Dashlane vs LastPass: Battle of the Best Password Managers of 2020
Dashlane and LastPass are two of the top-rated password managers around, both earning a spot in our best password managers guide. Although they have pros and cons like any piece of software, Dashlane and LastPass wipe the floor with the competition, offering unique features, excellent usability and competitive pricing.
In this Dashlane vs LastPass comparison, we’re performing an experiment, pitting two password managers at the top of their field against each other to see which one comes out on top. We’ll talk about features, pricing, security, support, ease of use and more, all before declaring our winner.
Frankly, you could go with either password manager and be just fine. Dashlane and LastPass are ahead of the pack in almost every way, beating out newcomers like RememBear (read our RememBear review). Still, there are some differences between them that may make one a better choice for you.
Before getting into it, remember that we’re directly comparing LastPass vs Dashlane. If you want to see how they perform against the rest of the market, or just want to get a more in-depth look, be sure to read our Dashlane review and LastPass review.
Setting Up a Fight: Dashlane vs. LastPass
LastPass and Dashlane are going to duke it out over a series of rounds, covering all of the major areas we usually evaluate in our reviews. We’ll judge them tit-for-tat in each area, awarding a point to the victor of each round. The service that comes out with more points in the end will be our overall winner.
There is some room for personal opinion, though. LastPass and Dashlane are both excellent password managers, able to sync passwords across your devices with ease. Although we’ll take a definitive approach in declaring a winner, one or the other may be better for you depending on your budget, needed features or other factors.
Fret not, however, we’re going to cover every angle in this Dashlane vs LastPass match. From security to the mobile experience to support, we’ve thoroughly tested our two competitors so you know which is the best option.
- 1
- 2FA
- Zero-knowledge
- Multi-device sync
- Mobile apps
- Free plan
- 2
- 2FA
- Zero-knowledge
- Multi-device sync
- Mobile apps
- Free plan
1. Security
Security is the most important aspect of any password manager, and both Dashlane and LastPass earned high marks in their respective reviews. Both provide security alerts and two-factor authentication options, which are great.
Starting with Dashlane, it uses a zero-knowledge model and AES-256 encryption. Authentication happens using a hash of your master password, which is generated using Argon2d.
However, Dashlane goes beyond the typical password manager security model. Whenever you use a new device, Dashlane will generate a device key based on certain hardware and software specifications that’s in no way related to your master password. The model is so strong that an MIT study in 2016 found it near impossible to crack.
LastPass isn’t as unique, though it still takes steps to keep your vault secure. Again, you’re protected with AES-256 and a zero-knowledge model. In this case, LastPass uses 100,000 rounds of PBKDF2 on your master password to generate an authentication hash. This hash is then used to create an authentication key that is matched against the LastPass database.
It’s important to note that your master password never leaves your computer. Instead, a hash of a hash is used to authenticate you, providing two layers of protection. Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story with LastPass.
The LastPass Hack
LastPass suffered a data breach in 2015, which resulted in a large database of encrypted user vaults leaving its servers. Although data was stolen, no actual information was compromised. Because of LastPass’ encryption and zero-knowledge model, the attackers made out with a bunch of unusable gibberish.
If anything, the breach is a testament to the security model LastPass has in place. That said, it’s not off the hook. Although Dashlane and LastPass go tit-for-tat in terms of technical protection, the fact of the matter is that LastPass has a breach on record and Dashlane does not, giving the latter a win in this round.
2. Price
Considering LastPass earned the top slot in our best free password manager guide, while Dashlane struggled to make the cut, this round isn’t much of a contest. Put simply, LastPass offers a better value. That said, there is a little more to the story if you’re looking for password management and identity theft protection.
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Free
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Premium
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Families
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Teams
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Starting with LastPass, the free version sticks out most. You get multi-device sync and unlimited storage without spending a dime, which other password managers struggle to keep up with. If you’re interested in password sharing, you’ll need the Premium plan. However, at only $3 per month, the price is low.
LastPass also has a solid family plan, though we prefer 1Password’s more (read our 1Password review, as well as our Dashlane vs. 1Password and 1Password vs LastPass comparisons). You’re limited to six users, but that hardly matters considering the price. For $4 per month, you’re essentially buying six Premium licenses, plus access to a family dashboard and unlimited shared folders.
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Free
| |
Premium
| 1-year plan $ 4.99/ month $59.88 billed every year |
Premium Plus
| 1-year plan $ 9.99/ month $119.88 billed every year |
Dashlane is one of the most expensive password managers around, which is its greatest weakness. There’s a free plan available, fit with autofill and security alerts, but you’re limited to 50 entries and can only access your vault on a single device. The paid version, Premium, adds multi-device sync, dark web monitoring and unlimited storage.
However, Premium Plus is the most impressive plan. At nearly $10 per month, it’s the most expensive password manager we’ve ever seen. That said, Premium Plus comes with the full password manager, credit monitoring and $1,000,000 in identity theft protection. Compared to our best identity theft protection software, the price really isn’t bad.
Although it’s easy to make an argument for Dashlane, considering how many features it packs in, there’s no denying the price. LastPass offers the best free plan out of any password manager we’ve seen while keeping the monthly price decently low.
3. Autofill
When it comes to autofill, LastPass and Dashlane both work wonderfully in the browser. Across Chrome and Firefox, we seldom ran into issues testing either of them, be it for a credit card entry or a login page. That said, each tool has its strengths when it comes to autofill.
Dashlane offers more control in the browser. Through the extension, you can specify if you want to fill login info, forms, both or neither for the URL you’re on. You can also choose if the settings apply to a particular page related to a domain or the entire website, allowing you to customize how autofill reacts.
LastPass doesn’t have as much flexibility, showing relevant logins for the site you’re on, as well as all possible fillable items. Although autofill works perfectly, we ran into a few snags with how LastPass recognizes fields. In particular, it doesn’t always detect when there’s a credit card entry field, meaning your stored cards won’t show up in the extension.
That said, LastPass has the advantage of local autofill. If you subscribe to Premium, you can use the LastPass Autofill for Apps tool, which will bring the browser experience to your desktop. Although it’s a useful feature to have, Dashlane has a local application, and given the options in the browser extension, there’s enough to award it a win this round.
4. Business Plans
LastPass and Dashlane offer comprehensive business plans — which is why they both made our best password manager for small business list — despite not being as robust as OneLogin and Zoho Vault (read our OneLogin review and Zoho Vault review). That said, LastPass offers more options than Dashlane.
Starting with the latter, Dashlane offers a single business plan, which runs $4 per user per month when billed annually. It’s the same as the Premium plan, though that comes with a few extras, including an account manager for more than 50 users and an admin console for user and security policy management.
LastPass is more piecemeal when it comes to business plans. There are two core plans: Teams and Enterprise. The former is for five to 50 users at $4 per user per month, while the later is for any team with more than five users. It also includes directory integration and single sign-on capabilities.
The last two plans add adaptive multi-factor authentication, either as its own service or bundled with Enterprise. LastPass is more expensive, with Enterprise clocking in $2 more per user than Dashlane. That said, it comes with SSO and adaptive MFA, which Dashlane lacks, giving LastPass the win this round.
5. Mobile Apps
Password managers mostly have the browser experience figured out, with the exception of some tools (read our Passwork review for an example). Mobile devices are a bit tricky, though. Thankfully, as two of the largest and best password managers around, Dashlane and LastPass offer streamlined and effective apps for Android and iOS.
LastPass’ mobile app feels almost like the browser application, which is why it earned a spot in our best password manager for iOS guide. Autofill works wonderfully, with LastPass supporting biometric authentication on Android and iOS. That said, there are a few features missing from the mobile application.
You can’t organize your entries like you can with Dashlane. Beyond that, Dashlane also supports mobile-specific entries, like contacts. All of the standard features work well, too, with Dashlane supporting autofill on the latest version of Android and iOS, as well as showing a full version of its security dashboard.
No matter which of the password managers you choose, accessing passwords on your mobile devices isn’t a problem. That said, Dashlane offers a more robust mobile app, fit with its excellent identity dashboard, organization options and autofill. Because of that, it earns a win on the mobile end of things.
6. Ease of Use
Dashlane and LastPass are both easy to use, much unlike LogMeOnce and Steganos (read our LogMeOnce review and Steganos Password Manager review). If you’re just concerned with ease of use, you could pick either tool and be just fine.
That said, Dashlane is more flexible. It uses a local application as opposed to LastPass’ browser-exclusive UI. When you download the app and create an account, Dashlane will ask you to import passwords from your browser. Considering that most people have passwords unknowingly stored in their browser’s database, this is a quick way to get set up.
Getting around Dashlane is simple, with your vault categories laid out in the left-side menu and plenty of ways to organize your entries. The browser extension mirrors this, giving you quick access to your vault and the password generator without having to open the local application.
However, there isn’t a browser UI, which is where LastPass shines. Although lacking a local application, LastPass can run in any browser. From a usability standpoint, LastPass is more or less the same as Dashlane. There are options to organize your entries, support for custom entry templates and an easy-to-use menu on the left-side of the UI.
The fact that LastPass works in your browser is a huge advantage, though. No matter what computer you’re on or browser you’re using, you can quickly access your passwords, even on public machines. Combined with LastPass’ more space-ish design, it earns the win for this round.
7. Free Plan
Both of our competitors offer a free version, though LastPass has the advantage. Although LastPass isn’t the only free option — read our NordPass review for another example — it has a feature that almost no other free password manager does: multi-device sync.
Even if you’re not paying, you can sync your entries across your devices. Additionally, LastPass offers one-to-one sharing and unlimited storage. Honestly, the free plan puts LastPass Premium to shame. The extra $3 per month grants a few extra features, including one-to-many sharing and priority support, but Free includes most of what we’re looking for.
Dashlane Free doesn’t, unfortunately. Although we understand reserving multi-device sync for Dashlane Premium, the free version limits your entries. You can only store 50 entries in your vault, no matter what category they’re in. Although the limit isn’t as strict as McAfee True Key, it’s still a limit (read our McAfee True Key review).
Compared to LastPass, Dashlane’s free version doesn’t stack up. However, it’s also lackluster compared to other free tools. Although not as pretty as Dashlane, KeePass and Bitwarden both offer unlimited storage for free, and they’re open source, to boot (read our KeePass review and Bitwarden review, and see how Bitwarden compares to LastPass).
It comes at little surprise that LastPass is the king of the crop when it comes to securing your passwords for free. Dashlane makes a solid effort, but with its limitations and lack of multi-device sync, it gets run over by LastPass.
8. Features
LastPass is fairly light in terms of features, outside of the notable LastPass for Applications desktop tool. Otherwise, it’s standard. You’re offered a security challenge, where you can see how your passwords stand up against the rest of LastPass’ users, support for custom entries and autofill.
There’s also LastPass Authenticator. Although not technically part of LastPass, Authenticator allows you to enable two-factor authentication on most websites, earning it a spot in our best 2FA apps guide. You don’t have to use or pay for LastPass to use Authenticator, though. It’s offered for free as a standalone service.
Dashlane is quite the opposite of LastPass. Stuffed to the brim with features and a price to match, Dashlane has gone beyond a standard password manager into something more akin to identity theft protection.
Dashlane Premium includes dark web monitoring, a password health center and a VPN, though we’d recommend choosing from our best VPN list for that last one instead.
It’s most unique feature, however, is the automatic password changer, which can update passwords on supported sites with a single mouse click. LastPass has a similar feature, though we could never get it to work properly during our testing.
Dashlane can’t change passwords on every site, but the list of supported URLs is still lengthy, including Reddit and Citrix (read our Citrix ShareFile review).
Dashlane is more expensive than LastPass, but it comes with a list of features to justify the price. From breach notifications to dark web monitoring to identity theft insurance, Dashlane goes beyond simply being a password manager, earning it a win in this round.
9. Support
Dashlane has some of the best support we’ve seen out of a password manager, which is surprising, given how lackluster support usually is for these tools. In addition to an easy-to-use knowledgebase, Dashlane offers email and live chat support. Email support runs seven days a week, while live chat is offered Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST.
Support is mostly focused around English-speaking customers, though Dashlane offers French and German email support during weekdays. Thankfully, you shouldn’t have to reach out to support much. The knowledgebase is exceptional, filled to the brim with every detail about Dashlane and how it functions.
LastPass doesn’t offer the same level of care with its support resources. You’re granted a knowledgebase that covers the basics of the application, but it includes very little in the way of troubleshooting resources. There are ways to contact LastPass if you have a problem, but you’ll need to jump through a few hoops.
You need to use the knowledgebase to contact LastPass. Instead of offering a contact form of email address, there’s a “contact support” button on the bottom of each knowledgebase article. Given how little there is for troubleshooting, a clearer route to contact is needed.
Still, LastPass offers support to customers paying and not, so it’s not all bad. Regardless, there’s no denying that Dashlane offers more robust support resources, both for those who need to contact the support team and those content with solving their own issues. Because of that, Dashlane takes the win for this final round.
10. Final Thoughts
Out of our nine rounds, Dashlane earned five points while LastPass earned four. As expected, the two were neck and neck throughout the competition, though Dashlane still comes out as the victor. Although expensive, Dashlane offers a more robust list of features and better security than LastPass.
Winner: Dashlane
Still, LastPass is a worthy opponent. With the best free plan we’ve seen from any password manager and exceptional usability, LastPass is a great tool. Although it doesn’t reach the heights of Dashlane, LastPass is still a compelling option, especially for those on a budget.
The choice is up to you, though. Are you going with Dashlane or LastPass? Let us know how you made your choice, as well as how you’re liking it, in the comments below. Read our Dashlane vs Keeper comparison, too. As always, thanks for reading.
Jacob Roach is a Midwesterner with a love for technology, an odd combination given his corn field-ridden setting. After finishing a degree in English at Southern New Hampshire University, Jacob settled back under the Arch in his hometown of St. Louis, MO, where he now writes about anything tech. His main interests are web technologies and online privacy, though he dips his toes in photography and the occasional card game as well. You can reach him at jacob[at]commquer.com.