Best Password Manager for a 5-Person Team
Short answer: On price, Proton Pass Essentials wins clearly at five seats — $9.95/month against Bitwarden's $20 and 1Password's $24.95. But if you expect to reach eight or ten people within a year, 1Password's flat Teams Starter Pack means those hires cost nothing extra, and it becomes the cheapest of the three by seven seats. We have not yet tested any of them, so this compares cost and documented behaviour, not how they feel to use.
Which one, for who
| If you're… | Pick | Because |
|---|---|---|
| A five-person team optimising for running cost | Proton Pass Essentials — $9.95/month | Lowest per-seat price we track at $1.99, and the 3-seat minimum is irrelevant once you have five people. Half of Bitwarden, 60% less than 1Password. |
| A five-person team that expects to be ten within a year | 1Password Teams Starter Pack — $24.95/month flat | The only option where hiring does not increase the bill. Flat to 10 members, so seats six through ten are free. It overtakes both competitors at about seven people. |
| A solo owner about to hire their second person | Bitwarden free organisation — $0 | Two users with real credential sharing, indefinitely, at no cost. Proton would charge you for a third seat you do not have. Bitwarden runs no affiliate programme, so we earn nothing saying this. |
| Anyone who needs SSO or activity logs | Proton Pass Professional — $4.49/user | Cheaper than Bitwarden Enterprise at $6 and roughly half 1Password's per-seat rate. Budget against this tier, not the $1.99 headline, if compliance matters. |
Free option first: Bitwarden's free two-person organisation covers a solo owner or a pair completely and indefinitely. It has no affiliate programme, so we earn nothing by recommending it.
Side by side at 5 people
| 1Password | Bitwarden | Proton Pass | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost at 5 people | $44.95/mo | $20/mo | $9.95/mo |
| At 1 / 10 / 25 | $8.99 / $89.90 / $224.75 | $4 / $40 / $100 | $5.97 / $19.90 / $49.75 |
| Monthly-billing penalty | annual only | annual only | +151% |
| Minimum seats | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Free tier | None (14-day trial) | Free personal plan; free 2-person org for sharing | No business free tier (14-day trial) |
| MFA / passkeys | Yes / Yes | Yes / Yes | Yes / Yes |
| Audit logs on this plan | Yes | Higher tier only | Higher tier only |
| Data export | self serve | self serve | self serve |
| Removing a person | Suspend or delete a member from the admin console; shared vault items remain owned by the team. | Remove user from organization; org-owned collections stay. Personal vault leaves with the user. | Admin removes the member; shared vault items stay with the organisation. SSO and activity logs sit on Professional, not Essentials. |
| Our evidence | Not yet tested | Not yet tested | Not yet tested |
What this page is and isn’t. A documentation and pricing comparison. Every price was read from each vendor’s own pricing page on 2026-09-02 in a rendered browser. We have not run any of these three through our testing lab — no accounts were created. Simulated-company runs are queued. This page answers what they cost and how they are built. It does not answer which one your team will actually keep using, which is the question that ultimately decides it.
The answer at five seats
| Monthly | Annually | What you are buying | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proton Pass Essentials | $9.95 | $119.40 | $1.99/user, 3-seat minimum |
| Bitwarden Teams | $20.00 | $240.00 | $4/user, no minimum |
| 1Password Teams Starter Pack | $24.95 | $299.40 | Flat rate, up to 10 members |
On cost alone at exactly five people, Proton is the clear winner — half of Bitwarden and 60% below 1Password.
Note the third row carefully. Most comparisons price 1Password at $8.99/user, which would be $44.95 at five seats. That is not the plan a five-person team should buy. The Teams Starter Pack is the relevant number, and almost nobody quotes it.
The nuance nobody covers: what happens when you hire
Price at your current head-count is the wrong question if you are growing. Here is what each does as you add people:
| Team size | Bitwarden | Proton | 1Password pack |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | $0 | $5.97 | $24.95 |
| 5 | $20.00 | $9.95 | $24.95 |
| 7 | $28.00 | $13.93 | $24.95 |
| 10 | $40.00 | $19.90 | $24.95 |
| 11 | $44.00 | $21.89 | $98.89 |
Two things fall out of that:
Proton stays cheapest from three people up. Its per-seat price is low enough that linear growth never catches the flat pack.
But 1Password is the only one where hiring is free. Going from five to ten people costs Bitwarden $20 more per month and Proton $10 more. It costs 1Password nothing — the pack is flat to ten members. If you are five people planning to be ten, you are choosing between a bill that doubles and a bill that does not move.
And there is a cliff. At member eleven the pack stops applying and 1Password reverts to $8.99/user — the bill jumps from $24.95 to $98.89. If you expect to pass ten, do not build on the pack.
Where the money goes if you need SSO
SSO is the upgrade most teams eventually hit, usually when a client questionnaire asks about it.
| SSO tier | Price | |
|---|---|---|
| Proton | Pass Professional | $4.49/user |
| Bitwarden | Enterprise | $6.00/user |
| 1Password | Business (per-seat) | $8.99/user |
Proton stays cheapest, and notably its upgrade tier is still below Bitwarden’s. Budget against this row rather than the headline if compliance is anywhere in your future — the client security questionnaire guide covers what gets asked.
Monthly billing
If you bill monthly rather than annually:
- Proton: $4.99 vs $1.99 — a 151% premium, second worst of the twenty products we track
- Bitwarden: annual billing only on Teams
- 1Password: monthly available at a higher rate
Pay annually on whichever you choose. On five seats with Proton that is $119.40 against $299.40.
What all three do the same
Worth saying, because it is where comparisons usually invent differences that do not exist.
All three support MFA and passkeys, offer self-serve data export, and handle offboarding the same structural way: items in shared or organisation vaults stay with the organisation; items in a personal vault leave with the person.
That last point is the one that actually bites, and it is a policy problem rather than a product one. A colleague who saved a shared client login into their personal vault takes it with them, and no admin console will flag it. Decide on day one that work credentials live in shared vaults only. The former-employee access guide has the full sequence.
What we cannot tell you yet
This is a price comparison, and price is the part we can verify from a public page. The things that decide whether a password manager was worth buying are:
- Adoption. The tool your least technical colleague abandons protects nothing. 1Password’s reputation is built on being the one non-technical people tolerate — and if that is true, it is worth more than the $15/month difference at five seats.
- How long removing someone actually takes, and what the console shows afterwards.
- Whether the export is genuinely complete.
- What support is like when something breaks on a $1.99 plan.
Those are lab questions. Runs are queued on the test log, and when they land this page gets a verdict rather than a price table.
Our honest position today: if cost is the deciding factor, Proton at $9.95 is difficult to argue with. If you have been burned by a team refusing to adopt a tool, 1Password’s $24.95 buys insurance against that, and buys your next five hires for free. If you are two people, Bitwarden costs nothing and you should stop reading.
Disclosure
We hold no approved affiliate relationship with any of these three. Bitwarden runs no programme at all. We are not currently approved for 1Password’s. We have deliberately not applied to Proton’s — which has the best published terms in our research, 30% on new subscriptions and 30% on renewals — until the lab runs produce a verdict that predates any commercial relationship.
This page earns nothing and contains no affiliate links. See how we make money and our methodology.
Prices verified 2026-09-02 in a rendered browser: 1Password Teams Starter Pack $24.95/mo to 10 members and Business $8.99/user; Bitwarden Teams $4/user and Enterprise $6/user; Proton Pass Essentials $1.99/user and Professional $4.49/user, both minimum 3 users. See the pricing tracker.