1Password hurts Safari performance by up to 50%

amcleod

I ran a series of tests, to try to understand how 1Password for Safari impacts performance.

Conclusion

• The 1Password for safari extension hurts performance by up to 50%.
• In the best case, the performance penalty for using 1Password was "only" ~20%, but this quickly degrades over time.
• Locking or unlocking the extension makes little difference.

Description of Tests and Results

• Each sequence of tests begins with a freshly restarted Safari. 10 runs per test case
• Each sequence of tests consists of 10 runs through https://browserbench.org/Speedometer2.0/
• Wait 30 seconds between each run.
• Keep the focus on safari for the full duration of each run.

Sequence 1: Extension Disabled

• 1password for Safari is installed, but disabled in extension settings.
• Performance starts good and stays that way.
  extension_disabled = pd.Series([412, 424, 421, 423, 430, 422, 420, 421, 424, 421])

Sequence 2: Extension Locked

• 1password for Safari is enabled, but locked.
  extension_locked = pd.Series([343, 360, 351, 225, 196, 187, 189, 197, 201, 183])

Sequence 3: Extension Unlocked

• 1password for Safari is enabled and unlocked.
  extension_unlocked = pd.Series([344, 320, 249, 169, 206, 188, 192, 205, 193])

Sequence 4: Extension Unlocked - Restart browser between runs

• 1password for Safari is enabled and unlocked. Restart Safari between each test.
  fresh_browser_each_run = pd.Series([355, 335, 333, 348, 340, 337, 346, 361, 356, 340])

Question

Did I mess up these tests, or is it really this bad for performance?

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1Password Version: 8.10.20
Extension Version: 12.17.1
OS Version: macOS 14.1.1
Browser: Safari 17.1