Keepsafe review: is Keepsafe safe, and is it worth paying for?

At a glance

What is Keepsafe?

Keepsafe is one of the oldest photo vaults on the App Store. It arrived in April 2012, and on Google Play it lists more than 50 million installs. You import photos and videos, and the app hides them behind its own PIN or pattern, apart from your Photos library. It runs on iPhone, iPad and Android, and one account works on all of them.

The model is freemium. Basic is free and shows ads. Premium removes the ads and adds a larger backup, a decoy vault, album passwords, break-in photos and Trash recovery.

How Keepsafe protects your photos

Keepsafe says it protects files with 256-bit AES and that “all files are encrypted at rest.” That is real encryption, not just a hidden folder.

The open question is who holds the keys. Keepsafe’s help center says the app is “not currently designed as a completely zero-knowledge app.” In plain words, the design does not stop Keepsafe from reaching your files. You trust the company’s rules and staff, not only the math.

After too many wrong PINs in a row, Keepsafe makes you wait before you try again. That slows down someone who guesses.

Lock, forgotten PIN and decoy

You pick a PIN of 4 digits or more, or a pattern. Face ID or Touch ID can open the vault on top of that, and a fingerprint on Android.

If you forget the PIN, Keepsafe sends an access code to your verified email. For security it waits a few minutes before it sends the code. This is easy to use. It also means that anyone who can read your email can reset your PIN, after the wait.

The decoy vault, which Keepsafe calls Secondary Vault or Fake PIN, opens a second set of photos with a different PIN. It is a Premium feature. Album Lock and Break-In Alerts are Premium too. Secret Door, the fake app front, is only on Android, because Apple’s rules made Keepsafe remove it from iPhone.

Backup and moving to a new phone

Keepsafe backs up to its own cloud, which it calls Private Cloud. Basic backs up the first 200 items. Monthly and yearly Premium raise that to 10,000, and the old Lifetime plan to 100,000. On a new phone you log in with your email, and the backup downloads.

The limit matters more than it looks. Keepsafe’s help center says unsynced items are lost when you uninstall. So on the free plan, item 201 and later live only on your phone.

Price and plans

Prices on the US App Store, checked October 6, 2026:

• Keepsafe Monthly Premium: $9.99
• Keepsafe Premium: $12.99
• Keepsafe Yearly Premium: $23.99
• Keepsafe Premium: Cloud Hider: $35.99
• Older plans still listed: $4.99 and $5.99

New users get 30 days of complimentary Premium with no payment step. When it ends, you upgrade or switch to Basic. Our read of the app package found seven different win-back screens that offer a discount when you cancel.

Privacy label and ads

Keepsafe Basic is ad supported. Its App Store privacy label lists Usage Data under “Data Used to Track You”, and usage and advertising data under “Data Not Linked to You”. The app asks for tracking permission “to measure ad performance and show relevant ads to basic users.”

None of this says that Keepsafe looks at your photos. It says the free app runs an ad business, which is fair to weigh when you choose a privacy app.

What users report

We read 495 Keepsafe App Store reviews from the US, Canada and India. The sample leans negative, because half of it comes from Apple’s “most helpful” sort. Read the counts as a list of what can go wrong, not as a failure rate.

• Lost photos: 111 reviews, 45 of them from 2025 to 2026. Triggers named most: an update, a new phone and a reinstall. One reviewer wrote: “The first time I actually needed to restore my photos, I discovered that all of my pictures were gone.”
• A vault that will not open: 113 reviews describe crashes or an “Updating Keepsafe” screen that does not end.
• Paywall in front of stored files: 54 reviews describe a trial that ended, a downgrade that stalled, or paid Trash recovery.
• Support: 78 reviews say support did not help.
• Features removed in the 2025 redesign: 11 recent reviews name sorting, slideshow, Files import or paste.

What Keepsafe does well

Keepsafe has years of history and a large team. 24 reviews in our sample praise years of reliable use, or a clean move to a new phone. Reviewers also praise its face-down lock, which switches to another app when you put the phone down. Sync across iPhone and Android with one login is easy. Its 4.75 store average from more than 383,000 ratings shows that most people who rate it are happy.

York Vault as an alternative

York Vault is our own app, so read this part with that in mind. It needs no account. Each item is encrypted on your phone with its own key (AES-256-GCM), and we cannot open your files. A 12-word recovery key replaces the email reset. Backup of every item to your own iCloud, or Google Drive on Android, is free. So are the cover code, the erase code and wrong-code photos. Viewing, export and Trash recovery stay free on every plan. See York Vault vs Keepsafe for the full table, and the Keepsafe alternative page for how to export everything first.

Download York Vault on the App Store or Google Play.

Who it fits

Side by side with York Vault, row by row: York Vault vs Keepsafe: which photo vault should you use?