Best Password Manager in 2023
With a password manager, you can forget about remembering all of your passwords.
Our brains are not well equipped to store and recall dozens of complex, unique passwords for all of our online accounts. Remembering even a single complex password is a feat in itself. This is why many people resort to the unsafe, risky practice of reusing the same often weak, easy-to-recall password across their online accounts.
A weak password is just as easy for criminals to hack as it is for you to remember. Once your password has been compromised, you're vulnerable to credential stuffing attacks, which can result in many of your online accounts being breached. At that point, you may as well tweet out all of your online login credentials to the world.
A password manager is an online service that provides an encrypted vault where you can store the login credentials for all of your online accounts so you don't have to remember them. You only need to remember a single master password to access the encrypted vault -- from which you can access all of the other passwords you have stored. Password manager services usually offer user-friendly web interfaces, apps or browser extensions where you can access your encrypted vault using your master password.
The best password managers are cross-platform-compatible and can automatically sync your entire vault across all of your devices. This means that once you've entered your passwords into the password manager on one device, they'll automatically show up on all your other devices on which you've installed the app -- whether you're using Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS, Android or a browser extension. Keep in mind that, by their nature, password managers are extremely attractive targets for cybercriminals, so it's important that you choose one with a track record for security and transparency.
Why you need a password manager
NordPass estimates that the average internet user has between 70 and 80 passwords. It's virtually impossible to remember each individual complex password that you should be creating for each account, which means you need another mechanism to keep track of them all.
Using a password manager is a far more effective and convenient mechanism for keeping track of your passwords. You can use one to create strong, unique passwords that are exponentially more difficult to hack than something like Fido1986. And if you're unsure of how to create a strong password, a good password manager will always include a strong password generator feature that will create them for you. A password manager can even help guard against phishing attacks because if the password manager doesn't recognize the URL on which you're entering your login credentials (i.e. if you're on a phishing site), its autofill function won't offer to fill the credentials.
And password managers have benefits beyond just storing passwords. You can use your password manager to securely store other items including credit card numbers (to autofill in online stores), identification documents, travel documents, medical records, PIN codes, bank account numbers and secure notes. Many of the top password managers also offer additional features like cloud storage and attachments, password health reports, data breach notifications and dark web monitoring (which alerts you if any of your personal information has been detected on the dark web). You can also use your password manager to securely share passwords and other items with family members, friends or other trusted contacts.