Passkeys in Numbers: What the 2026 Data Shows
Passkeys went from niche to mainstream in a year. Five charts on adoption, sign-in success, speed and the workplace gap, from the FIDO Alliance's 2026 reports.
Passwords have been the weak point of online security for decades. Passkeys, which replace them with a cryptographic key stored on your device and unlocked by a fingerprint, face or PIN, have been promoted as the fix since 2022. In 2026 there’s finally enough data to see whether people actually use them.
The numbers below come from two FIDO Alliance reports: the State of Passkeys 2026 survey, published in May, and the Passkey Index 2026, published in October. FIDO is the industry body behind the passkey standard, so it has an interest in the results, but both reports publish their methods and sample sizes. We note their limits where they matter.
If you want to know how passkeys work, see our explainer, Passkeys Explained.
1. Most people now know what a passkey is
FIDO’s May survey asked 11,000 consumers across ten countries (the US, UK, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China and India) about passkeys.
Awareness is near universal; regular use is not
Share of consumers surveyed, April 2026
- Aware of passkeys
- Enabled at least one passkey
- Use passkeys regularly when offered
Source: FIDO Alliance, State of Passkeys 2026 (Sapio Research, n = 11,000, margin of error ±0.9 points).
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| Measure | Share |
|---|---|
| Aware of passkeys | 90% |
| Enabled at least one passkey | 75% |
| Use passkeys regularly when offered | 49% |
The drop from 90% to 49% is the story. Almost everyone has heard of passkeys and three in four have created one, but only about half use them as their normal way to sign in. Setting one up once, often when prompted by a big platform, doesn’t yet mean changing habits.
2. A third of sign-ins now use them
The Passkey Index measures behaviour rather than opinions: data from participating consumer services on how their users actually sign in.
Passkey share of successful sign-ins
At services participating in the FIDO Passkey Index
- 2025
- 2026
Source: FIDO Alliance, Passkey Index 2026. FIDO calls the year-on-year comparison directional because the set of participating services changed.
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| Year | Passkey share of sign-ins |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 26% |
| 2026 | 36% |
More than one in three successful sign-ins at these services now use a passkey. FIDO also estimates the number of passkeys in use worldwide at around 7 billion, up from the 5 billion it reported in May. That’s a modelled estimate rather than a count, but the direction is consistent across every measure.
3. Passkeys fail less often
One reason services push passkeys is that they simply work more reliably than typing a password and a one-time code.
Sign-in success rate
Share of sign-in attempts that succeed
- Passwords and traditional MFA
- Passkeys
- Success rate
Source: FIDO Alliance, Passkey Index 2026. "Traditional MFA" includes one-time codes sent by SMS.
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| Method | Success rate |
|---|---|
| Passwords and traditional MFA | 78% |
| Passkeys | 93% |
A 15-point gap is large. Every failed sign-in is a user who might give up, reset a password or call support. The same report found passkey sign-ins were about 2.8 times faster, saving roughly 27 seconds each time.
4. Having a passkey isn’t the same as using it
The Index also compares how many accounts have a passkey with how many sign-ins use one.
Enrolment vs. use
Across Passkey Index participants, 2026
- Accounts with a passkey
- Sign-ins using a passkey
Source: FIDO Alliance, Passkey Index 2026. At 8 of the 10 services reporting both figures, use trails enrolment.
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| Measure | Share |
|---|---|
| Accounts with a passkey | 38% |
| Sign-ins using a passkey | 36% |
The gap is narrow overall, but it’s there at most services. The likely reason is the fallback: almost every service still lets people sign in with a password, and many users reach for it out of habit or on devices where their passkey isn’t available.
5. Workplaces are behind consumers
FIDO’s survey of 1,400 decision-makers at organisations with 500 or more employees shows a sharper gap between ambition and reality.
Passkeys at work
Share of organisations surveyed, April 2026
- Want to be fully passwordless
- Deployed or deploying passkeys
- Still rely on phishable methods day to day
- Already fully passwordless
Source: FIDO Alliance, State of Passkeys 2026 workforce study (n = 1,400, margin of error ±2.6 points).
Show as table
| Measure | Share |
|---|---|
| Want to be fully passwordless | 82% |
| Deployed or deploying passkeys | 68% |
| Still rely on phishable methods day to day | 57% |
| Already fully passwordless | 28% |
Most organisations say passwordless is the goal and two-thirds are rolling passkeys out, yet more than half still depend on methods that can be phished for employees’ everyday sign-ins. Older internal systems, shared devices and staff without company phones all slow the change.
What the numbers add up to
Passkeys are no longer an experiment. Most people know about them, most have created one, and they now handle more than a third of sign-ins at the services that measure them, while failing less often and taking less time than passwords. The remaining problem is the password itself: as long as it stays available as a fallback, a large share of people keep using it, and the security benefit stays partial.
Sources
- FIDO Alliance, FIDO Alliance reports accelerating global passkey adoption on World Passkey Day 2026 (May 2026)
- Start With Identity, FIDO Passkey Index 2026: passkeys now carry 36% of sign-ins (October 2026)