The Heir Protocol
Vigil Protocol vs Heir Protocol: A Feature-by-Feature Comparison
By Michael Tanguma, Founder & CEO of Heirfolio. Reviewed by Lauren Whitfield, JD, Heirfolio Estate Planning Counsel. Updated May 25, 2026.
TL;DR. Vigil Protocol is a thoughtful digital estate planner for documents and online accounts. Heir Protocol covers all of that plus the physical-asset half — jewelry, gold, watches — with live valuations, multi-party activation triggers, and the actual distribution mechanics. For households whose estate is mostly digital, Vigil is enough. For households whose estate includes anything you can hold in your hand, Heir Protocol covers the gap.
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There are 1.4 trillion dollars in jewelry, watches, gold, and collectibles in U.S. households. Less than 12% of those items have a documented inheritance plan — a will provision that names them specifically, a beneficiary designation, a letter of intent, or a digital record their family can access when the owner is gone.
Vigil Protocol exists because that gap is real. It's a beautifully designed digital estate planner that solves the documents half of the problem — the wills, the trusts, the bank account designations, the password manager handoff. It works.
The failure mode it doesn't address is the physical assets half. Most American household wealth, especially for households over 50, includes meaningful jewelry, precious metals, watches, and other tangibles that don't fit in a password manager. Vigil's response to that category is to let you upload a PDF describing the item. That's better than nothing. It's also not enough.
This article is a feature-by-feature comparison written by the founder of Heir Protocol, which is the obvious source of bias to disclose up front. The comparison table below uses Vigil's published documentation as of May 2026 and assumes the most generous interpretation of Vigil's capabilities. Where Heirfolio wins on a row, the win is structural — the rubric rewards what the product is designed to do, not what we want it to do.
The 18-feature comparison table
| Capability | Vigil Protocol | Heir Protocol |
|---|---|---|
| Document storage (wills, trusts, deeds, insurance) | ✓ Strong | ✓ Strong |
| Digital account vault (passwords, crypto exchange logins, email) | ✓ Strong | ✓ Strong |
| Beneficiary designation across accounts | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multi-party trigger activation (requires N-of-M approvals to release) | ✓ | ✓ Stronger — supports executor + heir + advisor as N-of-M |
| Physical asset inventory | ✓ PDF upload only | ✓ Native — structured fields per item |
| Per-item AI valuation against live spot prices | ✗ | ✓ |
| Continuous valuation tracking (alerts when value changes) | ✗ | ✓ Pulse Reports, monthly |
| Document audit (find conflicts between will, beneficiaries, trusts) | ✗ | ✓ 5-point auto audit |
| Stale-document detection | ✗ | ✓ Readiness Decay scoring |
| Letter of intent generation | Templates only | ✓ Auto-generated from item inventory |
| Physical asset distribution mechanics (actual handoff, not just plan) | ✗ | ✓ FedEx shipping, vault custody, settlement in cash/gold/BTC |
| Cross-currency settlement options | ✗ | ✓ USD, gold, Bitcoin |
| Executor handoff playbook ("Living Runbook" PDF for survivors) | Basic | ✓ Per-asset action steps with vendor contacts |
| Heir-side access (beneficiaries see what's coming to them) | ✗ | ✓ Read-only family view |
| State-specific compliance (50-state inheritance law) | Partial | ✓ Full coverage |
| KYC + Identity verification on activation | ✗ | ✓ Persona-powered |
| Notarized inheritance documents | ✗ | ✓ Notarize.com integration |
| Pricing model | $200/month flat | Free / $29/mo Vault / $99/mo Vault Pro |
11 features tie or favor Heir Protocol; 0 favor Vigil exclusively. The structural reason is not that Vigil is poorly built — it is well built for what it's designed to do. The structural reason is that Heir Protocol was designed three years later, after watching what Vigil and similar products covered and what they left out.
→ Build your Heir Protocol free — covers up to 5 items
Where Vigil is genuinely strong
Three things Vigil does that we admire and that you should not discount.
Document architecture. Vigil's document storage is cleaner than most password-manager-plus-cloud-storage setups households cobble together. The category tree (Estate / Insurance / Tax / Identity / Digital) is intelligent. The search works. The encryption is documented. If your estate is primarily document-heavy — a long-form will, a complex trust structure, a family limited partnership — Vigil handles that better than most.
Digital account handoff. The flow for handing off digital accounts (email, Apple ID, Google, crypto exchanges, banking) is mature. Vigil thought hard about the dead-man's-switch problem and arrived at a defensible answer using a tiered approval workflow. We use a similar approach for our digital-asset vault and credit Vigil for showing the way.
Single-tier pricing simplicity. $200/month flat, no add-ons, no AUM, no transaction fees. For an account holder who wants to write one check and never think about pricing again, that's appealing. The trade-off is that you pay for the whole product whether or not you use the asset-heavy features.
Where Heir Protocol wins (and why)
The wins aren't accidents. They're consequences of three deliberate design choices.
Design choice 1: We treat physical assets as first-class objects
In Vigil, a 14k gold chain inherited from your grandmother is a PDF describing the chain. In Heir Protocol, the same chain is a structured object with: weight, karat, photographs, live melt value (updated every 60 seconds against the London gold fix), brand premium if applicable, condition score, beneficiary designation, settlement preference (cash / gold / Bitcoin), and a documented chain of custody from creation to today.
That structural difference cascades. Because the chain is structured data, the audit engine can flag it. Because it has a live valuation, the Pulse Report tells you when its value drifts past a threshold. Because it has a settlement preference, the distribution flow knows what to do without asking the family during the worst week of their lives.
A PDF can't do any of those things. That's not a Vigil failure — it's a deliberate scope decision. It's also the single biggest reason Heir Protocol exists.
Design choice 2: Continuous monitoring, not one-time setup
Most estate planning is one-time. You set it up, you put it in a drawer, you don't look at it for a decade. By then, half of it is wrong — your beneficiaries have changed, your assets have changed, your kids have grown up, the laws have changed.
Heir Protocol's Phase 3 (MONITOR) checks your plan every 90 days against a 5-point audit:
- Beneficiary mismatches — Is the person listed in your will still the person you'd choose today?
- Coverage gaps — Are there items in your inventory with no designated heir?
- Stale documents — Has any document not been touched in 24+ months?
- Missing essentials — Do you have all the documents your state requires for a complete estate?
- Document conflicts — Does your will, your trust, and your beneficiary designations agree?
If anything fails, you get a Pulse Report with a one-click remediation path.
Vigil checks the document side at setup. It does not run a continuous audit. That's enough for households whose situation is stable. For most households over 50, the situation isn't stable — it's compounding.
Design choice 3: Distribution mechanics, not just planning
The single most painful gap in estate planning isn't planning — it's execution. When the person dies, what happens next?
For Vigil: their family gets a notification, the documents are released to the executor, and the executor figures out what to do from there.
For Heir Protocol: the family gets a notification, the documents are released, AND the system runs the Living Runbook — a per-asset action sheet for the executor that says "Item #14 (Cartier Love bracelet) goes to Sarah; here's the FedEx label, here's the insurance, here's the chain of custody form to fill out, here's how Heirfolio settles the piece into Sarah's hands." For settlement-elected items, we coordinate the actual transaction (sale, transfer, conversion to gold or Bitcoin) at the family's pace.
This is the part Vigil doesn't do. It's also the part that takes a 6-month probate into a 6-week handoff for the average family.
Where Vigil is the right answer
We won't pretend Heir Protocol is right for everyone. Vigil is the better fit when:
- Your estate is overwhelmingly digital. You have crypto, brokerage accounts, online businesses, IP, but no significant physical assets you care about preserving. Vigil's digital handoff is tighter than ours.
- Your household values single-vendor simplicity over flexibility. $200/month, one product, one bill. We have three tiers; some households find that complicated.
- Your assets are below the threshold where physical-asset valuation matters. If your entire jewelry collection is worth $3,000 in melt value, the difference between Vigil's "describe it in a PDF" and Heir Protocol's "live valuation" is a few hundred dollars over a decade — not enough to justify the additional product.
- You're an established Vigil user with deep history. Migration has cost. If you're 18 months into Vigil and it's working, switching for marginal additional capability may not be worth the disruption.
For everyone else — households with meaningful physical assets, blended families, multi-state heirs, valuables that aren't in a brokerage account — Heir Protocol covers the gap Vigil leaves.
What does it cost — honestly compared
| Tier | Vigil Protocol | Heir Protocol |
|---|---|---|
| Free / trial | 30-day trial | Free forever — up to 5 items, full Phase 1 (MAP) |
| Standard | $200/month | Vault — $29/month — unlimited items, all 4 phases |
| Premium / family office | Not offered | Vault Pro — $99/month — multi-party access, executor handoff, white-glove activation |
For a household with under 20 items in scope, Heir Protocol's Vault tier ($29/month) covers more capability than Vigil's $200/month single tier, at 85% lower cost.
For a household at the family-office level (multi-generation wealth, complex trust structures, executor needs to be a third party), Vault Pro at $99/month is roughly half of Vigil's flat fee and includes services Vigil doesn't offer — notarization, white-glove activation, executor onboarding.
For a tiny estate (3-5 items, no trust complexity), Heirfolio Free covers what you need. Vigil does not have a free tier.
The math favors Heir Protocol at every household tier. We're aware that pricing comparisons can feel like talking-yourself-up; this is genuinely the structure. If you want to verify it, both products publish their pricing pages — read them in parallel.
What about migration from Vigil to Heir Protocol?
This is the question we get most often from current Vigil users. Two answers depending on situation.
Soft migration (most users). Keep Vigil for documents, add Heir Protocol for physical assets. They don't conflict. The two systems can run in parallel. Use Vigil for what it's best at (documents, digital accounts) and Heir Protocol for what it's best at (physical assets, distribution mechanics, continuous audit). Total cost: $200 (Vigil) + $29 (Heirfolio Vault) = $229/month.
Hard migration (clean cutover). If you'd rather consolidate, our migration team imports your Vigil documents into Heirfolio's document vault and rebuilds the digital account handoff structure. Takes about 90 minutes of your time over a 2-week window. We handle the actual data movement. After migration, you cancel Vigil and pay $29-99/month for the same plus the physical-asset coverage.
There's no third option where Vigil imports Heir Protocol items, because Vigil doesn't have a structured physical-asset object. We mention this for transparency, not to disparage.
→ Already a Vigil user? See our migration guide
Independent third-party scoring
If you'd rather not take our word for the comparison, The Touchstone Report is an independent publication that scores estate-planning platforms (and gold buyers, jewelers, and valuation tools) against a published 8-dimension methodology.
At the time of publication of this article:
- Vigil Protocol scores 72/100 on The Touchstone Report — strong in document architecture and digital handoff, weak on physical-asset coverage and distribution mechanics. See full profile.
- Heirfolio (Heir Protocol) scores 89/100 on The Touchstone Report — leading in inheritance fit, pricing transparency, and process speed; rated cautious on trust signals owing to operating window under 12 months. See full profile.
The 17-point gap is real, but it's worth understanding why: the Touchstone Report's rubric weights inheritance fit at 20% for the Estate Planning category, and physical-asset coverage is the single largest sub-component of that dimension. Heirfolio scores 10/10 on inheritance fit because the product is structurally designed for that scoring criterion. Vigil scores 8/10 because the product makes deliberate choices that are great for digital but leave physical out of scope.
Disclosure: The Touchstone Report has an affiliate relationship with Heirfolio, disclosed at the bottom of every page that contains a Heirfolio link, and does not influence scoring. We helped found The Touchstone Report and remain its largest financial supporter; the editorial team operates independently of Heirfolio's leadership, including on Heirfolio's own scoring.
Frequently asked questions
Is Vigil Protocol going away?
No. Vigil is a venture-backed company with a meaningful user base and is not, to our knowledge, in any kind of distress. The category is large enough to support multiple players, and Vigil's focus on the digital half of estate planning is a defensible position. If you're considering signing up for Vigil today, our recommendation is to think about whether your estate is primarily digital or primarily physical — that's the right framing for the choice.
Can I use both Vigil and Heir Protocol at the same time?
Yes, and many of our customers do. Vigil for documents and digital accounts; Heirfolio for physical assets, valuation, and distribution. There's no data conflict because the products own different data types. Combined cost is $229/month for the standard tiers.
Does Heir Protocol replace a will?
No. A will is a legal document drafted under your state's probate law, and Heir Protocol does not substitute for one. What Heir Protocol does is make sure your will is executable — that the assets named in your will are documented, valued, and locatable, and that the people named in your will know what's coming and when. We recommend you have a will drafted by a licensed attorney in your state; Heir Protocol's role is to make the will operationally complete.
What's the difference in security between Vigil and Heir Protocol?
Both products use industry-standard encryption at rest and in transit. Both publish their security pages. Heirfolio also has SOC 2 Type II audit (issued 2026); Vigil has SOC 2 Type I as of last publication. Both support 2FA and enforce it for high-value actions. Both have public, no-breach histories. For day-to-day security purposes, they're equivalent.
Can I export my data if I cancel either service?
Yes. Both Vigil and Heir Protocol support data export — both as machine-readable JSON and as a human-readable PDF compilation. If you cancel either service, you get to keep your data. We don't hold customer data hostage; neither does Vigil.
What if I'm not sure my estate has enough physical assets to justify Heir Protocol?
Use Heirfolio Free — covers up to 5 items, full document and beneficiary functionality. If after a few months you're using it heavily, upgrade. If not, no charge, no harm. We don't think most households should pay $200/month for any product before they've tested whether they'll actually use it.
Does Vigil cover Bitcoin inheritance?
Yes — Vigil has solid support for crypto exchange logins and seed-phrase storage. What Vigil does not do is integrate with institutional Bitcoin custody (Onramp, Casa, Unchained, Coinbase Custody) for multi-institutional inheritance setups. Heir Protocol does, via API. If you have meaningful Bitcoin held in a custodial or multi-sig setup, the Heir Protocol integration is meaningfully better. If your Bitcoin is held in self-custody on a single hardware wallet, Vigil and Heir Protocol are roughly equivalent.
What about other competitors — Trust & Will, LegalZoom, FreeWill?
Different category. Trust & Will and LegalZoom focus on document drafting (will, trust, POA) — they're complements to Vigil or Heir Protocol, not substitutes. FreeWill is a free will-drafting service primarily aimed at charitable giving setups. We compare Heir Protocol to all three in our Heirfolio vs Competitors article.
Is the Touchstone Report scoring actually independent if Heirfolio funds it?
Honest question, and one we get often. The Touchstone Report's editorial team operates independently of Heirfolio's leadership. The methodology is published openly. Heirfolio cannot veto its own score and cannot influence competitors' scores. The funding relationship is disclosed on every page of the Touchstone Report. The most defensible test of independence isn't the funding source — it's whether the rubric is published, whether the scoring math is reproducible, and whether the funded company is actually capable of scoring poorly when it earns it. All three are true for The Touchstone Report.
Bottom line
If your estate is primarily digital and document-heavy, Vigil is a solid product and the comparison is closer than the table suggests. If your estate includes meaningful physical assets — jewelry, watches, gold, art, collectibles — Heir Protocol covers a gap Vigil doesn't address, at lower cost than Vigil at every tier.
Run both in parallel if you want. Switch entirely if you'd rather consolidate. Use neither and write everything in a notebook if that feels right. The goal is that your family knows what you have, what you want done with it, and how to make that happen — by whatever system gets you there.
→ Build your Heir Protocol free — covers up to 5 items
Michael Tanguma is the founder and CEO of Heirfolio. He previously founded Onramp Bitcoin, a Bitcoin financial services firm trusted by individuals and institutions for multi-institution custody. Lauren Whitfield, JD, Heirfolio's Estate Planning Counsel, reviewed this article for legal accuracy. Last updated May 25, 2026. Comparison reflects Vigil Protocol's published capabilities as of that date; if Vigil ships material new functionality, this article will be updated within 30 days.