Eternal Vault vs GoodTrust: 2026 Comparison Guide

If you’re comparing GoodTrust to Eternal Vault, it helps to know upfront that these two tools aren’t really solving the same problem. GoodTrust is primarily a legal-document platform (wills, trusts, powers of attorney) with a digital vault bundled in. Eternal Vault is a zero-knowledge vault with automated Legacy Access, and it doesn’t generate legal documents at all. If you need an actual will drafted, GoodTrust does something Eternal Vault simply doesn’t offer, and it’s worth saying that plainly before we get into details.

A disclosure up front: I built Eternal Vault, so this isn’t a neutral third-party review. Every claim about GoodTrust below is linked to its own published pages so you can verify it yourself.

The core difference: legal documents vs. a secure access system

GoodTrust’s main product is its Estate+ plan, which generates a Last Will and Testament, a Revocable Living Trust, a Financial Power of Attorney, an Advance Health Care Directive, a Funeral Directive, and a Pet Directive from templates it describes as attorney-built, plus a Digital Vault for storing documents and account details (GoodTrust). It’s positioned as an end-to-end estate-planning kit: draft the legal paperwork and store everything in one place.

Eternal Vault doesn’t draft any legal documents. There’s no will builder, no trust generator, no power-of-attorney template. What it does instead is give you a zero-knowledge encrypted vault for documents, passwords, and instructions, plus an automated system that detects when you’ve gone inactive and releases access to verified trusted contacts through Shamir’s Secret Sharing. If your will is already drafted (through an attorney, GoodTrust, or elsewhere), Eternal Vault is where the signed copy and everything around it lives securely until it’s needed.

That’s the honest framing: GoodTrust answers “how do I create my estate plan documents,” and Eternal Vault answers “how do I make sure the right people get secure access to everything, automatically, without anyone holding a key that shouldn’t.”

Encryption and trust model

GoodTrust states that vault contents are protected with 256-bit encryption, which it describes as bank-level and equivalent to what financial institutions use, along with multi-factor authentication on accounts (GoodTrust Digital Vault). That’s a legitimate, widely used standard. But GoodTrust’s public materials don’t describe a client-side, zero-knowledge architecture, meaning there’s no stated cryptographic guarantee that GoodTrust itself is unable to access your stored data. That’s reinforced by its separate Digital Executor service, where customers explicitly grant GoodTrust power of attorney and documentation to act on accounts on their behalf (GoodTrust Digital Executor), a model that requires the company to be a trusted, capable party, not a party that’s cryptographically locked out.

Eternal Vault takes a different approach: everything is encrypted client-side, in your browser, before it’s ever uploaded. The master key never leaves your device, so there’s no technical path for Eternal Vault to read your stored data, regardless of internal policy or a support request. You can read the full breakdown on the security page.

Neither model is inherently wrong. A company that can act on your behalf, like GoodTrust’s Digital Executor, needs some level of trusted access to do that job. A zero-knowledge vault, like Eternal Vault’s, trades that convenience for a cryptographic guarantee that no one but you and your designated contacts can ever read the contents. Which one you want depends on whether you’d rather have a service that can take action for you, or a vault no one but you can open.

How release-to-family actually works

GoodTrust lets you add trusted contacts to your account and configure whether they get access immediately or “in the event of the unthinkable,” with the Digital Executor service handling outreach to individual websites once activated (GoodTrust). The public documentation doesn’t detail an automated way for GoodTrust to independently detect that you’ve died or gone inactive; access appears to depend on the account holder’s settings and someone initiating the process.

Eternal Vault splits your vault’s decryption key across your verified trusted contacts using Shamir’s Secret Sharing, so no single contact, and no one at Eternal Vault, can unlock your vault alone. What triggers the process is different too: instead of relying on someone reporting your death, Eternal Vault runs ongoing automated check-ins (“heartbeats”) that you confirm manually, via API, or through a Google Fit connection. You set a configurable Inactivity Threshold, and if check-ins stop past that point, a verified Legacy Access process starts for your trusted contacts. You can test the entire flow safely with a Practice Run, and there’s a recovery path if you miss a check-in by accident.

If you want a system that notices on its own when something’s wrong, rather than depending on a family member’s initiative to report anything, that’s a meaningful gap in Eternal Vault’s favor. If you’d rather have a company that can proactively act on your online accounts for you once notified, GoodTrust’s Digital Executor closes a different gap that Eternal Vault doesn’t attempt to close at all.

Feature-by-feature comparison

Category	Eternal Vault	GoodTrust
Legal document generation	Not offered	Will, Revocable Living Trust, Financial POA, Advance Health Care Directive, Funeral Directive, Pet Directive (source)
Encryption model	Client-side, zero-knowledge; master key never leaves your device	AES 256-bit “bank-level” encryption; no published zero-knowledge architecture (source)
Emergency access mechanism	Shamir’s Secret Sharing across verified trusted contacts; no single party can unlock alone	Trusted contacts configured for immediate or post-death access; Digital Executor service acts on accounts via power of attorney (source)
Life monitoring	Automated heartbeats: manual check-in, API, or Google Fit; configurable Inactivity Threshold; Practice Run available	No published automated inactivity detection in public documentation
Document storage	Encrypted upload, or bring-your-own-storage via Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box	Centralized Digital Vault on GoodTrust’s platform
Pricing model	Free plan; paid Individual and Family plans, monthly or one-time lifetime (see pricing)	Estate+: $149 first year, $39/year renewal, as of July 2026 (source)
Family accounts	Included on Family plan	Up to 4 complimentary family member accounts included with Estate+ (source)

Where GoodTrust is genuinely stronger

It would be misleading to gloss over this: if what you actually need is a legal will, trust, or power of attorney, Eternal Vault cannot help you, and GoodTrust can. Its documents are built from attorney-drafted templates, valid across all 50 states, and take roughly 20 minutes to complete according to the company (GoodTrust). That’s a real product, solving a real problem, that Eternal Vault has no version of.

GoodTrust’s Digital Executor service is also a genuine differentiator. Rather than only storing your account information, GoodTrust can actively contact over 100 supported websites on your behalf, closing accounts, stopping recurring subscriptions like Netflix or Spotify, or memorializing social profiles, using power of attorney you grant in advance (GoodTrust Digital Executor). Eternal Vault stores and releases information; it doesn’t take action on third-party accounts for you.

GoodTrust also has more institutional backing than Eternal Vault does right now. It was founded by Rikard Steiber, who held senior marketing leadership roles at Google before starting the company (Rikard Steiber), and it’s been covered by outlets including the BBC, CBS News, Fortune, and NerdWallet. Eternal Vault, by contrast, is built and maintained by an independent developer (me). That means faster iteration and direct access to the person building the product, but it also means a shorter track record than a venture-backed company with a founding team that includes former Google executives. If institutional maturity and legal-document coverage matter more to you than encryption architecture, that’s a fair reason to lean toward GoodTrust.

Which should you choose?

Choose GoodTrust if you need to actually draft a will, trust, or power of attorney, you want a service that can proactively contact websites and close accounts on your behalf after you’re gone, and you’re comfortable with a company holding meaningful access to act as your digital executor.

Choose Eternal Vault if your legal documents are already handled elsewhere and what you need is a secure place to store everything else, with a vault no one but you can technically read and an automated system that detects inactivity instead of depending on a family member to report anything.

Honestly, using both isn’t a bad idea for a lot of people: draft your legal documents through GoodTrust (or an attorney), then store the signed copies, passwords, and instructions in Eternal Vault’s zero-knowledge vault with automated Legacy Access as the release mechanism. They don’t compete much in practice, since one is a document-drafting tool and the other is an access-management vault. If you want a broader look at the market before deciding, the roundup of the best digital legacy planning tools in 2026 covers other options too, including our comparison against Everplans.

If you’re not sure what gaps you currently have, the free digital legacy assessment takes a few minutes and shows you exactly where you stand, regardless of which platform you end up using.

Ready to see the zero-knowledge model for yourself? Create your free Eternal Vault account and set up your first heartbeat in a few minutes.

This post reflects publicly available information about GoodTrust as of July 2026. GoodTrust’s features and pricing may change; check their site directly for current details.