“Admin” has overtaken every other login credential in South Africa, becoming the country’s most common password over the past year.
The finding comes from NordPass, which has released its latest Top 200 Most Common Passwords report.
The study draws on public data breaches and dark web leak repositories collected between September 2024 and September 2025. The firm says the picture for South Africa is clear: weak choices remain the norm.
The most common passwords among South Africans
“In South Africa, ‘admin’ is the number one password, while ‘123456’ takes second place,” NordPass said, as per Mybroadband.
The company also noted that password quality is consistently poor across age groups.
Numeric strings such as “12345” and “123456” appear across every generation, while older users tend to include names in their passwords.
Generations Z and Y typically avoid names altogether, opting for entries such as “1234567890” or pop culture terms like “skibidi”.
Simple number sequences and familiar weak options such as “qwerty123” continue to dominate the top 20 list in many countries, including South Africa.
Here are the top 20 most common passwords in South Africa:
- admin
- 123456
- password
- Kenzo007
- 12345678
- 12345
- Password1
- P@ssw0rd
- sindy1
- Jassie21
- Scorpion1234
- macebo123
- Password
- saskia
- 123456789
- jagadira
- Dzunisani1
- Fifteen15!
- Password@1
- Knowledge1
‘Password’ not an ideal password
NordPass added that users continue to ignore clear security advice.
“Although cybersecurity experts keep repeating that simple passwords are extremely easy to guess using a dictionary and brute-force attacks, South Africans seem to ignore the warnings,” the company said.
The firm also highlighted a dramatic shift in local trends.
“Admin”, now the most common password, jumped from number twenty in last year’s rankings. At the same time, variations of the word “password” take up five of the top twenty spots, while numeric combinations make up four.
NordPass has produced this annual report for several years and says the patterns repeat themselves. Many people combine a first name or surname with a few numbers. While these rarely reach the top of the global rankings, the company says the trend is visible around the world.
