Ledger vs Trezor
The two hardware wallets everyone compares, and a genuine philosophical split: broad support and closed firmware against narrower support and fully open firmware.
Both links below are affiliate links — what that means. It does not change what is written here; every entry carries a drawback for the same reason.
Short answer
You hold assets across many chains, or want the widest app integration. Nothing else supports as much.
Visit Ledger →You want to be able to verify what the device does. Trezor's firmware and hardware are open source, and after Ledger's 2023 Recover announcement that is not an abstract preference for everyone.
Visit Trezor →Side by side
| Ledger | Trezor | |
|---|---|---|
| Launched | 2014 | 2013 |
| Based / registered | France | Czech Republic |
| Who holds the assets | Self-custody — you hold the keys | Self-custody — you hold the keys |
| Identity verification | None | None |
| Available to US residents | Yes — sold worldwide | Yes — sold worldwide |
| Supports |
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What each one is actually good at
The widest asset and app support of any hardware wallet, and the only one many chains integrate with directly.
Worth knowing. Its firmware is not open source, and the 2023 Recover announcement — a key-sharding service — showed the device could be updated to do things owners had assumed impossible. A 2020 breach of its marketing database also exposed customer addresses, and those people are still being phished.
Fully open-source firmware and hardware design — the only way anyone outside the company can actually verify what the device does.
Worth knowing. Openness has a cost: some models are vulnerable to physical extraction if an attacker gets the device, which is exactly what a passphrase exists to defend against. Supports fewer assets than Ledger.
What do they cost?
Both are one-off hardware purchases, and both run several models at different prices. We do not reprint a price list — it would be wrong the next time either runs a sale — so here are the official shops:
Buy direct from the manufacturer, never from a marketplace listing. A hardware wallet bought second-hand or from a reseller can arrive pre-initialised with somebody else’s recovery phrase, and the coins leave the moment you fund it. How to choose one →
Before you commit
Availability changes. Regulators bar platforms, platforms withdraw from markets, and this page was last checked on 2026-08-05 — confirm on the platform’s own terms that it serves your country before you sign up.
And whichever you pick, the device is the easy half. The recovery phrase is what actually protects the coins — how to store one properly matters more than which brand you bought.