A random 10-character password is a modest step up from 8, but still below modern recommendations. With all 94 printable characters it has about 66 bits of entropy. Use the generator above — it opens at 10 characters, and you can still adjust the length if a site needs something different.
Where 10-character passwords are common
Ten characters shows up as a maximum on some government and university systems, older ERP software and certain gaming platforms, and as a minimum in many corporate policies written around 2015–2020. Two extra characters over the old 8-character standard multiply the search space by 94² = 8,836.
That still leaves a random 10-character password at about 66 bits — strong against online guessing, but within reach of a determined offline attacker if the service stored it with a fast hash. If the form allows more, move up to 12 or 16 characters.
Making the most of 10 characters
- Keep symbols on — they add more entropy per character than anything else.
- Avoid recognisable fragments like names or years; randomness is the whole point.
- Enable MFA on the account wherever possible.
How strong is a 10-character password?
The table shows how many different 10-character passwords exist for each character set, and how long an offline attacker testing 100 billion guesses per second (a multi-GPU rig against a fast hash such as MD5 or NTLM) would need on average to find a randomly generated one.
| Character set | Possible passwords | Entropy | Average time to crack |
|---|---|---|---|
| Numbers only (0–9) | 1.0 × 1010 | 33 bits | instantly |
| Lowercase letters | 1.4 × 1014 | 47 bits | about 12 minutes |
| Letters (A–Z, a–z) | 1.4 × 1017 | 57 bits | about 8 days |
| Letters + numbers | 8.4 × 1017 | 60 bits | about 49 days |
| All printable characters | 5.4 × 1019 | 66 bits | about 9 years |
These figures assume the password is truly random. A 10-character password built from a word, a name or a date can be cracked in a tiny fraction of this time. Check any password with the strength checker.
Other password lengths
- 8 characters
- 10 characters
- 12 characters
- 14 characters
- 15 characters
- 16 characters
- 20 characters
- 24 characters
- 32 characters
- 64 characters
Last updated: · Reviewed by the Password Generator team