Individual or family plan: which password manager is cheaper?
A family plan is one flat price for the whole household, while individual plans are billed per person. The break-even is simple arithmetic: divide the family price by the individual price and you get the number of people from which one family plan beats separate subscriptions. Enter your numbers below, or tap a preset, and see exactly what you pay either way, per month and per year.
For 4 people, the family plan is cheaper. The family plan wins from 2 people onward; share it with more people and the saving per person keeps growing.
A family plan is one flat price for everyone, so it gets cheaper per person the more you share. For a single user, a solid free manager is often enough; pay only for sharing and extras.
How to read the result
Separate plans cost the individual price multiplied by the number of people, so they scale up with every extra person. A family plan stays the same flat price, which means it gets cheaper per person the more you share it. As a rule of thumb, from roughly two or three people a family plan almost always wins. For example, 1Password is about $3.99 a month per person versus $6.95 a month for up to five family members, so a family plan pays off from the second person onward. Keeper ($2.92 individual, $6.25 family) and Dashlane ($4.99 individual, $7.49 for up to ten people) follow the same pattern.
The honest answer is that not everyone needs to pay at all. A single user is usually well served by a solid free manager such as Bitwarden or Proton Pass, both open source and independently audited. You start paying for sharing, advanced reports, or extras like dark web monitoring, not for the basics. So size the decision to your household: alone on a free plan, sharing with two or more people on a family plan, and only reach for a paid individual plan when you specifically want the extras it adds.