Aura Password Manager Review 2024: Worth the Money?

Aura’s password manager is simple but secure. Though it lacks some features you’d expect to see in a top password manager, it comes as a part of Aura’s comprehensive cybersecurity packages. It uses strong encryption and is beginner-friendly, but while it certainly isn’t the worst password manager, I hesitate to call it fully-featured.

There are things I really like about Aura’s password manager. For example, you can create email aliases for each of your accounts, block trackers using the browser extension, and create unique passwords with its password generator. Plus, you can use it to save information like insurance documents, medical information, credit cards, and more.

However, it lacks industry-standard features like advanced 2FA options and doesn’t support passkeys or biometric logins. The password auto-filler was also pretty buggy in my tests, inconsistently filling in passwords correctly and sometimes getting stuck in the middle of my screen, blocking the page until I hit refresh. It just isn’t quite as good as our top picks.

Aura’s strength comes from the range of cybersecurity products you get with one purchase. It includes an antivirus suite, a VPN, parental controls, and identity monitoring and insurance, in addition to the password manager.

Overall, Aura password manager does some things really well, but it’s fairly basic. Its plans aren’t the cheapest either, but since the password manager comes as a small part of a whole security suite and has a generous 60-day money-back guarantee, you can always try it out and make sure it works for you before committing.

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Aura Password Manager Full Review

Aura password manager is great at basic password management, but not much more. It’s not all bad; I really like the email alias feature and the range of forms you can save, but it lacks anything that sets it apart. That said, it comes packaged with top-notch fraud monitoring identity theft protection tools.

Aura offers 14-day free trials for all of its plans, each of which includes a VPN, an antivirus, and identity theft monitoring as well as the password manager. It has its flaws, but Aura does offer comprehensive protection. It also backs its products with a risk-free 60-day money-back guarantee.

Aura Security Features

Aura password manager uses powerful 256-bit AES encryption to keep your passwords secure in your vault. Virtually uncrackable, this is the same level of encryption used by militaries and banks around the world. Essentially, all of your data is protected by a layer of unreadable code that even a supercomputer couldn’t crack.

Aura isn’t a standalone password manager; your subscription gives you access to its entire security suite. This includes:

• Email alias creation.
• Identity theft protection and insurance (US customers only).
• Credit monitoring
• VPN (separate app).
• Antivirus (separate app).

The password manager part of the package has all the basic features you need to keep your passwords safe and accessible. It keeps your data stored in a secure vault and provides password monitoring to check your credentials against breaches. There’s also a password generator and auto-fill function.

It’s easy to auto-fill your passwords using the browser extension or mobile app. Whenever you log into a new website, Aura will offer to save your credentials. In the future, it will automatically fill your username and password to that website. I did run into a bug where it would occasionally leave a box in the middle of my screen, but refreshing always fixed the issue.

Aura’s 2FA could use a bit of improvement. I set up 2FA with my mobile phone, but it lacked advanced options like biometrics, hardware tokens, or QR codes. Top competitors like Norton Password Manager include multiple 2FA options to customize your security.

Overall, though, if you’re looking for an easy-to-use password manager it’s pretty good. It’s not the best, but Aura’s entire cybersecurity kit does contain everything you’d need in one plan.

Password Vault

I found it pretty easy to start adding new entries to Aura right after making my account. My favorite aspect of Aura’s vault is that it integrates email aliases and password generation into the process of saving an entry. Even if it’s your first time using a password manager, you can create and manage strong passwords without any hassle.

The password manager’s vault can store all different kinds of information. On top of passwords, you can save all sorts of information, including but not limited to:

• Passwords.
• Credit cards.
• Wills.
• Insurance information.
• Driver’s licenses.
• Birth certificates.
• Court documents.
• Divorce agreements.

I’d like to see multiple vaults added to Aura. It would make managing a large volume of sensitive information much easier. Customizable entries would be great too — while you can leave a custom description, you can’t create custom fields or alter document layouts. I like how you get 1 GB of secure file storage, but this is pretty standard in a password manager (and some, like NordPass, offer more storage).

Overall, Aura presents an intuitive and beginner-friendly password vault that can store a ton of information. It has a few drawbacks, like a lack of customizable entries, but its vault is still one of its strongest points.

Password Generator

Aura’s password generator is easy to use and pops up whenever you’re making a new password on any website (provided you’re using the browser extension or phone app). It will create a strong but random password in a single click and auto-save it for you.

However, unlike most password generators, there are no customization options. Competitors like 1Password let you set password lengths and give you the option to include or exclude specific symbols and numbers, or even generate phrases with real words. Aura simply generates a totally random password each time you click the button. It’s nowhere near as customizable as any of our top password managers’ generators.

Email Alias

Aura allows you to create email aliases to mask your identity. When you add an entry for a website, you can set your email address to be a randomly generated alias. Aura will then forward emails to your main mailbox, making it so the website doesn’t actually know your real email address.

You can still get updates and confirmation links while protecting yourself with an extra layer of privacy. Using an alias helps filter spam mail and stops you from having to explain why you’re getting emails from an embarrassing website. If spam does become a problem, you can delete the alias to stop mail forwarding to your actual address.
Whenever you create a new entry, it will offer to give you an email alias. Alternatively, for services you already use, you can set an email alias by clicking on the three squares to the right of your password and then on Edit details. From there, you’ll get the option to set an email alias.

Password Monitoring

Aura’s password monitoring is simple but decent. As soon as you log in and go to your vault, you’ll see Aura monitoring your password in real time. It scans the web to check for any data brokers posting your information online, and even shows you which specific brokerages have your information and tells you how to take steps to get this taken down.

I especially like that it displays all this information front and center, so you’re always aware if there’s any suspicious activity with your password. Aura found my information on several brokers and alerted me immediately.

Anti-Fraud Protection

Where Aura shines is in its anti-fraud protection. Note that some of these tools are only available to customers in the US. It offers quite a few services in one subscription, including:

• Identity theft insurance. Each adult gets up to $1 million in identity theft insurance in case their identity is stolen.
• Breach monitoring. You’ll be notified if your SSN, online accounts, or personally identifiable information (PII) has been breached and appears on the dark web.
• Identity monitoring. You’ll be alerted if your identity has been stolen by criminals or is being used for risky purchases, like payday loans.
• Home and auto title monitoring. Watches your titles for any signs of fraud, alerting you if it sees anything suspicious or if your titles change.
• White glove fraud resolution. The resolution team will guide you through any problems you’re experiencing while working with you directly.
• Lost wallet remediation. The support team will help you come up with a plan if you’ve lost your wallet.

The Individual plan comes with up to $1 million of coverage, the Couple plan offers up to $2 million, and the Family plan comes with up to $5 million. The Family plan also comes with child identity protection, SSN alerts, and 3B credit freeze.

Overall, the anti-fraud insurance is great. It offers one of the most complete identity monitoring and recovery services on the market and will immediately alert you whenever it finds anything amiss.

VPN

Aura’s VPN is a good tool for protecting your identity and blocking malicious websites. Unfortunately, it’s missing industry-standard features like a kill switch for automatically turning off your connection. Even worse, there’s no way to change your location by connecting to a server in another country.

It has a few good qualities — I only had a 3% drop in speed during my tests, making it a very fast VPN. It also allows P2P torrenting at pretty fast speeds, but without a kill switch, you run the risk of your ISP seeing what you’re torrenting.

I was able to log into my Netflix and Amazon Prime accounts and stream without buffering, but I couldn’t log into Hulu or Disney+.

Overall Aura’s VPN is fast and ok for streaming, but it’s missing vital security features and doesn’t hold up to the best standalone options like ExpressVPN.

Antivirus

Aura’s plan also comes with a decent antivirus with good malware detection rates. It managed to score an impressive, but not quite flawless, 98% malware detection rating in my tests. You can run full scans, quick scans, or custom scans, but it’s notably lacking the ability to schedule scans.

its real-time protection didn’t fare so well. Not only was it unable to catch as much malware as the scanner, but it gave me a false positive during my testing. What’s more, its browser extension glitched, blocking me from reading the false positive alert it gave me about a game on Steam.

Aura’s antivirus uses a massive malware database, but it lacks the machine learning and heuristic analysis that top antiviruses like Norton use.

Still, while I’m being harsh, it scored a higher malware detection rating than Windows’s built-in antivirus. Plus, unlike a lot of cybersecurity companies, the antivirus comes as part of a comprehensive package with a VPN and password manager (both of which are also somewhat limited).

Aura Plans & Pricing

You can get Aura’s cybersecurity kit by subscribing to 1 of 3 plans:

• Individual.
• Couple.
• Family.

The main differences between plans are the number of licenses and the amount of fraud insurance you get. Each plan gives you the option to choose between monthly or yearly subscriptions. You can use the 14-day trial to try out any plan. Plus, there’s a pretty generous 60-day money-back guarantee, so you have plenty of time to get a refund if it doesn’t work for you.

The plans are a little pricey, but they offer a lot of value. Each of Aura’s plans includes the password manager, the antivirus, the VPN, parental controls, identity theft monitoring, and more, making up a comprehensive security suite. However, if you’re just looking for a password manager, frankly, there are better and cheaper options out there.

Here’s an overview of Aura’s plans:

Aura Individual — Includes Every Aura Feature

Aura’s cheapest plan is the Individual plan ($12.00 / month). It includes every main security feature offered by Aura and 1 GB of vault storage.

The Individual plan comes with:

• Password manager.
• Antivirus.
• VPN.
• $1M identity theft insurance.
• 10 device licenses.

I won’t lie, it’s a lot more expensive than any of our top standalone password managers. It’s important to consider whether or not you need a full security suite or a standalone password manager. Aura is simply overpriced if you just need a good place to store passwords.

Aura Couple — Slight Discount for 2 Users

The Couple plan comes with everything the Individual plan comes with but for two adults. There are a few minor differences though.

The Couple plan also includes:

• 2 GB of vault storage.
• $2 million in identity theft insurance ($1 million per adult).
• 20 device licenses (10 per adult).

The Couple plan costs $22.00 / month, which is only very slightly less than buying two individual plans. That’s hardly a deal in my opinion, but it is technically cheaper than buying two individual plans.

Aura Family — Best-Value Plan

The Family plan is the best-value plan — it costs $32.00 / month and comes with the most extra features.

On top of everything included in earlier plans, it comes with:

• 5 GB of vault storage.
• $5 million in identity theft insurance ($1 million per adult).
• 50 device licenses (10 per adult).
• Unlimited accounts for kids.
• Parental controls.
• Child identity protection.
• Spam call and message protection.

The family plan is also the most cost-effective option. It offers a much better deal than the Couple plan does, especially considering you can make unlimited accounts for your kids. That said, it’s still pretty pricey, and you need to make sure you’ll take advantage of all, or at least most, of Aura’s features for it to be worth it.

Aura Ease of Use

Aura is very easy to set up and use. Since the password manager is 100% web-based, you only need to purchase a license and you can use it from any browser of your choice. It has extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

The web app is likewise super straightforward. You can manage your vault and all of your stored information without requiring any downloads. The only feature that the web app is missing is password auto-fill on websites.

All of Aura’s apps can be set up within a few minutes — just know that if you’re on a computer, you’ll need to download a separate app to use the antivirus and VPN that come bundled with the password manager. It only took me a few minutes to install; during installation, it will run you through a few basic setup questions, but nothing complex.

One thing I found a little tricky was getting used to all of the apps. For example, I could save passwords and auto-fill on websites with the extension, but I needed the web app to save documents and take full advantage of the password manager.

Fortunately, Aura condenses all of its features into one app on mobile. However, since the parental controls are only available on mobile and there’s no password manager in the desktop app, I was constantly bouncing between 4 different apps on multiple devices to test all of Aura’s features.

No app or feature was hard to use or very complicated. In fact, they were each very easy to use and had intuitively designed interfaces. I’d just like to see the features less fragmented across so many apps.

One unintuitive part of the app was the lack of automatic password importing. If you’re trying to swap password managers, you’ll have to manually format and import a .CSV file. Most password managers make important and exporting passwords much more simple.

I had some minor problems with the extension, too. It would occasionally freeze in the middle of my screen. I found this happened most if I ignored its attempt to auto-fill a password on a website — whenever this happened I simply refreshed my screen and it was solved.

Overall, the apps have intuitive interfaces and are beginner-friendly, but I wish the features weren’t spread out across 4 different apps. Some of the features were a little buggy, but it was usually just a case of Aura being too strict, rather than being unsafe. The password manager is easy to use, but you may experience a few visual bugs with the browser extension.

Mobile App

The mobile app is easily Aura’s best app. Unlike its PC and Mac counterparts, every feature is available in one place. You don’t need the browser extension for auto-fill, the web app to manage complex forms, or a second app to use the antivirus and VPN. Instead, you can simply download the app from your phone’s app store and everything’s there.

To get to your password manager, click on the Vault logo in the bottom right corner — I’m using the Android version for my example, so just note that it may be in a different spot on iOS.

From there, you can manage your passwords and add new entries. You can also add new documents, like wills, proof of purchase statements, and more. The password monitoring service, password generator, and email aliases all work on mobile as well.

The mobile app is also the only app that includes every feature, including the password manager, the antivirus, the VPN, and the parental controls in one place. I didn’t experience any of the problems I encountered on the Windows version of Aura on mobile either. It was bug-free and user-friendly.

It’s still pretty basic, but the mobile app is the most convenient way to use Aura. The only drawback is that it only opens websites in your mobile browser, not apps (there’s also no dark mode for my poor eyes, but that’s a relatively small gripe).

Aura Customer Support

I found Aura’s customer support to be fairly good, but there are a few areas where things could be improved. I liked that the support channels are all free — you don’t need a subscription to ask customer support a few questions. There’s also an FAQ and a substantial Help section.

I’ll start by saying that the Help section was well-designed and the FAQ section offered dozens of extensive answers to questions regarding billing, features, apps, and Aura’s products. It was pretty good, but I’d like to see product manuals included somewhere to research more specific questions.

I shot their email support a question, asking a fairly basic question about whether or not they offered passkey support, but instead of answering, I was sent an email instructing me to call their support team. It felt a little bit unintuitive, but after calling the help number, I was able to get my question answered.

Phone support was more helpful, but it took a long time. It’s available 24/7, but I was on hold for nearly an hour before finally being able to ask my questions. It felt like the email support team could have answered the question much more efficiently, without me having to wait on hold for so long.

Another drawback is that support is only available in English. Since Aura is US-based, I’d like to at least see customer support channels for Spanish-speaking users.

Overall, Aura’s customer support is a bit mixed. I really like the FAQ and I always appreciate 24/7 phone support, but I didn’t like that the email support immediately directed me to the phone support instead of answering my question.

Is Aura Password Manager Worth the Cost?

It depends on what you’re looking for. The password manager itself is pretty basic and comes as a part of the overall suite (you can’t buy it separately). Though the password manager isn’t particularly full-featured, it’s safe, effective, and easy to use.

The family plan is pretty generous, too, allowing up to 50 devices across 5 adults and unlimited accounts for kids. You can share passwords between other users on your account easily enough and it’s pretty easy for a kid to pick up and start using.

The password manager isn’t the best out there, though. It’s missing a lot of extra features like advanced 2FA options, and it still hasn’t begun incorporating passkey support. I also had a bit of trouble with the auto-fill.

But, if you’re looking for a beginner-friendly password manager, it’s not too bad. Plus, it comes with a decent VPN and a reliable antivirus suite. I’d still recommend checking out one of our top picks for a more comprehensive password manager, but Aura’s full suite isn’t too bad if you consider every feature it adds.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Aura have a free trial?

Yes, Aura offers a 14-day free trial. You can choose any of the three plans you’d like and try out every one of Aura’s features, including the password manager. Plus, since it comes with a risk-free 60-day money-back guarantee, you can take your time testing it out and making sure it works for you.

Is Aura password manager good?

Yes, but it has some drawbacks. Aura includes a basic password manager in all of its plans. While it does safeguard your passwords using military-grade AES 256-bit encryption, it’s missing a lot of advanced features that would set it apart.

For example, you can only share passwords with other users on your account. There’s also no way to customize the password generator. Even the family vault has a limited amount of space. You probably won’t ever reach 5 GB of data, but the cap is still there. Our top pick, 1Password, comes with great password sharing, a customizable password generator, and more.

Does Aura password manager support passkeys?

Unfortunately, Aura doesn’t support passkeys yet. Passkey technology is being widely adopted by password managers and major tech companies like Google and Apple as a safer replacement for passwords. Competitors like Dashlane and 1Password are focusing on full passkey support, so I’d like to see Aura adopt a similar strategy.

What features does Aura password manager come with?

Aura’s password manager only comes with a handful of features, but the password manager is just one part of Aura’s overall security suite. It comes with basic 2FA, a password generator, email aliases for your logins, and an intuitively designed vault. I particularly like the password monitoring, which even helps remove your information from online brokerages.

The overall security suite comes with great anti-fraud protection, decent parental controls, and a good (but not great) antivirus suite. Overall, Aura is well-rounded and bundles every main security feature you’d need in one package.