Comparison · 11 min read

The best document vault apps, and how to actually choose one

Ten apps people use to store passports and ID, sorted by what they are genuinely good at — including where each one falls down. Ours included.

Search for a vault app and you get a list of ten things that are not competitors. A photo hider, a password manager, a cloud drive with a locked folder, and a travel document organiser are four different products solving four different problems, and ranking them against each other produces nonsense. The first useful thing anyone can tell you is which of the four you actually need.

So this is a roundup organised by job rather than by score. Ten apps people genuinely use to store passports, ID cards and private files, grouped by what they are good at — with the trade-off each one asks you to accept, including ours.

First, work out which of the four you need

A photo vault hides pictures and videos from your gallery. Its job is privacy from people who pick up your phone. Most are not built around documents and do not do much with a PDF.

A password manager stores logins and syncs them everywhere, usually with browser autofill. Many will also hold file attachments, which makes them a plausible home for a passport scan — but attachments are generally a side feature rather than the point.

A cloud drive with a locked folder gives you a protected area inside storage you already pay for. Convenient, and your files are on somebody's server by design.

An offline document vault keeps identity documents on the device, encrypted, with no account. Narrow by design. Nothing syncs, which is either the feature or the dealbreaker depending on who you are.

Pick the category first. Almost every bad recommendation in this space comes from someone answering a question in the wrong category.

If you want documents on the device and nothing else

1. Travel Document Vault. Offline-first, AES-256 on the device, no account, and built specifically around travel — multiple travellers, passport and visa expiry tracking. If your problem is a family with four passports and a set of renewal dates you keep losing track of, this is aimed squarely at you. One-time purchase rather than a subscription.

2. DocVault. A straightforward offline document vault: passports, IDs, certificates and records, kept searchable on the device with no cloud component. Less travel-specific, more general filing.

3. Vaultaire. Local file encryption with no identity account required, and unusually clear public documentation about where its key boundaries sit. Worth a look if you like reading the security model before you commit, which is a habit more people should have.

4. Hasp Vault. Ours, so weigh accordingly. It holds documents, passwords, bank cards and notes behind one PIN, encrypted on the device with no account. It is deliberately four things in one lock rather than a document filer alone. It does not sync — see the honest bit below.

If your real problem is passwords, and documents are secondary

5. Bitwarden. Open source, audited, generous free tier, and it will hold file attachments on paid plans. If you want one tool for logins across every device and a place to tuck a passport scan, this is the sensible default and has been for years.

6. 1Password. Better designed than almost anything else in the category, handles document attachments properly, strong family sharing. Subscription only, and it wants an account — which is the point, because that account is what makes it work on your laptop.

7. Proton Pass. Worth naming separately because Proton's whole pitch is jurisdictional and structural privacy rather than just encryption, and some people care about that distinction. Pairs with Proton Drive if you want encrypted file storage from the same provider.

8. Enpass. The interesting middle. It stores its vault locally and lets you choose the sync target — your own cloud folder, or nothing at all. If you want desktop access without handing your vault to a vendor's servers, this is the design that does it.

If you already live inside an ecosystem

9. OneDrive Personal Vault. A protected area inside storage you may already pay for, unlocked with biometrics or a code, and Microsoft explicitly suggests it for passports and driving licences. Zero extra cost if you have Microsoft 365. Your documents are on Microsoft's servers, which is either fine or not depending on your threat model.

10. Apple Passwords and the Files app. Not a vault app, but genuinely underrated for this. Passwords is now a real app rather than a settings panel, and Files with iCloud gives you encrypted storage and Face ID on a folder. If you are entirely on Apple hardware and do not want another subscription, try this before you buy anything.

The seven things actually worth checking

Ignore the marketing and check these. They separate a serious app from a skin over a folder.

• Where is the key? "AES-256" tells you almost nothing on its own — it is the standard everyone uses. The question is what protects the key. Derived from your PIN, held in the phone's secure hardware, or sitting next to the data?
• What happens if you forget the PIN? If the vendor can reset it, they can open your vault. That may be a fair trade for you. Just know which trade you made.
• Is there a real export? An app that cannot give your documents back in a standard format has locked you in, not secured you.
• Does it survive the phone dying? Offline is great until the device goes in a river. If there is no backup, or backup is behind the paywall, that is the single most important line in the pricing table.
• Does the free tier cripple the wrong thing? Limits on item counts are fair. Limits on backup mean the free version can lose everything, which is a design choice worth noticing.
• Screenshot and app-switcher protection. Small, and it tells you whether anyone thought about the boring attack — someone glancing at your phone, or a screen recording running.
• What does the privacy policy actually say? Not the landing page. Analytics and crash reporting are normal and fine; a policy that contradicts the marketing is the warning sign.

The honest part about ours

Hasp Vault has a real limitation and you should hear it from us rather than discover it: there is no sync. Your vault lives on one phone. There is no account, so there is nothing to log into on a second device, and if you lose the phone without a backup file, the contents are gone. We cannot recover them, because we never had them.

That is a deliberate trade and it is wrong for plenty of people. If you want your passwords on a laptop, autofill in a browser, or a shared family vault, use Bitwarden or 1Password — genuinely, they are better tools for that job and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

What the trade buys is a smaller blast radius. There is no server holding everyone's documents, so there is no breach that includes yours. There is no account to phish, no password reset flow to socially engineer, and no vendor who can be compelled to hand over something they do not hold. Backup is a file you keep and control, and it is free rather than a paid tier, because losing everything should not be the thing you have to pay to avoid.

What we would actually tell a friend

If you need passwords everywhere: Bitwarden, or 1Password if you will pay for polish.

If you already pay for Microsoft 365 and just want a locked folder: use Personal Vault, you already own it.

If you are all-Apple and subscription-averse: try Apple Passwords and Files first, seriously, before spending anything.

If what you actually want is your ID, passport, licence and cards on one phone, encrypted, with no account and nothing uploaded anywhere — that is the narrow case we built for, and it is the case the big password managers handle least gracefully.