No subscription is proof,
not a discount.
Vault apps charge $35–155 a year to store photos that never leave your phone. Caveau charges $19.99. Once. The difference isn't generosity — it's architecture.
The two tiers
$0forever
- Up to 250 photos & videos
- Full encryption strength — XChaCha20-Poly1305 and Argon2id, identical to paid. There is no "lite" cipher.
- Face ID unlock
- Printable recovery kit
- Inheritance setup — split your recovery key 2-of-3 among people you trust
- Encrypted portable backups & restore on a new iPhone
- Albums
- Encrypted video playback
- EXIF & GPS stripping when sharing
- One-tap full export — leave with everything, any time
$19.99one time. That's the whole model.
- Everything in Free
- Unlimited photos & videos
- Private AI search — find text and objects in your photos, entirely on-device
- People — automatic face grouping with naming
- Automatic Collections — documents, receipts, screenshots, favorites
- Every future update, included, forever
Purchased through the App Store, tied to your Apple Account, restorable on any new iPhone. Refunds are handled by Apple under their standard policy.
The math nobody asks you to do
Typical photo-vault apps charge a recurring subscription — commonly $35 to $155 per year — for storage and features that mostly run on your own device. Here is what that looks like over time.
| Caveau | Typical vault app | |
|---|---|---|
| Price model | $19.99, once | $35–155 / year, forever |
| Cost after 5 years | $19.99 | $175–775 and counting |
| Where your photos live | On your phone, encrypted | Often on their servers |
| Account required | None | Usually |
| If you stop paying | Nothing changes — it's yours | Features lock; sometimes access does too |
| If the company shuts down | App keeps working; open-source client; full export | Depends entirely on their goodwill |
| Can staff see your photos? | No — no servers, no keys, verifiable in code | You have to take their word for it |
Subscription range reflects common photo-vault apps on the App Store as of mid-2026. We don't name competitors; check any vault app's pricing page and its privacy label and do this table yourself.
Why "no subscription" is a security claim
A subscription is a business telling you what it needs from you every month. If a vault app needs recurring revenue, ask what the recurring cost is. Usually it's servers — and if there are servers, your photos (or keys, or metadata) are probably on them. The billing model quietly contradicts the privacy pitch.
Caveau stores and processes everything on your iPhone. There are no servers to run, so there is no recurring cost, so there is no subscription. The absence of a monthly charge isn't a promotion — it's evidence about the architecture. If we ever charged you monthly, you should ask what we started doing with your data.
Incentives matter too. A subscription business profits from dependence: the harder it is to leave, the better the retention curve. A one-time purchase flips that — we get paid when the product is worth $19.99 on its merits, and you keep your leverage: one-tap export, portable encrypted backups, a documented format, and an MIT-licensed client mean you can walk away whole on any day you choose.
Everything that keeps you safe or free to leave is permanently free: full encryption strength, the printable recovery kit, inheritance setup, and complete export. The $19.99 unlock buys capacity and intelligence — unlimited items, AI search, People, Collections — never your security.
One more promise, in writing: Caveau will never move to a subscription. Not a "founder's price," not a rental tier, not a cloud add-on that slowly becomes mandatory. If that ever changes, hold this page against us — the Wayback Machine works.
Twenty dollars, one time, and it's settled.
Start free with 250 items. Unlock everything when you're convinced.