What NordPass Is

NordPass is the password manager from Nord Security, the same company behind NordVPN, launched in 2019 and now one of the cheaper credible options in the category. It does the expected things: stores logins, passkeys, cards, and notes in an encrypted vault, fills them across your devices, scans for breached credentials, and rates your password health. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, every major browser, and a web vault.

Two things make it stand out from the pack: the encryption it chose, and the price. One thing holds it back: what its free plan will not let you do.

The XChaCha20 Difference

Almost every password manager encrypts your vault with AES-256. NordPass uses XChaCha20 instead. In practice both are considered extremely strong, and no one is breaking either, so this is not a reason to panic or to switch on its own. XChaCha20 is a modern stream cipher that some cryptographers prefer for being simpler to implement correctly and fast without special hardware. NordPass pairs it with a zero-knowledge architecture, so the company cannot read your vault, and it has had an independent security audit through Cure53.

Feature-wise it covers the modern checklist: passkeys, a password and passphrase generator, a Data Breach Scanner, Password Health reports, email masking to hide your real address, and secure sharing. It is not trying to out-feature 1Password. It is trying to give you the essentials cheaply and cleanly.

The Free Plan Catch

NordPass has a free tier, and unlike Dashlane it has kept it. You get unlimited stored items, which sounds generous. Here is the catch that the marketing soft-pedals: on the free plan you can only be actively logged in on one device at a time. Log in on your phone and you are logged out on your laptop. For a tool whose entire job is to follow you between devices, that limit guts the free plan for most people. It is fine as a trial of the apps, not as a permanent setup.

By contrast, Bitwarden's free plan syncs across unlimited devices. If a free multi-device manager is what you are after, that difference alone probably decides it.

What It Costs

Prices checked on NordPass's site in October 2025. As with the rest of Nord Security's products, the headline rates are the intro term and renew higher, so read the renewal price before committing.

• Premium: about $1.39 to $1.99/month depending on term, lifting the one-device limit and adding the breach scanner and email masking.
• Family: from $3.69/month for six separate accounts, which is one of the cheapest family plans anywhere.
• Business (Teams): from about $1.79 per user/month, scaling into Business and Enterprise tiers with admin controls.

At roughly a dollar to two dollars a month, Premium is a third of what 1Password or Dashlane charge. If you already pay for NordVPN, the bundle discounts make it cheaper still.

Where It Falls Short

The free plan's one-device limit is the big one, already covered. Beyond it: the intro-then-renew pricing means the low number you sign up at is not the number you pay in year two. The feature set, while complete, is shallower than 1Password's, with no developer tooling and a lighter approach to power-user extras. And as a newer product it has less of the long, audited track record that Bitwarden and 1Password lean on, though its Cure53 audit and Nord Security's scale count for something.

Verdict

NordPass is the value pick: buy it if you want a clean, modern manager with solid encryption for the lowest credible price, especially if you already live in the Nord ecosystem. The family plan in particular is hard to beat on cost.

Do not rely on its free plan as a permanent home, because the one-device limit will frustrate you within a day. If you want a genuinely free, multi-device manager, run Bitwarden instead. If you want the deepest feature set and the most polish and price is no object, 1Password is the upgrade. But for most people who just want cheap, correct, and cross-platform, NordPass Premium is the easy value winner. Check the renewal rate before you pay.