StackMatch

Password Managers: 1Password vs. Bitwarden (and Why LastPass Isn't in This Comparison)

Password reuse is one of the most common paths to a breach. Across every curated vertical we track, small businesses land on one of exactly two vendors — and it's worth knowing why the third obvious name isn't one of them.

By The StackMatch Research Team

1Password and Bitwarden are the only two password managers in our curated small-business catalog

$40-951Password Business /mo
$40-60Bitwarden Business /mo
2Public breaches that keep LastPass off this list

1Password and Bitwarden pricing from real per-business costs across our curated vertical catalog.

Why the same two vendors show up across every industry we track

From dermatology practices to trucking companies to marketing agencies, every curated vertical in our catalog that runs a dedicated password manager runs either 1Password Business or Bitwarden Business. That's not a coincidence of our data set — it reflects which vendors small businesses actually trust with the one credential that unlocks everything else: the EHR login, the accounting system, the shared client-portal password nobody should be texting to a coworker.

A password manager protects the one credential that, if reused or shared, exposes everything behind it.

1Password Business: $40-95/mo

1Password's range reflects two real tiers: the base Business plan around $40/mo for straightforward teams, and pricing up toward $95/mo for businesses layering on Advanced Protection (mandatory 2FA enforcement, SSO integration, stricter admin controls) — often the practices and firms handling regulated client or patient data. Its Watchtower feature flags reused or breached passwords automatically, which is the concrete failure mode it's solving: a team member reusing an EHR or banking password across two logins without anyone noticing until it's exploited.

2
tiers worth knowing: base Business vs. Advanced Protection with SSO/2FA enforcement

Bitwarden Business: $40-60/mo

Bitwarden is open source and independently audited, which is the specific reason security-conscious teams pick it over a proprietary vault — you (or a third party) can actually verify how the encryption is implemented rather than taking a vendor's word for it. It also offers a self-hosted deployment option for businesses with stricter data-residency requirements. The common mistake with self-hosting: businesses take on that option to save the hosted fee, then don't have the IT capacity to patch and maintain it, which quietly reintroduces the security risk the tool was bought to close.

Self-hosting Bitwarden only makes sense if someone on your team is actually accountable for patching it. If nobody owns that, the hosted Business plan at $40-60/mo is worth the fee.

1Password vs. Bitwarden

Criterion1Password BusinessBitwarden Business
Monthly cost$40-95$40-60
Open source / independently auditable
Self-host option
Breach/reused-password monitoring
SSO enforcement on higher tier

Why LastPass doesn't appear in this comparison

LastPass isn't missing from our catalog by oversight — no curated vertical in our data runs it. LastPass disclosed a 2022 breach in which an attacker used data stolen from an earlier incident to access a cloud storage environment containing customer vault backups; the practical fallout for any business running it was a forced credential rotation across every integrated system, not just a password manager update. We don't have current small-business pricing data for it because it isn't a tool we'd recommend into any curated vertical, and we're not going to invent a number for a vendor we don't track.

Questions to ask before choosing or switching password managers

  • Does the vendor enforce 2FA/SSO at the plan tier you're actually buying, or is that an upsell?
  • Who inside your business owns patching and updates if you choose a self-hosted option?
  • What's the export process if you switch vendors later — can you leave with your vault intact?
  • Does it integrate with your identity provider (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365) for onboarding/offboarding?
  • Has the vendor had a publicly disclosed breach, and if so, what changed afterward?

The ROI math barely needs a calculator: $40-95/mo per business against the cost of a single reused-password breach reaching your EHR, accounting system, or client portal. This is one of the easiest security purchases a small business makes.

The bottom line

1Password wins on Watchtower's polish and SSO enforcement for regulated teams. Bitwarden wins on open-source auditability and a genuine self-host option for teams with the IT capacity to run it. Both are real, catalog-verified choices — and neither is the vendor with the breach history.

Run the free StackMatch audit to see which security tools fit your team size and how they compare on cost to what similar businesses actually run.

Run your own audit
More from the blog