Inventory
Audit your vault with a phone
Walk the shelves, scan each artifact's barcode, and check off what's where. Anything missing gets flagged on the spot — and you always know who verified what, and when.
For small museums & archives
Cataloging that respects your volunteers' time.
Catalog artifacts, run barcode inventory audits, and publish public exhibitions — built around the work small institutions actually do.
No credit card · Free plan up to 250 artifacts · Export your data any time
Dublin CorePastPerfect importSelf-serve export8 languages
What's inside
Everything a small institution actually needs.
Built around the work small museums and archives really do — not a stripped-down enterprise tool, and not a stack of plugins you have to wire together yourself.
Public exhibitions
Put your collection online, one click
Pick a subset of your collection and publish it as a clean, dark-themed gallery page. Bring your own domain, or use a museumvault.app subdomain.
Getting started
Bring your records with you
Coming from PastPerfect or a spreadsheet? Upload it, match your columns once, and your whole collection comes over. Nothing is ever overwritten without asking you first.
Cataloging
Records that travel anywhere
Built on Dublin Core, the standard libraries and archives share — so your catalog is never locked in. Add custom fields for anything unique to your collection.
Media
Every photo, safe for decades
Attach photos, audio, video, and documents to each artifact. We fingerprint every file the moment you upload it, so you can confirm it hasn't changed — and you can download everything, any time.
Loans
Never lose track of a loan
Record who borrowed what, when it's due back, and the condition it returned in. Overdue loans flag themselves — no more sticky notes on the office door.
Why volunteers stick with it
Designed for the people actually doing the work.
Most museum software was built for full-time archivists. Museum Vault is built for the volunteer who comes in on Saturdays and just wants to log a few items without re-learning the UI every time.
“Our weekend cataloging team picks it up in about five minutes instead of five visits. That's the whole pitch, honestly.”
Elena Cho · Director, Holloway Heritage Museum (beta)
If you can do it, you can see it.
No hidden menus, no gestures to memorize. Every action is a big, obvious button — easy to find on a first visit, easy to hit with any hand.
It works like your index cards.
No nested trees, no hidden side panels. The screen looks like the box of cards your collection has always lived in — just with photos and search.
Sign in with one click from your email.
A weekly volunteer shouldn't have to remember a password between visits. We email a one-click sign-in link instead. (Passwords stay optional if you prefer them.)
Easy to read, impossible to lose work.
Text you can read without leaning in. And nothing ever blocks a save — half-finished records are welcome, not an error to fix before you leave.
Pricing
Free runs your catalog. Pro runs your visitor experience.
Catalog as much as you like on Free. Upgrade when you're ready to open your doors to visitors.
240+ institutions in betaCounty & historical societiesUniversity archivesPrivate collections
Free
$0/ forever
- Catalog up to 250 artifacts
- Loans, inventory audits, and CSV import
- Video, audio, documents — 5 GB storage
- Up to 5 volunteers
- 14-day activity log
- One public exhibition (Parchment theme)
- Read-only guestbook (up to 20 messages)
- Free subdomain on museumvault.app
- All Dublin Core metadata fields
Pro
$39/ per month
- Custom domain (museum.yourname.org)
- Unlimited public exhibitions
- Theme picker (Parchment, Ink, Pencil)
- Visitor guestbook with moderation
- QR poster PDFs for the gallery wall
- 10,000 artifacts · 100 GB storage · 25 members
- 180-day activity log
- Everything from Free, of course
Enterprise
$199/ per month
- Unlimited artifacts
- 1 TB storage · 5 GB / file
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Unlimited members
- SSO (SAML / OIDC)
- Priority support + SLA
- Audit retention forever
Small museums, archives, historical societies, and private collectors with anywhere from a few dozen to a few thousand artifacts. If you've outgrown spreadsheets but find PastPerfect or CollectiveAccess heavy, this is for you.
Resources
Browse help articlesGuides for small museum collection management
Migration
Moving from PastPerfect? Here's Why Museum Vault is Better
If you're tired of local network installations, massive setup fees, and per-user licensing restrictions, it might be time for a modern alternative.
GuideThe Volunteer-Friendly Collection Management System
Empower your volunteers with tools they will actually love, rather than frustrating them with complex software.
Private CollectionsHow to Digitize Your Private Collection on a Budget
Moving beyond the spreadsheet: the affordable way to digitize and preserve your private collection with museum-grade asset management.
Ready when you are
Ready to digitize your collection?
Set up your museum in under five minutes. Free forever for collections under 250 artifacts. No credit card, no time limit.