1Password is Raising Price

by Rian

Just last year I covered the very issue of leaving 1Password. Long story short, Apple Passwords, a free alternative for iOS and MacOS, has come a long way. With iOS 26, some argue it is now a suitable free alternative among many others. Not that I am suggesting everyone should jump ship, but I believe there is an argument to be made against where 1Password stands and why it is losing grip.

Autofill from 1Password has seen better days. In fact, I stopped using autofill for credit cards ever since I made my first Korean credit card. It is customary in South Korea to disable keyboard inputs for sensitive infos, such as credit card, national ID card, etc. It’s all done via virtual keyboards. I think it’s a security theater than anything else, but it is, in essence, incompatible with 1Password’s autofill feature. Do they work well with, say, North American websites? — not always. I’ve seen fair shares of websites that blocked or effectively broke autofill one way or the other. Same goes with profiles and addresses.

Password generators on browser extensions have never worked for me: either the website refuses to take an autofilled password, or the password policy is so ridiculous I need to use one of my Python codes anyway. These websites often don’t allow copy-pasting the passcodes either, so I have a special tag to group the problematic ones.

The ones that are still distinctively unique to 1Password (from Apple Passwords) would be its universal autofill feature, which, again, is breaking apart left and right. It’s been awhile since I had a success with universal autofill, now it just became a habit to fire up the app and copy-paste the passwords old fashioned way.

Last year, there was an announcement from the developers of 1Password that the password manager will support importing and exporting passkeys in the coming future. As far as I am aware, Apple Passwords already supports the new passkey import and export protocols. One of the biggest hurdles, or platform lock-in, is planned to be removed. Of course, this isn’t a one way street for 1Password either.

The only feature I would be missing, if I were to transfer my vault over to Apple’s, is the web UI. Apple Passwords still does not have a web version. It may never will. The difference, I suppose, is that on unsupported environment, such as Linux, web UI can fill the gaps. But again, if I am signing into one of those websites with weird password policies and no copy-pasting, I would still resort to my “type-friendly” passwords. Had I have the luxury of writing off 1Password subscription as a business expense, I would have swallowed the price tag without blinking an eye.