1Password vs Okta

1Password is a password manager for individuals, families and businesses, made by AgileBits, a company founded in 2005 in Toronto, Canada. It is known for a strong security track record, polished apps on every major platform and a design that makes good password habits easy for non-technical people.

1Password stores passwords, passkeys, credit cards, secure notes, documents, SSH keys and software licenses in encrypted vaults that can be shared with family members or colleagues. Data is protected by end-to-end encryption that combines your account password with a locally generated Secret Key. Watchtower flags weak, reused and breached credentials and sites that support passkeys or two-factor authentication, and Travel Mode hides selected vaults when crossing borders. For businesses, plans add SSO with Okta, Microsoft Entra ID and Google Workspace, admin policies, activity reporting, provisioning and free Families accounts for employees. Developer tools include a CLI, an SSH agent, Git commit signing and Secrets Automation for infrastructure. Extended Access Management, built partly on the 2024 acquisition of Kolide, adds device trust and discovery of unmanaged apps.

1Password fits households and companies that want strong security with excellent usability. There is no free plan, only a trial. Bitwarden is the leading open-source alternative with a free tier, Proton Pass suits privacy-focused users, and Dashlane and Keeper compete in the business market.

Okta is an identity and access management company founded in 2009 in San Francisco by Todd McKinnon and Frederic Kerrest. It went public in 2017 and bought Auth0 in 2021 for about $6.5 billion. Its core job on the workforce side is to give every employee one secure login to all their apps, enforce multi-factor authentication, and create or remove accounts automatically as people join, move or leave.

Workforce Identity is sold per user per month, billed annually, with a $1,500 annual minimum. Starter ($6) covers SSO, MFA and Universal Directory; Essentials ($17) adds Adaptive MFA, lifecycle management, access governance and privileged access, with Core Essentials ($14) in between; Professional and Enterprise add Device Access, Identity Threat Protection, Identity Security Posture Management and API Access Management. Customer Identity starts at $3,000 a month, and a free Integrator plan allows 10 users in a non-production org.

Okta fits companies running dozens of SaaS apps that need central access control, audits and fast offboarding. It falls short for very small teams because of the contract minimum, and add-ons push real costs above list prices. Microsoft Entra ID is the natural rival for Microsoft-heavy shops, Keycloak is a free self-hosted option, and 1Password covers password sharing rather than full IAM.

Recent development: Okta for AI Agents reached general availability on April 30, 2026, registering AI agents as non-human identities with managed tokens and kill switches. Okta also pushes the Cross App Access (XAA) protocol through the IETF.