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Dashlane to Delete Its Free Tier of Service

The password manager service is giving free users until Sept. 16 to choose between upgrading to a paid tier or switching to a competitor.

 & Rob Pegoraro Contributor

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People who have stayed with Dashlane’s free password-management option even after a serious cutback of its features two years ago are getting a new and final reason to consider paying: The company is dropping the free tier entirely.

"As we continue to focus on rapid innovation and stronger protection against emerging threats, Dashlane is streamlining our consumer plans and discontinuing the Free plan on September 16, 2025,” the company announced in a blog post. “This enables us to increase investment in new technology and advanced security features to defend customers’ data from threats like breaches and AI-powered phishing.”

That post says Dashlane is giving all of its free users a free trial of Dashlane Premium until Sept. 16. Typically, a paid account costs $59.88 a year for solo use or $89.88 a year on a friends-and-family plan covering up to 10 users. Dashlane is teasing an "exclusive discount" on a paid plan that will kick in after Sept. 16 if you sign up for a paid account before then. A spokesperson said that deal could be as much as 50% off, but didn't give specifics.

The individual and family plans place no limits on the number of logins you can save or the number of devices on an account. The free plan has been limited to 25 saved passwords on a single device since October 2023. Paid plans also include VPN service, although the family tier reserves that perk for the plan manager. 

Free users who haven’t upgraded by Sept. 16 will not be able to edit or view their saved passwords, just export them as a CSV file for use in another password manager. The company didn’t say how many users are on its free plan. 

But if they’ve saved any passkeys, they will be out of luck because developers are still working on an open standard for passkey portability. In that scenario, you’ll need to create new passkeys to replace those saved in Dashlane, which has been an enthusiastic supporter of that highly secure, passwordless authentication.  

Among password managers, free services without major restrictions on usage or features has become increasingly hard to find. But our current picks for free password managersProton Pass, LogMeOnce, and Bitwarden—don’t limit how many passwords you can save or how many devices you can use with one account.

Apple and Google also offer their own free password-management apps, although each company’s offering assumes you will only use its own mobile platform.

The only really bad choice when forced to migrate from a discontinued free password manager is abandoning password managers entirely. They remain your safest choice for organizing saved logins, because they will warn you about weak and reused passwords, most will alert you if you’re using a password that has been compromised in a data breach, and they will refuse to autofill your password on a lookalike phishing site.

About Our Expert

Rob Pegoraro

Rob Pegoraro

Contributor

Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.

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