NQ Vault review: is NQ Vault safe, and is it worth paying for?

At a glance

What is NQ Vault?

NQ Vault is one of the first photo vaults. It arrived on the App Store in July 2012, and its store name today is “Vault - Hide photos & videos”. The seller is NQ Mobile Inc., and the website, lexing.tech, names Beijing Lexing Yingda Technology. On Google Play, Vault lists more than 100 million downloads under the name Wafer Co. On the App Store it runs on iPhone only.

You import photos and videos, and the app hides them behind its own passcode, apart from your Photos library. The model is freemium. The free version shows ads. Premium removes them and adds the cloud backup, break-in photos and a camera disguise.

How NQ Vault protects your photos

The App Store page promises “Space encryption” and a “personal digital password”. It names no cipher. Our read of the app package found one good sign. Changing the passcode re-encrypts every file: “Vault needs to re-encrypt all photos and videos”. That suggests the key depends on the passcode.

Other parts of the package are less reassuring. It allows plain HTTP and the old TLS 1.0 for one NQ domain. It also ships an App Store shared secret in a plain text file. Apple encrypts the app code, so we could not read more than that.

Lock, forgotten PIN and decoy

You set a passcode of 3 to 15 digits. Touch ID can open the vault, and the current package also asks for Face ID.

The forgotten-passcode story has two versions. At setup the app warns: “If it’s forgotten, you need to re-install the app and all data will be erased.” Its Google Play Q&A says that with a security email, a “Forgot Password” entrance shows after a wrong password. So set that email on day 1, or you have no way back.

You can make multiple vaults with different passwords, and the website says “one of them can be a fake vault.” Break-in Alerts, a Premium service, take a photo of the person who types a wrong password and log the code they typed. The alert also promises the place of the attempt. But the package has no location permission text, so that part cannot work. We found no erase code.

Backup and moving to a new phone

NQ Vault’s cloud is called Private Cloud Space. It is a Premium service and needs an NQ account, by email, Facebook or Apple. Premium includes 1024 GB. When Premium ends, “Cloud Backup space has been reset to 1GB.”

On a new phone you sign in and restore. Premium moves to the new phone through the NQ account. Our read of the package found that some account cases go to a Gmail support address. The free version has no backup.

Price and plans

Prices on the US App Store, checked October 8, 2026. The listing text and the purchase list do not agree:

• Listing text: 1 month $2.99, 3 months $7.99, 12 months $19.99
• VIP: $3.99 a month, $9.99 for 3 months, $19.99 a year
• Vault Premium: $2.99 for 1 month, $19.99 for 1 year
• One-off items: Premium Features $1.99, 3 in 1 Package $1.99, Gold 20 $1.99, SecureCam $0.99, Break-in attempts $0.99

The English text in the app package also holds prices in Chinese yuan: “CN¥18/Month” and “CN¥128/Year”.

Privacy label and ads

The App Store page says the app contains ads. Our read of the package found ad code from AdMob, Meta Audience Network and AppLovin. The ad slots sit in the photo, video and album lists. The privacy label lists Identifiers under “Data Used to Track You”. The app’s tracking prompt names “personalized ads”.

None of this says that NQ Vault looks at your photos. It says the free app runs on ads, which is fair to weigh when you choose a privacy app.

What users report

Our main review study had no NQ Vault reviews. So for this page we read the 150 most recent US reviews from Apple’s review feed on October 8, 2026. They run from April 2022 to September 2026, and 36 are from 2025 or later. 86 give 1 star. People with a problem write more reviews. So read the counts as a list of what can go wrong, not as a failure rate.

• Crashes, or the app will not open: 46 reviews, 9 of them from 2025 to 2026. “This app worked for a short time. Then it stop and all my pictures and videos are lost in the app.” (1★, July 2026).
• Support did not answer: 28 reviews. “I reached out to support And they have not contacted me.” (1★, June 2026).
• Sign-in, network or restore errors: 21 reviews. “The cloud shows 0 KB and no backup history.” (1★, September 2026).
• Locked out: 17 reviews. “Lost password = Lost account” (1★, February 2026).
• Lost files: 16 reviews, 7 of them from 2025 to 2026.
• Paid, but Premium did not work: 13 reviews. “It took them 30 seconds to withdraw their money but I’m still marked as Basic” (2★, June 2022).
• Videos that will not import or play: 7 reviews. Export that stalls: 4 reviews.
• Ads in the way: 3 reviews. “sometimes you have to watch a commercial be for it opens” (1★, August 2026).

Our NQ Vault alternative page read a longer sample of 313 reviews back to 2017, and it shows the same themes.

What NQ Vault does well

NQ Vault has kept some people’s photos for a decade or more. “Awesome app..been using it for 5 years now” (5★, March 2023). Another reviewer has used Vault for “about 13 years”. It still ships updates, with version 4.6.54 in August 2026. Its Vault Camera saves new photos straight into the vault, with no passcode needed to take them. It reminds you to empty “Recently Deleted” after import, which many apps forget. A face-down gesture closes the vault and opens another app, and Premium includes 1024 GB of cloud space.

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 security email. Backup of every item to your own iCloud, or Google Drive on Android, is free, and there is no sign-in to fail. The cover code, the erase code and wrong-code photos are free too. Viewing, export and Trash recovery stay free on every plan, and York Vault shows no ads. See York Vault vs NQ Vault for the full table, and the NQ Vault alternative page and moving guide 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 NQ Vault: which photo vault should you use?