Proton Pass

Is Proton Pass safe?

Yes. Proton Pass encrypts each password, note and web address on your device before it syncs, Proton says it cannot read any of it, and the apps are open source with two published audits. Its App Store label is about as short as they get: crash and diagnostic data, not linked to you. We score it 89/100, one point above Bitwarden (88) and above 1Password (86). The main limits are small: alias addresses Proton can read, no export from the phone apps and no self-hosting.

What does Proton Pass encrypt end to end?

More than most password managers. Proton's security model, published in April 2023, gives each item its own 32-byte key, encrypts every field with AES-256-GCM, and locks item keys inside a vault key that is itself encrypted with your user key. That user key is protected with a bcrypt hash of your Proton password. Sign-in uses the Secure Remote Password protocol, so the password itself never reaches Proton's servers.

Proton's Pass privacy policy, last changed in July 2025, adds that "metadata is encrypted as well". That matters because many managers leave web addresses or item names readable. In the 2026 ETH Zurich study of what a malicious server could do to cloud password managers, Bitwarden, LastPass, Dashlane and 1Password were tested; Proton Pass was not, so there is no matching outside test of those claims yet.

Feature by feature, the picture looks like this:

What the audits say

Cure53, a German security firm that Proton says has extensive experience with password managers and browser extensions, examined all the Proton Pass mobile apps, the browser extensions and the API in May and June 2023. Proton published the report on 19 July 2023 when it opened the source code. Cure53 found what Proton calls "a moderate number of findings", most of limited severity. Proton fixed all of them except one medium-severity Android issue that it said depended on a platform limit.

A second audit followed in 2026. Recurity Labs, an ISO 27001-certified German firm, reviewed source code for nearly all Pass components and tested the desktop and mobile apps, the Chrome, Firefox and Safari extensions and the command-line tool between January and April 2026. Proton published the report on 12 May 2026. Recurity called the overall security posture "well above par" and found no remote exploits and no way around the encryption. The one medium-severity issue, leftover account data on Android after sign-out, was fixed during the retest. Some low-severity findings stayed open, including usernames stored in plain text in the Android app's local database and weaker-than-ideal Keychain settings on iOS, according to CyberInsider's reading of the report.

In July 2025 Proton received its first SOC 2 Type II attestation from the auditing firm Schellman. That report checks how Proton runs its infrastructure, not the cryptography in the Pass apps. Proton also runs its own bug bounty program, and we found no CVE filed against Proton Pass in the US vulnerability database and no reported breach.

Can you get your data out?

Yes, with a better option than most. Proton Pass exports a ZIP containing a PGP-encrypted JSON file, an unencrypted ZIP, or a CSV. The encrypted export is the one to keep as a backup, since a plain CSV on a laptop is a list of every password you own. Exports only work from the web app, the browser extensions and the Windows app; Proton says the iPhone and Android apps cannot export.

How to use Proton Pass safely

1. Use a long, unique Proton password and add a security key or authenticator code to the Proton account itself. That account is the lock on everything.
2. Set up account recovery (a recovery phraseSeed phraseA list of 12 to 24 words that can restore a crypto wallet and all its funds. Anyone who has it controls the wallet.More in the glossary or recovery email). Proton cannot reset your vault without it.
3. Choose the PGP-encrypted format for backups, and delete any CSV export once the import elsewhere is done.
4. Give each shopping or newsletter site its own hide-my-email alias. When one leaks, you can switch it off without changing your real address, but remember Proton can see the aliases.
5. Keep your codes for the Proton account itself somewhere other than Proton Pass, such as the separate Proton Authenticator app or a hardware key, so one lost password does not lock you out of both.

How we scored it

Regulatory record (95) and privacy (90) are the strongest factors: no fines, and a label with almost nothing on it. Security (88) is held back only by a few open low-severity audit findings. Scams and harmful content (86) matches the other password managers we score, where phishing for the main password is the real risk. Coming from an authenticator such as Authy, which cannot export, Pass can hold your new codes, but you will still have to re-enrol each site.