Ledger vs Trezor: which hardware wallet should you buy?

Security architecture

Ledger: Secure Element, proprietary core OS

Every Ledger device stores your seed inside a Secure Element — the same class of tamper-resistant chip used in passports and payment cards. Physical attacks like voltage glitching, side-channel analysis or chip decapping are dramatically harder against an SE than against a general-purpose MCU. Ledger’s core device OS is proprietary, while some apps and components are open-source. You are trusting Ledger not to ship a malicious firmware update.

Trezor: distinguish legacy MCUs from Safe-series hardware

Trezor devices historically stored the seed on a general-purpose STM32 microcontroller. The advantage: every line of firmware is public and reproducibly built. The disadvantage: with the device in hand, researchers have repeatedly extracted seeds via voltage glitching (Kraken Security Labs on the One, and Unciphered on the Trezor T). Safe 3 and Safe 5 include an OPTIGA Secure Element; Safe 7 adds TROPIC01. These built-in protections change the threat model while retaining open-source firmware.

Security incident history

The incidents below involve different security layers: hardware extraction, leaked customer data, malicious dApp code and physical implants should not be conflated.

• Ledger (2020): e-commerce database breach leaked ~1M customer emails and ~270K physical addresses, kicking off years of targeted phishing and even wrench-attack threats. The devices themselves were not compromised.
• Ledger (2023): Connect Kit supply-chain attack drained ~$600K from dApp users via a compromised npm package — a software integration issue, not a device compromise.
• Ledger (October 2026): Ledger confirmed genuine devices modified to capture recovery phrases in its Southeast Asian distribution channel. Global loss estimates vary and are not confirmed by Ledger. Singapore Police issued an October 28 advisory describing at least two local cases since September 10; overlap remains unknown. Ledger response · Police advisory
• Ledger Recover (2023): optional key-shard backup service triggered a major community backlash over the principle that a firmware update could, in theory, expose the seed to third parties.
• Trezor One (2020): Kraken Security Labs demonstrated a voltage-glitching attack that extracts the seed in ~15 minutes with physical access.
• Trezor T (2023): Unciphered publicly extracted a seed from a Trezor T via physical voltage glitching.
• Trezor (2024–2025): a third-party support-portal breach exposed customer contact data; later support-form abuse delivered phishing through automated replies. This is separate from legacy physical extraction.
• Ledger (January 2026): Global-e commerce-data exposure was reported; this was not a disclosed device or seed compromise.

Full incident timeline for every brand →

Which one should you pick?