Vaulted App Review

Disclaimer: We are reader supported.  We may be compensated from the links in this post, if you use products or services based on our expert recommendations. Please read our Advertising Disclosure.

Vaulted is a mobile app that lets you buy fractional shares of physical gold and silver, with the metal stored at the Royal Canadian Mint or HSBC Bank in London.

It's operated by International Collectors Associates (ICA), a firm founded in 1972 and owned by McAlvany Financial Group.

The pitch is simple: skip the coin shop, skip the safe deposit box, and own real, serial-numbered bullion from your phone.

Key Takeaways

• Vaulted charges 1.8% per gold transaction and 3.0% per silver transaction, well below the 5-8% many traditional bullion dealers charge.
• There's no minimum investment, so you can start with as little as $10 and build a position over time through VaultPlan, its automated purchase feature.
• Your metal isn't FDIC or SIPC insured, but it is fully insured through the Royal Canadian Mint and HSBC's own coverage, and you can request physical delivery at any point.

What Vaulted Actually Is

Gold has had a strange few years. As of early July 2026, spot gold has been trading above $4,100 an ounce, up roughly $815 compared to one year earlier, and China's central bank reported its largest monthly increase in gold reserves in over two and a half years this past June.

That kind of backdrop is exactly why apps like Vaulted have found an audience. People want exposure to gold without driving to a dealer, without haggling over spreads, and without stashing bars under a mattress.

Vaulted isn't the only company doing this. But it's built its whole product around one idea: make owning actual metal (not a paper claim on metal) as easy as using a banking app.

You link a bank account, transfer cash, and buy or sell gold or silver with a few taps. The company says it has facilitated more than $2.5 billion in gold and precious metals purchases since ICA's founding.

How the App Works, Step by Step

Setting up an account doesn't take long, and that's kind of the point. Here's the process:

1. Download the app or sign up on the website and enter basic contact information.
2. Link a bank account through the app's Plaid integration.
3. Fund the account via ACH transfer or wire.
4. Choose a dollar amount of gold or silver to buy.
5. Confirm the trade during NYSE market hours for near-instant execution.

Selling works the same way in reverse. You won't need a Social Security number to open an account, only when you're ready to sell and Vaulted needs to issue a 1099 tax form.

That's a nice touch for anyone who's cautious about handing over sensitive information just to browse a product.

There's also VaultPlan, which automates recurring purchases on a schedule you set. Think of it as a dollar-cost-averaging tool for gold, similar to how a 401(k) contribution pulls money out before you can second-guess it.

Fees and Minimums

Vaulted's fee structure is one of its clearest selling points, and it's laid out plainly on the site rather than buried in fine print.

For comparison, traditional coin and bullion dealers commonly charge somewhere between 5% and 8% per transaction, and some run even higher depending on the product.

That gap matters more than it looks like on paper. On a $10,000 gold purchase, the difference between a 1.8% fee and a 6% fee is $420 versus that same purchase costing you an extra couple hundred dollars in commission alone.

You can waive the annual storage fee by having your gold shipped to your home, but you'll pay for shipping, handling, and insurance instead, and you need to own at least one full ounce before delivery is an option.

If you funded your account by ACH, expect a roughly 60-day hold before you can request physical delivery, which is a detail some reviewers gloss over but matters if you're planning around it.

Where the Actual Gold Sits

Here's where things get more technical. Gold purchased through Vaulted is allocated in 99.99% pure kilo bars and held at the Royal Canadian Mint, a government-backed facility with its own security and insurance infrastructure.

 Silver, which Vaulted added to the platform in mid-2023, is stored as 99.9% pure 1,000-ounce London Good Delivery bars at HSBC's vaults in London.

Each holding carries a serial number tied to your account, and Vaulted says it conducts annual third-party audits to confirm purity, weight, and serial number accuracy.

If Vaulted or its parent company ever shut down, the metal itself is still yours, held at the mint or bank independent of Vaulted's own balance sheet.

That structure is meant to separate your assets from the company's operational risk, similar to how a brokerage account keeps your shares separate from the brokerage's own funds.

One caveat worth stating plainly: this isn't a bank account. Your holdings are not covered by the FDIC, and they're not covered by SIPC either, since gold isn't a security.

What you get instead is commercial insurance through the mint and HSBC, which is a different kind of protection with different limits.

Market Context: Why Gold, Why Now

Gold's run over the past year has been hard to ignore. Gold sat near $4,121 per troy ounce as of July 10, 2026, down slightly from the prior day but still about 22.77% higher than a year earlier.

Some of that move has been driven by geopolitical stress. Oil surged roughly 5% in the same week after renewed strikes between US and Iranian forces, which pushed up inflation expectations and shifted market odds toward a possible September Fed rate hike.

Gold tends to catch a bid when investors get nervous about currency stability or rate policy, and this stretch has had both.

Zoom out, though, and gold isn't a guaranteed winner. Between 1971 and 2024, stocks averaged annual returns of about 10.7%, compared to roughly 7.9% for gold.

Gold also doesn't pay a dividend, so all of your return has to come from price appreciation. During long stretches (the late 1980s through the late 1990s, for instance) gold traded sideways or declined for years at a time.

Anyone treating it as a guaranteed inflation hedge should know that history doesn't fully back that up. It's more accurate to think of gold as insurance you hope you don't need, not a growth engine.

What Users Actually Say

App Store reviews for Vaulted skew positive, and a common theme is how little friction there is compared to buying physical coins from a dealer.

One longtime user described it as an easy way to shift savings between cash and gold without leaving their phone. Another reviewer initially wished the platform offered silver, then updated their review once Vaulted added it in 2023.

Trustpilot ratings for the app land around 4.5 out of 5 stars, with most complaints centered on fees for physical delivery rather than the core buying and selling experience.

Pros and Cons

Where Vaulted holds up well:

Where it falls short:

Vaulted vs. the Alternatives

If you're weighing Vaulted against other ways to get gold exposure, here's roughly how they stack up:

JM Bullion offers a wider range of coins and bars, including IRA-approved gold, and supports more payment methods.

Gold ETFs are cheaper on paper but don't give you a claim on physical metal. Vaulted sits in the middle: cheaper than a coin shop, more tangible than an ETF.

Reputation and Third-Party Coverage

Vaulted has picked up coverage and reviews from outlets including Bloomberg, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance, and The New York Times, along with more detailed writeups from personal finance sites like Best Wallet Hacks and Benzinga.

Jim Wang, founder of Best Wallet Hacks, described it as a solid option for people who want to own actual gold without handling physical storage themselves.

 Andrew Boyd of Finty made a similar point about it offering a straightforward path into gold ownership for portfolio diversification.