Storing passwords in 2026: bcrypt, scrypt or Argon2

Fast hash functions (MD5, SHA-1, SHA-256) are built to be fast. For passwords that’s a downside: a GPU tries billions of guesses per second.

What to use

• Argon2id: OWASP’s default recommendation. It needs memory, which hurts GPU cracking.
• scrypt: also memory-hard, a good choice if Argon2 isn’t available.
• bcrypt: battle-tested, but limited to 72 bytes of password.

What not to do

• Don’t invent your own “SHA-256 + salt + SHA-256 again” scheme.
• Don’t store passwords with reversible encryption.
• Don’t forget to raise the cost parameters as hardware gets faster.