For most UK mid-market IT teams the honest shortlist comes down to price at the plan that actually switches on single sign-on, not the headline "starting from" figure. 1Password Business includes SSO at $8.99 per user a month billed annually, with no upgrade needed. Bitwarden and Keeper only add SSO on their top tier, both priced at $6.00 per user a month (roughly £4.42 to £4.53 once converted), not on the cheaper plan most comparison tables quote.
Key pointers
- Check which tier actually includes SSO before comparing headline prices. Bitwarden Teams and Keeper Business do not include it; you need Bitwarden Enterprise or Keeper Enterprise.
- 1Password Business includes SSO without needing a further paid upgrade, at $8.99 per user a month billed annually, unlike Bitwarden and Keeper.
- 1Password bills in US dollars, Canadian dollars or euros only. There is no native pound price, so budget for a foreign exchange line on the invoice.
- Bitwarden's list prices are in US dollars too. Its own GB checkout converts and adds UK VAT at 20%; the Enterprise plan (needed for SSO) is $6.00 a month, shown as about £4.42 ex VAT, £5.30 with VAT, at the time this was checked.
- Ask Keeper for a written UK quote before budgeting. Its own pricing page does not display a number in static form, and the USD figures reported by third-party trackers are not confirmed by Keeper direct.
- For 40 users on a one-year annual contract, expect roughly £2,100 to £2,550 (Bitwarden Enterprise) up to about £3,260 (1Password Business, converted from USD).
- Bitwarden is the only one of the three that offers self-hosting, and only on its Enterprise plan, if data sovereignty matters more than a hosted SaaS vault.
- Confirm minimum seat counts and trial length with each vendor. 1Password Business has a 1-user minimum and a 14-day trial; ask the same question of Bitwarden and Keeper before signing.
What changes once SSO is the requirement
A small team can get away with a shared vault and a master password each. Once you are rolling out single sign-on, the decision is really about which identity provider integration you need, who administers it, and which plan tier the vendor has decided to put that feature behind. The three vendors do not even use the same protocol. 1Password's own setup guide states that Unlock with SSO "is only available using the OpenID Connect (OIDC) protocol", not SAML. Bitwarden supports either SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect. Keeper's feature table names SAML 2.0 specifically. Check which protocol your identity provider offers before assuming any of the three will simply plug in. 1Password bundles its OIDC-based SSO into Business, its standard paid plan, without a further upgrade. Bitwarden and Keeper treat SSO as a step-up feature, reserved for their top tier.
That distinction matters for budgeting. A UK IT manager who compares "Bitwarden from $4.00" against "1Password from $8.99" is not comparing like for like, because the Bitwarden number is for a plan that cannot do SSO at all. The plan that actually meets the brief is Bitwarden Enterprise at $6.00 a month, shown as about £4.42 on Bitwarden's own GB checkout, not Bitwarden Teams.
1Password Business, SSO without a tier upgrade
1Password's Business plan is $8.99 per user a month when billed annually, or $107.88 per user a year, and SSO is included from day one, not an add-on. 1Password's own setup guide confirms that Unlock with SSO uses the OpenID Connect protocol, with the admin setup covering Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Google Workspace, Duo, OneLogin and JumpCloud. Separately, SCIM-based user provisioning covers Google Workspace, JumpCloud, Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, OneLogin and Rippling, plus event streaming to SIEM tools such as Splunk and Elastic. Rippling can automate account creation this way, but is not a supported sign-in provider for Unlock with SSO itself. There is a 1-user minimum, a 14-day free trial, and 1Password's own support pages confirm that the displayed price excludes sales tax and VAT, with UK VAT added as a line item at checkout based on your billing address.
The catch for UK buyers is currency. 1Password does not publish a pound price. It bills in US dollars, Canadian dollars or euros, so a UK company either pays in USD (subject to card FX fees) or sets up EUR billing at €7.99 per user a month. At the GBP/USD rate of roughly 1.3250 reported by FXStreet on 29 September 2026, $8.99 works out at about £6.78 a month. That is an estimate for budgeting, not 1Password's own UK price, and it will move with the exchange rate.
For teams under 10 people that do not need SSO yet, 1Password also sells a Teams Starter Pack at $24.95 a month billed annually (about £18.83 estimated), covering up to 10 members as a flat fee rather than a per-seat charge.
Bitwarden, a USD list price with a converted GBP checkout, SSO only on Enterprise
Bitwarden publishes its business prices in US dollars, like the other two vendors here. The Teams plan is $4.00 per user a month billed annually. Bitwarden's own GB checkout, which uses Stripe to convert and add tax by billing country, showed this as about £2.95 ex VAT (£3.54 with UK VAT added at 20%) when checked on 29 September 2026. That converted figure moves with the exchange rate and is not a fixed pound list price. The Teams plan includes shared collections, an admin console, event logs and SCIM-based directory sync. What it does not include is SSO.
To get single sign-on with Bitwarden you need the Enterprise plan, at $6.00 per user a month billed annually, shown as about £4.42 ex VAT (£5.30 inc VAT) on the same GB checkout. Enterprise adds SAML 2.0 and OpenID Connect based SSO, granular access control, enterprise policies, and the option to self-host Bitwarden on your own infrastructure instead of Bitwarden's cloud. Bitwarden's own FAQ confirms that SSO authentication is handled by your identity provider while vault decryption stays local, preserving the product's zero-knowledge design even with SSO switched on. Bitwarden is open source, which some UK procurement teams weigh separately from price when assessing supply-chain transparency.
Keeper, SSO confirmed on Enterprise but the price needs a direct quote
Keeper's own pricing page sets out three tiers: Business Starter (capped at 5 to 10 users, no SSO), Business (adds shared team folders and delegated administration, still no SSO) and Enterprise (adds SCIM provisioning, Active Directory and LDAP sync, Entra ID and Okta integration, and SAML 2.0 single sign-on). The feature table is unambiguous that SSO sits in the Enterprise row alongside SCIM, not in Business.
What Keeper's page does not do, at least on the pages checked for this article, is show a number. The pricing widget did not render a figure in the page's static content, which is unusual among the three vendors compared here. A third-party pricing tracker, PAMCost, reports Keeper Business at $3.75 per user a month and Keeper Enterprise at $6.00 per user a month, both billed annually, with a note that "SSO is Enterprise-only" and that its figures were verified against Keeper's page on 26 June 2026. Converted at the same 1.3250 GBP/USD rate used above, that puts Keeper Enterprise at roughly £4.53 per user a month and Keeper Business at roughly £2.83. Treat both as estimates from a secondary source rather than Keeper's confirmed UK list price, and get a written quote before budgeting. One UK reseller comparison, Connection Technologies, lists Keeper "from £4.50" with SSO marked simply "Yes" without saying which tier that refers to, which is exactly the kind of tier confusion this article is trying to avoid.
Keeper also sells KeeperPAM, a privileged access management add-on covering session recording and secrets management, as a separate quote-only purchase on top of Business or Enterprise. It is not needed to get basic SSO working and should not be assumed as part of the Enterprise price above.
Monthly cost per user compared
| Vendor and plan | SSO included | Price per user a month | Billing basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1Password Business | Yes, no upgrade needed | $8.99 (about £6.78 estimated) | Annual commitment, billed in USD, EUR or CAD, VAT added at checkout |
| Bitwarden Teams | No | $4.00 (about £2.95 ex VAT, £3.54 inc VAT on Bitwarden's own GB checkout) | Annual commitment, billed in USD with GB checkout conversion |
| Bitwarden Enterprise | Yes | $6.00 (about £4.42 ex VAT, £5.30 inc VAT on Bitwarden's own GB checkout) | Annual commitment, billed in USD with GB checkout conversion |
| Keeper Business | No | About £2.83 estimated ($3.75, secondary source) | Annual commitment, confirm direct with Keeper |
| Keeper Enterprise | Yes | About £4.53 estimated ($6.00, secondary source) | Annual commitment, confirm direct with Keeper |
What a 40-user team would pay over a year
Assume a mid-market IT team of 40 users, all needing SSO, on annual billing. 1Password Business comes to $4,315.20 a year, which is about £3,256.75 at the 1.3250 exchange rate used above, though the actual charge on your card statement will be in US dollars. Bitwarden Enterprise comes to $2,880.00 a year (40 users at $6.00 a month), which Bitwarden's own GB checkout showed as about £2,121.47 ex VAT or £2,545.76 inc VAT when checked on 29 September 2026, again a converted figure rather than a fixed pound list price. Keeper Enterprise, based on the secondary-sourced $6.00 monthly figure, comes to the same $2,880.00 a year, roughly £2,173.58 once converted, an estimate pending a direct quote.
These are the SSO-capable tiers only. Swapping in the cheaper non-SSO plans, where they exist, saves money but does not meet the brief in the question this article answers.
Feature and support comparison
| Criterion | 1Password Business | Bitwarden Enterprise | Keeper Enterprise |
|---|---|---|---|
| SSO protocol | OpenID Connect only | SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect | SAML 2.0 |
| SSO identity providers | Okta, Entra ID, Google Workspace, Duo, OneLogin, JumpCloud | Any SAML 2.0 or OpenID Connect provider | Entra ID, Okta, Ping and other SAML 2.0 providers |
| Provisioning | SCIM (adds Rippling as a provider, SSO sign-in excluded) | SCIM | SCIM plus Active Directory and LDAP sync |
| Self-hosting option | No | Yes, Enterprise only | No |
| Open source | No | Yes | No |
| SIEM export | Splunk, Elastic, Sumo Logic, Panther | Not confirmed on the pages checked | Add-on, ARAM required |
| Certifications confirmed | SOC 2 Type II | Not confirmed on the pages checked | SOC 2 Type 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, 27017, 27018 |
| List price currency | USD, CAD or EUR | USD, converted on Bitwarden's own GB checkout | Not confirmed |
| Free trial | 14 days | Free trial available, length not confirmed | 14 days, per secondary source |
Where this table says "not confirmed", that is a genuine gap in what each vendor's own page states, not a claim that the feature is missing. Ask the vendor directly before ruling anything out.
Which one suits which UK mid-market business
If your organisation already runs Okta, Entra ID or Google Workspace and wants SSO switched on without stepping up a pricing tier, 1Password Business is the simplest fit, accepting that you will be billed in a foreign currency and that VAT is added separately. If cost control in pounds matters more, and you are comfortable that SSO means Bitwarden's Enterprise tier rather than its cheaper Teams plan, Bitwarden's own GB checkout gives you a VAT-clear pound figure to put in a budget, even though the underlying list price is in US dollars, and the option to self-host later if data sovereignty becomes a bigger issue. If your business is in a regulated sector and already values Keeper's certification set or its optional privileged access management add-on, Keeper Enterprise is worth a formal quote, but do not commit a budget line to it until Keeper itself confirms the price, since neither this article nor Keeper's own page could produce one in writing.
None of the three should be chosen on price alone. Confirm the identity provider integration works with your specific setup, ask each vendor for their current UK price in writing, and check whether Cyber Essentials or a cyber insurance renewal is the actual deadline driving the SSO project, since that affects how much slack you have to negotiate.
For a broader look at password management for smaller teams that are not yet at the SSO stage, see Compare the Cloud's help guide to password managers for small teams.
Sources
- 1Password Business and Teams pricing
- Set up 1Password Unlock with SSO
- Set up automated provisioning using 1Password SCIM Bridge
- About taxes for 1Password
- Bitwarden Business password manager pricing
- Keeper Enterprise Password Manager plans and pricing
- Keeper Business pricing 2026, PAMCost
- British Pound softens to near 1.3250, FXStreet, 29 September 2026
- Cyber Essentials, Requirements for IT Infrastructure v3.3, NCSC
- Best Password Managers for Business UK 2026, Connection Technologies
- Help Guide for Password Managers for Small Teams, Compare the Cloud
