A password made of several words, like violin-tadpole-reckless-hydrant-oyster. Longer than a password, easier to remember, and when a random process picks the words, very hard to guess.
A passphrase is a sequence of words used in place of a password. It usually has four to eight words, often joined by spaces or hyphens. Because it's longer than a typical password, it can hold far more randomness while staying easy to type and remember.
This is the part most explanations skip: a passphrase is only as strong as the process that chose its words. Try the toggle below.
That's why generators and dice matter. Picking uniformly from a known list turns strength into arithmetic: words × log2(list size). With the EFF's 7,776-word list, each word is worth 12.9 bits.
A crypto wallet's 12 or 24-word recovery phrase looks similar but is a different thing: the wallet generates it from its own random source using the BIP-39 standard, and it encodes your keys. Never generate a seed phrase on a website. Let the wallet or hardware device make it.
Next: see how passphrases compare with ordinary passwords in passphrase vs password, or browse passphrase examples.
A passphrase is a password made of several words, like "violin-tadpole-reckless-hydrant-oyster". It works like any password, but it is longer, easier to remember and, when the words are chosen at random, much harder to guess.
It is a kind of password. Any login box that accepts a long password accepts a passphrase. The difference is in how it is built: a sequence of words rather than a short mix of characters.
Often, yes. NIST SP 800-63B says verifiers should accept spaces. Some older systems reject them, so hyphens or dots are the safe choice.
The same idea in different places. On Wi-Fi it is the WPA network key. On Android and iOS a long alphanumeric screen lock can be a passphrase. In crypto wallets a "passphrase" can mean an optional extra word added to a seed phrase, which is different from the seed words the wallet generates.