If we take the EFF wordlist commonly used to generate passphrases, we have 7776 words. If we take ASCII alphanumerics and special characters we have about 92. Assuming we generate a NIST compliant password of 15 characters in length we get 92^15=2.8*10^29 of combinations. To get the same level of security (same number of combinations) using the EFF wordlist we need (log(2.8)+29)/log(7776)=29.45/3.9=7.6 around 8 words. If we assume the words are 7 characters long on average, plus the separators, we get 7*8+6=62 characters long. If we start to also include Unicode characters like other scripts or emojis (something I’ve recommended to others) the required number of words grows even more. I don’t know about you, but I can’t be bothered to type that all out every time, a password manager works for me.
If we take the EFF wordlist commonly used to generate passphrases, we have 7776 words. If we take ASCII alphanumerics and special characters we have about 92. Assuming we generate a NIST compliant password of 15 characters in length we get 92^15=2.8*10^29 of combinations. To get the same level of security (same number of combinations) using the EFF wordlist we need (log(2.8)+29)/log(7776)=29.45/3.9=7.6 around 8 words. If we assume the words are 7 characters long on average, plus the separators, we get 7*8+6=62 characters long. If we start to also include Unicode characters like other scripts or emojis (something I’ve recommended to others) the required number of words grows even more. I don’t know about you, but I can’t be bothered to type that all out every time, a password manager works for me.