Heritkey vs. LastPass Emergency Access: what to know before you rely on it
· 4 min read
LastPass is still one of the most widely used password managers, and its Emergency Access feature lets a trusted person reach your vault if something happens to you. Here's how it works, what to weigh, and how Heritkey compares.
Emergency Access is included in LastPass Premium, Families and Plus plans, not in the free plan. Your contact needs to be a LastPass user. You decide whether they can get in right away or only after a waiting period, and access is granted if you don't deny the request in time. LastPass describes it as one-time access to your vault.
What to weigh
The 2022 breach. In December 2022, LastPass said an attacker had copied a backup of customer vault data. LastPass said the sensitive fields stayed encrypted with keys derived from each user's master password, so how exposed a vault is depends on the strength of that password.
Lock-in. Your heir must use LastPass, and you must keep paying for a plan that includes the feature.
Only the vault. Anything you keep elsewhere isn't part of the handover.
Side by side
LastPass Emergency Access
Heritkey
Included in the free plan
✗ Paid plans only
✓ Free for your heirs
Your heir can skip signing up to a password manager
If you stay with LastPass, set up Emergency Access, use a long master password and check who your contacts are. If you want a handover that doesn't depend on which password manager you or your heirs use, keep it in Heritkey. To compare every major password manager, see password manager emergency access compared.
LastPass's details come from its own website and blog as of October 2026. Heritkey is launching soon; its details describe how it's being built.