A free password manager with no account, no cloud and nothing to install

KEYS is a vault kept in this browser's storage on this device, encrypted with your passphrase: AES-GCM, with the key derived by PBKDF2-HMAC-SHA256 at 600,000 rounds, which is the figure currently recommended for that function. There is no account, no server and no sync, so there is nobody to breach, nobody to bill you and nobody to ask if you forget the passphrase. That last one is not a detail. Plan for it before you put anything in.

What a password manager is, underneath

A list of sites, usernames and passwords, encrypted with a key derived from one passphrase. That is the whole mechanism. Everything else a paid manager sells you is around the edges of it: syncing the file between your devices, sharing entries with a family or a team, browser extensions that fill forms, apps on every platform, and someone to call.

Those are real things, and for a lot of people they are worth paying for. But it is worth being clear about which part is the security and which part is the convenience, because the marketing tends to blur them. The encryption is not better in the paid product. The logistics are.

What you get without an account

• Nothing to breach. A hosted vault is a very attractive target, and the ones that have been breached were breached at the company, not at the cryptography. A vault that exists only on your device is not in anybody's database.
• Nothing to install. Open a page. On a machine where you cannot install software, this is the difference between using a manager and using the same password twice.
• No subscription and no upsell.
• A generator that is part of it. Characters or words, with the length and the alphabet under your control, and the strength shown as you move the slider.
• A health check. It will tell you which entries share a password, which are weak, and which are duplicates, which is the single most useful thing any manager does, and the reason to put everything in rather than the ten you remember.
• An encrypted backup you hold. Export the vault as an encrypted file and put it somewhere you control.
• It locks itself. After an idle period you choose, it closes and needs the passphrase again.

What you give up

This is the part to read twice, because it is the part that decides whether this suits you.

• Sync. The vault is in this browser on this device. It does not appear on your phone. If you want the same passwords in both places, you are moving an encrypted backup by hand, or you want a manager with sync.
• Filling forms for you. There is no browser extension, so it is copy and paste. Less convenient, and worth naming: the friction is real and friction is what makes people give up on password managers.
• Sharing. No shared vaults, no family plan, no emergency access.
• Recovery. There is no reset link, because there is no account to send it to. Forget the passphrase and the vault is unreadable, by you and by everybody, which is the same property that makes it safe.
• Surviving the browser. Clearing site data, or a browser profile lost with a laptop, takes the vault with it. The encrypted backup is not optional. It is the plan.

Is this better than the browser's own password store?

Chrome, Safari and Firefox all offer to remember passwords, and for most people that is already better than reusing one. Two differences are worth knowing. The browser's store is usually protected by your operating system account rather than by a separate passphrase, so anyone at an unlocked machine can read the list. And it syncs to the browser maker's account by default, which may be exactly what you want or exactly what you are trying to avoid. A vault with its own passphrase, that locks on idle and syncs nowhere, is a different trade: stricter, less convenient.

Coming from 1Password, LastPass, Bitwarden or KeePass

Every one of them exports a CSV, and 1Password also exports a fuller .1pux file, which keeps every kind of item where its CSV keeps only logins and passwords (converting a .1pux says what survives the move). MIGRATOR reads those exports in the tab, converts between the formats, and audits what is in there for reused, weak and duplicate passwords on the way through. That last part is worth doing even if you are not moving anywhere.

One warning that applies whatever you are moving to: an export is a plain-text file with every password you own in it. Do not leave it in Downloads, do not email it to yourself, and delete it when the import is done (DEADBOLT if you were doing it on a machine that is not yours).

The other half of an account

A password is half of most logins now. The other half is the six-digit code, and the usual answer is an app tied to a phone and sometimes to an account. TOKEN generates those codes from the same secret your service showed you, on this device, with nothing to sign into. PWNCHECK tells you whether a password has appeared in a breach without sending the password anywhere, and PHRASE makes the one passphrase you do have to remember (the vault's) worth the encryption behind it.

Who this is not for

If you need the same passwords on a phone and a laptop, you want sync, and you should use a manager that has it: Bitwarden's free tier syncs, and KeePass with a file you sync yourself is a long-standing answer. Nothing here is served by pretending otherwise. This is for a vault on one machine, for somebody who would rather have no account than a convenient one.

The short version

The one risk you can do something about

The last row of that table is the one that keeps people on a service with an account: lose the passphrase and there is nobody to ask. It is the honest cost of having no company in the middle, and it is not quite the dead end it looks like.

SHARD splits a secret into several pieces using Shamir's scheme, with a threshold you choose: any three of five, say. Three pieces reconstruct the passphrase exactly; two reveal nothing at all, which is a mathematical statement rather than a promise about how hard it would be. Give one to a sibling, one to a solicitor, seal one in an envelope at home. No single holder can open anything, losing one costs you nothing, and you are not trusting any of them individually. It is the same arrangement a company uses for a root key, and it takes about five minutes.