Proton Pass Review 2026: A Free Password Manager That Hides Your Email

Proton’s password manager, for freelancers who keep their own logins and their clients’.

For this Proton Pass review I tested both of its one-person plans myself. Below is what the free plan gives away, where it stops, what Plus adds, and the one setting that leaves your vault open on a shared computer.

This post has no active affiliate links yet. No affiliate program can change my scores.

What Is Proton Pass?

Proton Pass is a password manager from Proton, the company behind Proton Mail and Proton VPN. It keeps logins, cards, notes, and identity details in vaults, generates passwords when you sign up somewhere, and fills them in when you sign back in. It also makes hide-my-email aliases, forwarding addresses that keep your real email off a site’s records.

You use it through a browser extension, the phone apps, a desktop app, and a web app, all on one Proton account. Proton’s apps page lists the extension for Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Edge, and Safari.

Proton’s Pass pricing page and apps page, read September 2026.

Plan	Free	Pass Plus	Pass Family
Monthly	$0	$4.99	$6.99
Yearly, billed once	$0	$35.88	$59.88
Yearly, per month	$0	$2.99	$4.99
People	1	1	6
Devices	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Vaults	2	50	50 per person
Share a vault with	2 others	10 others	10 others
Hide-my-email aliases	10	Unlimited	Unlimited
Storage for file attachments		10 GB	50 GB
Everyday password tools ¹
Pass Plus tools ²
Renewal price shown at checkout	Not applicable	Not shown	Not shown

Proton’s checkout prints no renewal price for the yearly plan, only “Renewal pricing subject to change,” and its terms say a changed price is charged at renewal.

Prices in USD from Proton’s US Pass pricing page and checkout, read 28 September 2026 and checked again 3 October 2026; they vary by region. The US checkout added sales tax, so check the current rate before you commit.

Canceling Proton Pass and Asking for a Refund

The Cancel subscription box sits at the very bottom of the web account’s Subscription page, not in the extension, and none of the four screens after it mentions the 30-day money-back guarantee.

Proton’s terms promise a full refund if you cancel and ask within 30 days of your first purchase, once per user, and only on a plan bought directly from Proton. You ask through the support form, which has no refund topic, so pick “Plans and billing” and write at least 100 characters; the terms say the refund is processed within 30 days.

I didn’t ask for my refund, so the steps after the form and how long the money takes aren’t tested. Refund terms can change and can differ by region, so read Proton’s current terms before you subscribe.

Source: Proton’s terms of service and Pass pricing page, read October 2026.

How I Tested Proton Pass

I tested Proton Pass on a new account of my own, made with my tool-testing email address, in a separate Chrome profile. The vault held five made-up logins from a spreadsheet, a test card, a note, and a real Letterboxd account I signed up for with a Proton alias during the test. No real password of mine or a client’s went in.

I ran the free plan first and photographed every Pass Plus wall, then paid for one month of Pass Plus on the same account the same day, out of my own pocket. I tested in September and October 2026 on my computer, in Chrome and Proton’s Mac app, and on my phone.

Not tested: the refund (not asked for), Pass Family, Proton Unlimited, the business plans, Android, Windows, the free plan offline or with a passkey, aliases on your own domain, and the invited person’s side of a vault share. I opened no support ticket, because a made-up question wastes an agent’s time, so support speed isn’t measured.

What I measured	Result	Plan
Sign-up to the open extension, recovery phrase included	about 6 min	Free
Logins arrived from a five-row Chrome spreadsheet	5 of 5, in about 1 min 30 s	Free
Clicks from an empty sign-in form to signed in	3	Free
Devices signed in at once	2 of 2, computer and phone	Free
Password Health on the made-up logins	3 weak, 1 reused	Free
Clicks from the extension to help	2, to a “Report a problem” form	Free
A one-view secure link, opened once, then tried again	Opened with no account the first time; the second time: “Secure link does not exist. Try reaching out to the link owner.”	Pass Plus
Screens to cancel, after Continue	4, no retention offer	Pass Plus

Is Proton Pass Worth It? Score Breakdown

I scored the free plan and Pass Plus, each on its own card, because they score differently.

Not deducted, but worth knowing

• On Pass Plus, Dark Web Monitoring didn’t watch my sign-in address, which isn’t a Proton address, until I added it by hand and entered an emailed code. No points off, because it was watched once added; NordPass Premium named the address it watched from the start.
• On Pass Plus, a secure link shows the password to whoever opens it. No points off, because the link dies after the time and views you set; NordPass Premium’s Can autofill share kept the password hidden on my receiving account.

On the Support score. The extension’s route to help is Settings, then Support: two clicks to a “Report a problem” form that warns “Reports are not end-to-end encrypted,” with links to Reddit, X, and feature requests. The chat isn’t in Pass at all; I found it on the web account under the round account button, as “Chat with us.”

The assistant answered none of my questions itself, but each time it offered to pass me to a human advisor who replies by email. I never took the offer, so the human is Proton’s word, not my test.

Key Features of Proton Pass

Every Device Signed In at Once, Even on Free

Proton Pass Free has no device limit, and that’s the biggest difference from NordPass Free. I signed in on my iPhone while the Chrome extension on my computer stayed signed in, refreshed it to be sure, and the account’s session list showed both.

Two Vaults on Free, and No Folders

Proton Pass Free stops at two vaults, and it has no folders, so you can keep two clients apart and no more. My third vault hit a wall.

The message reads “Upgrade to a paid plan to create multiple vaults.”

Hide-My-Email Aliases: 10 on Free, Unlimited on Plus

Proton Pass gives the free plan 10 hide-my-email aliases, and on a sign-up form one is a single click away. Clicking Letterboxd’s empty email box brought up “Use my email” and “Hide my email,” with an alias already named after the site.

An email I sent to that alias from another address arrived in my test mailbox. My guide to creating Proton Pass aliases also shows how to reply from one.

Is Proton Pass Safe? Lock It on a Shared Computer

Proton Pass held up where I could check it, but its standard lock setting leaves the extension open. Proton says the vault is end-to-end encrypted, which no user can verify, so it stays Proton’s claim. Out of the box, “Unlock with” is set to None, “Proton Pass will always be accessible,” and after I quit and reopened Chrome the extension opened straight into my vault with no password.

On a computer other people use, anyone who opens that Chrome profile gets every login. One setting fixes it: in the extension, Settings, then Security, set Unlock with to PIN code. Fingerprint unlock is the other choice, but it failed in Chrome, and once I installed Proton’s Mac app it worked only in that app.

Proton Pass gives the free plan the password checks NordPass keeps for Premium. Pass Monitor flagged three weak passwords and one used on two logins, and each opened with a banner telling me to change it.

The recovery phrase Proton makes you save at sign-up is the part to keep safe outside Proton Pass, because without it a forgotten password can cost you the vault’s contents (the FAQ below has the details).

Getting Started and Daily Use: A Recovery Phrase You Can’t Skip

Proton Pass’s sign-up was easy to find, a “Create free account” button on its website, and unlike NordPass it made me save a recovery phrase before I could go on. I had to download or copy the phrase and tick “I understand that if I lose my recovery phrase, I may permanently lose access to my account.” The whole sign-up, to the open extension and past a “Special Offer!” pop-up for Plus, took about 6 minutes.

Proton’s import screen names browsers and password managers, NordPass, 1Password, Bitwarden, and LastPass among them, plus a generic spreadsheet. My Chrome-format file went in as it was, all five logins arrived with their web addresses and notes in about 1 minute 30 seconds, and Proton let me send the whole import to a vault of its own.

Proton Pass handles the daily password job well on the free plan. On Letterboxd’s sign-up form, the password box offered a 20-character password, with a length slider and switches for symbols, capitals, and numbers. The moment it filled, a “Save login” panel appeared, before I’d pressed Sign up.

Signing back in was easy: a “Log in as…” suggestion appeared under the empty box on its own, and it took 3 clicks from the empty form to signed in. On my phone, the iPhone offered to fill the same login from Proton Pass, and Face ID did the rest.

Sharing With a Client: Free Shares a Vault, Plus Sends a Link

Proton Pass lets the free plan share a whole vault, and Plus adds the share I’d use most with a client, a link they open without an account. On Free I invited an address to a vault as a Viewer (Proton’s other roles are Editor and Admin) with no upgrade wall, while sharing one login carried the Plus badge.

On Plus, sharing one login “With other Proton users” refused my non-Proton address: “Only existing users can be invited to access an item.” The secure link has no such limit, and you set how long it lasts and how many times it opens.

I opened my one-hour, one-view link in a private window with no Proton account. It showed the username, the password, the website, the note, and the attached file to download, with no sign-up at all.

A login with a file attached could be shared this way too, which NordPass Premium refuses.

Proton Pass: Pros and Cons

Who Should Use Proton Pass?

Who Should Use Proton Pass Free?

Who Should Use Pass Plus?

Free Alternatives to Proton Pass

Both have a free plan. I haven’t tested Bitwarden yet, so its line comes from its own pages.

NordPass Free kept every client in a folder of their own, though it allows one signed-in device at a time and locks the password checks Proton gives away; every test is in my NordPass review and my Proton Pass vs NordPass comparison.

Bitwarden says its free plan works on unlimited devices and sorts logins into folders, the place where Proton Pass Free stops at two vaults.

Bitwarden’s own pages, read October 2026.

Frequently Asked Questions

Final Verdict: Is Proton Pass Worth It?

Proton Pass is worth it for a freelancer who works across a laptop and a phone. The free plan keeps every device signed in, flags weak and reused passwords, and hands out aliases on sign-up forms. Pass Plus is the upgrade when you need more than two vaults or want to send a client a login by link.

The two-vault cap is the wall most freelancers will hit on Free. Help and a few settings live on the website, and the extension stays open until you set a PIN, so do that first on any computer you share.

Evidence verified: October 2026.