Dashlane vs KeePassXC Comparison

• Premium (individual, 1-year): $59.88 per year
• Friends & Family (10 members, 1-year): $89.88 per year

First-level security certification of KeePassXC 2.7.9 on Windows — full source-code review, penetration testing of every security function, and cryptographic and random-number-generator analysis

The vault is encrypted client-side with AES-256 in CBC mode plus HMAC-SHA256 — an encrypt-then-MAC construction, so tampering with the ciphertext is detectable. The key is derived from the master password with Argon2d (3 iterations, 32 MB memory, 2 threads); PBKDF2 remains only as a backward-compatibility fallback that Dashlane says it will deprecate in 2026. All vault fields are encrypted, including usernames, item URLs and notes — not just passwords. Support for legacy CBC-only mode was removed in November 2025.

The database is encrypted with AES-256 by default (Twofish and ChaCha20 are also selectable) in the KDBX 4 format, with an HMAC-SHA-256 integrity check that detects tampering. The master key is derived with Argon2d by default — a memory-hard function that resists GPU and ASIC cracking — with the older AES-KDF still available. The composite master key can combine a password, a key file, and a YubiKey or OnlyKey challenge-response secret.

The product is run by Dashlane, Inc.; the brand and trademarks belong to Dashlane SAS, France. The company is independent and venture-backed — it has raised over $200M across five rounds, the last a $110M Series D led by Sequoia Capital in May 2019, with Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and Rho as earlier backers. It has not been acquired. Dual headquarters in New York and Paris.

Volunteer, community-run open-source project under the keepassxreboot organization on GitHub — no company and no venture funding behind it. Development is paid for by donations. Forked from KeePassX in 2016; the KeePass lineage goes back to 2003.