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Who owns your password manager? Companies, seats, and open code
The companies behind 1Password, Bitwarden, Keeper, and Proton Pass, their seats, who owns Proton, which apps are open source, and their CVE entries.
Key points
- Two of the four managers listed here belong to US companies, one to a Canadian one, and one to a Swiss one.
- Proton AG, the company behind Proton Pass, has had a non-profit foundation as its primary shareholder since June 2024.
- Bitwarden and Proton Pass publish their code, Keeper publishes part of it, and 1Password does not.
The companies
| Company | Seat | Open source | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1Password | AgileBits Inc. | Canada | no |
| Bitwarden | Bitwarden Inc. | United States | yes |
| Keeper | Keeper Security, Inc. | United States | partly |
| Proton Pass | Proton AG | Switzerland | yes |
Who owns Proton
On June 17, 2024, Proton announced that its founders had donated Proton shares to the non-profit Proton Foundation. Since then, the foundation has been “the primary shareholder of Proton,” and Proton AG operates under its supervision.
Why the seat matters
The seat decides which country’s laws apply to the company first. Because all four makers encrypt the vault on your device, a company can hand over only an encrypted vault. Data outside the vault, such as your email address or your billing details, is a different matter. Where the servers stand is shown in the guide Where are your passwords stored?.
Open code and audits
Open code lets anyone check how an app encrypts your data. It does not prove that the app is safe, but it makes hidden weaknesses harder to keep. All four makers also name outside checks:
| Audits and certifications the makers name | |
|---|---|
| 1Password | SOC 2 Type 2 and ISO 27001 |
| Bitwarden | regular audits by outside firms such as Cure53 |
| Keeper | ISO 27001, 27017, and 27018, and tests by firms such as NCC Group |
| Proton Pass | audits by Cure53 (2023) and Recurity Labs (2026) |
CVE entries
This archive counted the CVE entries, public records of security flaws, that concern each manager itself and were published since 2021:
| Tool | Own CVE entries since 2021 | Newest entry |
|---|---|---|
| 1Password | 8 | August 2024 |
| Bitwarden | 16 | October 2026 |
| Keeper | 1 | July 2023 |
| Proton Pass | 0 | – |
More entries do not simply mean less safety: widely used apps are examined more closely. What counts is how fast a maker fixes a flaw.
Next step
The page Password managers compared lists the four managers with their free plans, devices, and CVE entries.
The figures in this guide come from the archive and change with every data update. As of November 13, 2026.