Dashlane vs Proton Pass Comparison

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

• Pass Plus (individual, annual): $35.88/year
• Pass Family (up to 6 users, annual): $59.88/year

Source-code review and gray-box testing of the browser extensions, mobile and desktop apps, and CLI

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.

Vault and item data are encrypted with 256-bit AES-GCM under 32-byte random keys; the user key is protected by a bcrypt hash of the account password. Authentication uses a hardened SRP implementation; sharing uses OpenPGP with ECC (Curve25519). Every field is encrypted client-side — usernames, URLs and notes included — so Proton cannot see which services you hold accounts with. Offline access on paid plans uses Argon2 for the local hash.

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.

Proton AG, Geneva, Switzerland. Since June 2024 the primary shareholder is the non-profit Proton Foundation, which the founders endowed with Proton shares in an arrangement they describe as irrevocable. Proton began as a 2014 crowdfunding campaign.