But not everybody wants to use a password manager. In fact, a nationally representative survey of 2,000 people conducted by Consumer Reports in 2023 (PDF) found that only 35 percent of Americans use one of these services.
Security experts disagree on whether browser password managers offer the same level of robust security as stand-alone password managers, but one thing is clear: Both types of password managers make it easier for people to create and store unique passwords for each account.
That means if you don’t want to pay for a password manager or spend time setting one up, you can protect yourself by saving passwords directly in your browser and having it generate passwords for you—just like a standalone password manager would.
To see how browser password managers stack up against one another, CR’s security testers evaluated the password managers built into Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari. They also compared them with one of our top-rated standalone password managers, 1Password Families.
Here are answers to the most important questions.
