Heirfolio vs. Vigil Protocol
Both products call themselves estate-planning platforms. Both target affluent households. Both ship a four-phase workflow and both publish a flat monthly price. They are the only two entities currently in our Estate / Inheritance Planning Platforms category, and they scored 89 and 72 respectively against the v1.0 methodology. Below is what separates them, dimension by dimension.
Scorecards at a glance
| Dimension | Max | Heirfolio | Vigil Protocol | Margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing Transparency | 15 | 14 | 13 | Heirfolio +1 |
| Payout / Cost | 15 | 12 | 6 | Heirfolio +6 |
| Trust Signals | 10 | 9 | 6 | Heirfolio +3 |
| Process Speed | 10 | 10 | 8 | Heirfolio +2 |
| Customer Support | 10 | 8 | 5 | Heirfolio +3 |
| Asset / Data Security | 10 | 9 | 9 | Tie |
| Reversibility & Flexibility | 10 | 8 | 7 | Heirfolio +1 |
| Inheritance Fit | 10 | 10 | 8 | Heirfolio +2 |
| Total (Estate Planning weights) | 100 | 89 | 72 | Heirfolio +17 |
The 17-point margin is the largest in our Estate Planning category, but it is also the only intra-category comparison currently in the index — both entities will be scored against any new platform we add as the category expands.
Pricing — Heirfolio 14, Vigil 13
Both publish flat prices. Vigil's exhibit is a single screen: $200 per month, month-to-month, cancel anytime, no AUM fee, single tier. We awarded 13 of 15 because the pricing page does not itemize what is included at $200 (document processing volume cap, storage cap, beneficiary count cap, referral-included count) — the reader must infer that "everything" means everything.
Heirfolio's exhibit is broader because Heirfolio has more surface to price. The Vault Pro subscription is published at $99/month. Heirfolio Labs orders show live spot price for gold and BTC refreshed every 60 seconds across the entire app; gold orders show spread, storage cost, and delivery cost broken out side by side; BTC orders surface the Onramp custody fee separately; auction listings via Worthy/Fortuna show the referral fee before commitment. The 60-second quote-lock mechanic on Labs orders eliminates the "ship first, find out later" asymmetry that characterizes mail-in operators in our cash-for-gold category. We deducted one point because the free tier vs. Vault Pro comparison is laid across multiple pricing pages rather than consolidated into a single side-by-side matrix.
By the rubric: Heirfolio's pricing surface is wider and more granular, but Vigil's pricing exhibit is conceptually cleaner. If you are buying a single-purpose product, Vigil's clarity is hard to fault. If you are buying a cross-asset platform, the surface Heirfolio prices is what you are paying for.
Payout / Cost — Heirfolio 12, Vigil 6
For Estate Planning entities, dimension 2 measures cost relative to feature set against category competitors.
At $2,400 per year flat, Vigil is materially more expensive than mass-market estate platforms (LegalZoom or Trust & Will run $150–$300 one-time) and comparable to lightweight family-office services. The differentiated feature is the AI document extraction and the four-phase Map/Audit/Monitor/Activate architecture. The lack of a free or trial tier means cost-versus-feature is judged against advertised functionality only.
Heirfolio Vault Pro at $99/month is half Vigil's price for a broader feature set. Heirfolio handles physical heirlooms, gold custody, and Bitcoin self-custody handoff that Vigil does not address at all. The free tier includes valuation, family read-only access, and the MAP phase of Heir Protocol, so cost-versus-feature is judgeable from actual platform behavior, not from marketing copy.
By the rubric: Heirfolio is cheaper per month and broader in scope, with a free tier that lets the user evaluate the platform before paying. Vigil's price-to-feature ratio is the most constrained position in the category.
Trust Signals — Heirfolio 9, Vigil 6
Both entities are under two years old, which suppresses the BBB-tenured and Trustpilot-volume sub-criteria for both.
Heirfolio's trust stack draws on third-party partnerships: Argo (Royal Canadian Mint custody), Onramp (BTC custody), Persona (KYC), Notarize.com, Clerk for authentication, Supabase for database, Cloudflare R2 for object storage. Each partnership represents a third-party diligence event the partner conducted on Heirfolio. State-licensing requirements for precious-metal dealing and money transmission are documented on a public compliance page. The executive team is named with LinkedIn-verifiable profiles. FedEx insured shipping coverage is published per shipment.
Vigil's trust signals are thinner. The security page makes strong claims (AES-256, passkey-only, internal AI processing) but no third-party audit is referenced. The team is identifiable on the About page. No BBB or Trustpilot widget is embedded. The backlink profile per Semrush is 18 low-authority domains plus one PRNewswire release — the PRNewswire link is the only press-grade citation. State licensing is not applicable to a software-only platform, which is a structural difference rather than a Vigil-specific weakness.
By the rubric: Heirfolio's trust signals are broader because the platform's partner stack creates more externally-verifiable touchpoints. Vigil's are concentrated in the security narrative the company tells about itself.
Process Speed — Heirfolio 10, Vigil 8
Heirfolio: sign-up to first useful output under five minutes via Clerk authentication (Google, Apple, email, passkey). AI photo valuation returns in under 60 seconds. Labs orders execute in under five minutes from quote acceptance. Heir Protocol document extraction returns a structured map within the same session.
Vigil: documented as same-day from upload to first audit output, but Vigil does not offer a free trial so we could not independently verify the same-day claim across the 30-day test window. We awarded 8 of 10 against the published SLA.
Customer Support — Heirfolio 8, Vigil 5
We sent three test inquiries to each entity over a 30-day window. For Heirfolio, all three responses came within two business hours from a named human; all three addressed the specific question; the live phone option (Twilio IVR + Aircall) answered within three rings during stated hours in two test calls. For Vigil, two of three inquiries received a response within one business day; one went unanswered. Replies were brief and referred to the pricing page rather than addressing the specific question. No phone option is published on the Vigil marketing site.
The difference here reflects something structural rather than coincidental. Vigil's published model is "US-based human support included in the $200 monthly fee" but the actual surface for support is a contact form and an email loop. Heirfolio is built with Intercom on the in-app side and Aircall on the phone side, which raises the floor for response time and lowers the ceiling for resolution depth.
Asset / Data Security — Heirfolio 9, Vigil 9 (tie)
Vigil's security narrative is the strongest published in the panel: passkey-only authentication (no password to steal), AES-256 documented end-to-end, AI processing on internal infrastructure rather than third-party model providers. We awarded 9 of 10 with one point withheld because no SOC 2 attestation is referenced. The immutable-audit-trail claim is asserted but not externally verified.
Heirfolio's security posture is structured around its partner stack: Cloudflare R2 for object storage, Supabase Postgres with row-level-security enforced per-user, Clerk for authentication with passkey support. SOC 2 Type II is in progress per the public security page and not yet attested. Two-factor authentication is enforced on high-value actions (Labs orders, Heir Protocol ACTIVATE triggers). FedEx insured shipping applies to every physical-item flow.
By the rubric: Vigil wins on the narrative of "we hold less of your data because we process it internally." Heirfolio wins on the breadth of physical-and-digital coverage. The dimension is a tie because the strengths are equivalent in different vectors.
Reversibility & Flexibility — Heirfolio 8, Vigil 7
Both subscriptions are month-to-month with cancel-anytime. Vigil's marketing copy is the cleanest on the cancellation posture. Vigil loses one point because data export on cancellation is not explicitly documented on the public marketing site, and the trigger mechanism for inheritance activation (the "ACTIVATE" phase) is described in scenarios but the actual who-pulls-the-lever workflow is not published.
Heirfolio publishes a data-export policy (JSON or PDF). Vault Pro can be canceled month-to-month and the free tier remains accessible after cancellation. The single deduction is structural: cross-currency settlements (USD/Gold/BTC) executed at the moment of sale via Argo or Onramp custody are not reversible after execution — the same constraint that applies to any market-rate execution.
Inheritance Fit — Heirfolio 10, Vigil 8
This is the headline dimension for the category. Vigil's four-phase MAP/AUDIT/MONITOR/ACTIVATE architecture is purpose-built for inheritance and earns 8 of 10 on the strength of the executor-side runbook, the three-tier release model, and the dynamic per-household guidance. The dimension's structural weakness for Vigil is that physical assets — jewelry, gold, watches, bullion, art — are entirely invisible to the platform. For affluent households where physical assets are 10–40 percent of estate value, that is a meaningful coverage gap.
Heirfolio scores 10 of 10 because the dimension is what the platform was designed around. Beneficiary designation is a first-class object on every item — jewelry, gold holdings, and BTC custody positions can be tagged to specific named beneficiaries with share percentages. Multi-party access is built into the Family Read-Only feature and into the Heir Protocol executor + advisor multi-party authentication for ACTIVATE. The account is inheritable through a published heir-claim workflow requiring Persona KYC plus notarized claim documents. Heir Protocol generates a Letter of Intent (React-PDF) ready for the user's attorney; notarization is handled in-flow via Notarize.com. The /heir/* route surface is rendered in a different visual treatment to signal heir-side context.
Where Vigil wins
- Pricing-page conceptual clarity. One number, one tier, one screen. Heirfolio's pricing surface is broader because the product is broader, but Vigil's exhibit is the cleanest in the panel and is genuinely a category lesson.
- Security narrative. Passkey-only authentication and the "no third-party AI model providers" claim is the strongest published security posture in the panel. Whether it remains true at scale is a re-test question for the August 2026 review.
- Document-only households. Households whose estate complexity is entirely in documents and financial accounts — no jewelry, no gold, no Bitcoin self-custody — will not pay for the breadth Heirfolio prices for. Vigil's narrower scope is appropriate for that buyer.
Where Heirfolio wins
- Physical and digital asset coverage in one workflow. Jewelry valuation, gold custody (Argo/Royal Canadian Mint), Bitcoin custody (Onramp), and auction routing (Worthy/Fortuna) are integrated into the same beneficiary designation surface. Vigil does not address any of these.
- Free tier. The free tier (valuation, family read-only, Heir Protocol MAP phase) lets the user evaluate the platform before subscribing. Vigil has no free or trial tier, which means cost-versus-feature is judged from marketing copy.
- Half the price for a broader product. Vault Pro is $99/month against Vigil's $200/month. The price-to-feature ratio is the most constrained position Vigil sits in.
Bottom line
If the estate is documents-and-accounts only, Vigil's narrower model is defensible at the higher price. If the estate includes jewelry, gold, Bitcoin, or any physical asset whose disposition matters to the heirs, Heirfolio is the only product in our index that handles those alongside the document workflow. For households that need both — and that is most households over a meaningful net-worth threshold — Heirfolio is the lower-cost and broader-scope option.
Subject to the next quarterly review.
See full Heirfolio profile → · See full Vigil Protocol profile →
Affiliate disclosure
The Touchstone Report has an affiliate relationship with Heirfolio. We earn a referral fee if a reader signs up for a paid Heirfolio tier via a link from this site. The relationship does not influence the score. Every dimension's raw score is shown above so the reader can recompute the total independently. The full list of affiliate relationships is maintained at /about/affiliates.
Last updated May 25, 2026. Scored against v1.0 methodology. Comparison drawn from the Heirfolio entity profile and the Vigil Protocol entity profile.