
- An audit log and access restrictions listed among its access-management features
- SCIM provisioning, so accounts follow your directory instead of being made by hand
- SSO alongside the vault, which reduces how many shared credentials need to exist
Where Uniqkey is a step down from 1Password
- Business only: no individual or family plan, where 1Password serves both from one account
- Closed source, where 1Password at least publishes a detailed security white paper for its design
- No published price at all: there is a trial, but the number comes from a quote rather than a checkout
- A much smaller ecosystem of integrations and third-party tooling than 1Password has
Standout against 1Password. It is the only tool here whose answer to "who could see that credential" is an audit log rather than a reconstruction.
- Which law reaches it. EU (Luxembourg). 1Password is operated from Canada, outside the EU and without an adequacy decision, so transfers rest on contractual safeguards rather than on the data staying inside the EEA.
- Where the data sits. EU cloud, or self-hosted anywhere.
- Source code. Open source, where 1Password is not: you can read what it does rather than take the description on trust.
Best for: Teams that want the password server on their own hardware
Passbolt SA is in Luxembourg City and the Community Edition is AGPL v3, free, with no seat limit, installed on your own Linux host or run from an EU cloud. That is the specific thing 1Password removed: a vault that exists somewhere you control, rather than an account you rent.
It goes further than the old local vault did on the part that actually breaks in teams. Every shared credential is encrypted to each authorised user's OpenPGP public key, so an administrator with database access still cannot read anything, and revoking a leaver is a defined operation rather than a memory exercise across shared vaults. There is role-based access control, folders by department, an activity log and an API for automation.
Passbolt says plainly that individual use is not what it is for, and it is right. GPG has a learning curve that non-technical staff will not enjoy, the mobile apps lag the browser extension badly, and nothing about it feels like 1Password to someone who just wants their Wi-Fi password to autofill.
What Passbolt does better than 1Password
- Self-hosted under AGPL v3, so the vault sits on your hardware — the option 1Password deleted in version 8
- Free at any team size on the Community Edition, where 1Password has no free tier at all
- Shared credentials encrypted per recipient with OpenPGP, so administrators cannot read what they grant
- Published source and published independent audits, where 1Password clients are closed
- Luxembourg establishment, so no adequacy decision is involved anywhere in the chain
Where Passbolt is a step down from 1Password
- A poor fit for individuals and families, which 1Password handles well
- GPG key handling is a real obstacle for non-technical users
- Mobile apps are noticeably behind 1Password's on every platform
- Self-hosting means you own the upgrades, backups and uptime that 1Password currently owns for you
Standout against 1Password. Nothing else listed here lets the server belong to you, and that is precisely the arrangement 1Password once permitted and has since withdrawn.
What actually breaks when you switch
Export more than one vault. 1Password separates your private vault from shared family and team vaults, and they come out as separate files. Migrations that carry only the personal vault look finished right up to the moment somebody needs a credential that lived in Shared.
Expect the browser extension to be the thing people complain about. 1Password's autofill is the best in this market and both Proton Pass and Passbolt acknowledge trouble on complex sign-in pages. Test the two or three internal applications your staff open every day before you move anyone, because a manager that fails on those is worked around within a week.
And plan the cancellation, not just the migration. 1Password is billed annually, the vault becomes read-only when the subscription lapses rather than disappearing, and travel mode or emergency-access arrangements you set up years ago do not transfer to anything here. Write down what you had configured before you turn it off.
If 1Password is Canadian, is there any legal reason to move?
Not a strong one, and this page will not pretend otherwise. The CLOUD Act binds a provider only where United States jurisdiction already reaches it, and AgileBits is an Ontario company that it does not reach. The European Commission has recognised Canada as providing adequate protection, so transfers need no further mechanism, and you can choose an EU region for the vault on top of that.
The thin edge that remains is the wording of the decision. Canada's adequacy applies to commercial organisations, a limitation that Switzerland's does not carry. A password manager is plainly a commercial organisation, so the transfer is covered — but "covered by a sectoral adequacy decision" is a longer sentence in a risk register than "processed inside the EEA", and some procurement teams will not accept the longer sentence.
If your reason for looking is legal, be honest with yourself that you are optimising a position that is already lawful. The better reasons are on the product and the price.
Can I still keep my passwords in a file I control?
Not with 1Password. Local vaults were removed in version 8 and the standalone licence was retired, so the account is the product. You can export, but an export is a snapshot that ages the moment you make it.
Passbolt is the option here that restores the arrangement rather than approximating it. The Community Edition is AGPL v3 and free with no user limit, and it runs on your own Linux host with documented Docker and Kubernetes deployments. The server holds material encrypted to each user's OpenPGP key, so even with the box in your own rack nobody with root can read the credentials.
The cost is the one self-hosting always carries: somebody owns the upgrades, the backups and the certificate renewal. If nobody wants that job, this is not a saving, it is a deferred outage.
Will moving actually cost less?
For a personal account, yes and by a small amount: Proton Pass Plus is about €1.99 a month against $3.99 for 1Password Individual, and Proton Pass has a free tier that 1Password does not offer at any point.
For a business the gap is wider. 1Password Business is $8.99 per user per month; Uniqkey is around €3 per user per month and Passbolt Pro about €4. On forty seats that is the difference between roughly $4,300 and roughly €1,450 a year, before anyone argues about features.
The offsetting cost is the migration and the retraining, and for a team that has been on 1Password for five years it is not nothing. Count a fortnight of somebody's attention, not an afternoon.
Which of these three is aimed at my kind of buyer?
Proton Pass is the consumer and small-team product. It has a free tier, apps on everything, and it is the only one here that generates email aliases alongside passwords, which matters because the username half of a credential is usually an address you reuse everywhere.
Uniqkey sells to the same person 1Password Business sells to: an IT manager in a European company who has to show an auditor who could see which credential. It lists SCIM provisioning, an audit log and access restrictions among its access-management features, and it keeps the data in Danish data centres so the answer to the auditor is short.
Passbolt is for the team that wants the server. It is explicit that individual use is not its strength, so do not put a marketing department on it because the licence is free.
Which one to pick
If you are leaving for legal reasons, reconsider. 1Password is Canadian, Canada is recognised as adequate, and an EU region is available. The gain from switching is a cleaner paragraph rather than a different outcome, and it is fair to decide that is not worth a migration.
If you are leaving because version 8 took the local vault and the perpetual licence, Passbolt is the answer and it is the only one on this page. Run the Community Edition, accept that GPG needs explaining, and you have the arrangement back with better team handling than you had before.
If you are replacing a personal or family account, Proton Pass costs less, has a free tier, publishes its source, and throws in aliases that 1Password has no answer to. It is the shortest move on this page.
And if you are the person signing off on 1Password Business at $8.99 a seat, Uniqkey does the same job for about a third of that with a Danish processor and an audit log built for the question you actually get asked. Just do not put a family on it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Proton Pass if you are replacing a personal or family vault and would like a free tier back. Uniqkey if you are replacing 1Password Business and the question you have to answer is an auditor's. Passbolt if what you miss is the local vault version 8 removed, because it is the only one here you can run on your own server. The three are aimed at genuinely different buyers, so the first question is which 1Password you are on.
No. The company behind it is AgileBits Inc., registered in Toronto, and the CLOUD Act binds providers subject to United States jurisdiction. This is one of the few products in this directory where that argument genuinely does not apply, and anyone telling you otherwise has not checked the corporate record.
Yes, and more comfortably than most non-EU services. Canada holds a European Commission adequacy decision, so transfers there need no supplementary mechanism, and 1Password additionally lets you host the vault in a European region. The only nuance worth knowing is that the Canadian decision is written for commercial organisations rather than the country as a whole, which Switzerland's is not.
It can. Accounts are created in one of three regions — the European Union, the United States or Canada — and the region determines both where the vault is hosted and the currency you are billed in. What it does not do is move an existing account: 1Password states data stays in the region you chose and is never automatically transferred, so an older account is still where it was opened.
No. The perpetual licence — $64.99 when it was last listed, in 2018 — is no longer sold, and the local vault option went with version 8. Every current plan is a subscription with the vault held on 1Password servers. If owning the software and the file was the reason you chose it originally, that reason no longer exists.
No, only a fourteen-day trial. Individual is $3.99 a month billed annually, Families $5.99, the Teams Starter Pack $24.95 a month covering ten members, and Business $8.99 per user per month. Proton Pass and heylogin both run permanent free tiers, which is the practical difference for a household or a two-person company.
Export from the desktop app to CSV or 1PUX, import into the new manager, then verify a sample by logging in with it rather than by reading the list. The step people skip is the second vault: shared family or team vaults export separately from your private one, and a migration that only carries the personal vault looks complete until somebody needs the router password.
Polish and breadth, mostly. Watchtower's breach reporting, travel mode, the browser extension's behaviour on awkward sign-in forms, and apps that are equally good on every platform are all better than any single alternative here. It also has an access-management layer — device checks and SaaS discovery — that only Uniqkey partly matches, and no individual product on this page attempts.
Legally it is a small step rather than a large one, because Canada is already recognised as adequate. Switzerland's recognition has no sectoral limit and EU establishment removes the transfer question entirely, so both are tidier on paper. If your objection to 1Password is jurisdictional, that is the honest size of what you gain: a shorter paragraph in the risk register, not a different legal world.
Who worked on this review
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