Price terms as published
Each line is the vendor’s own wording, split from the price capture checked on 2026-09-18. Nothing here is rounded, converted or re-worded — the full sentences stay in the review below. Lines that carry only a price continue the plan named on the line above, in the vendor’s own order.
| # | Plan / term | Checked |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $29 one-time per user (Windows + macOS same license) | 2026-09-18 |
| 2 | 14-day trial no card | 2026-09-18 |
| 3 | 30-day money-back | 2026-09-18 |
| 4 | launch window 20% off auto-applied | 2026-09-18 |
One-liner: PhraseVault is a text expander for people who hate memorizing abbreviations: press Ctrl/⌘ + . anywhere, type a few letters of a saved phrase’s name or its contents, hit Enter, and the text lands at the cursor. Version 3.0 launched on Product Hunt September 17, 2026, adding the ability to PIN-lock individual sensitive snippets. It is positioned heavily as an offline home for reusable AI prompts alongside the usual emails and code snippets. Facts below were checked against phrasevault.app (homepage + /pricing) and the Product Hunt listing on 2026-09-18.
Verified facts (checked 2026-09-18)
| Attribute | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Local text expander / snippet manager; inserts at the cursor in any app that accepts paste (Outlook, Gmail, Word, Slack, browser, IDE, terminal) | Official phrasevault.app |
| The 3.0 new feature | Lock individual sensitive phrases one at a time behind a PIN | Maker’s Product Hunt 3.0 launch post |
| How you recall a snippet | Global shortcut Ctrl/⌘ + . opens a search box; fuzzy-search by name or contents — no trigger abbreviation to invent |
Official site |
| Price | $29 one-time, per user; same license covers Windows and macOS | Official homepage pricing section |
| Trial | 14 days, no credit card | Official site |
| Refund | 30-day money-back guarantee; Stripe processes payment, license key emailed, payment details not stored | Official /pricing FAQ |
| Launch offer | “20% off PhraseVault 3.0 today,” auto-applied through the Product Hunt hunt window, no code | Site banner + maker’s PH post |
| Licensing model | One license per person; that user may install on their own devices (team of five = five licenses); volume/education discounts referenced on the pricing page | Official /pricing FAQ |
| Updates | Free updates within the version line; major version upgrades may be sold separately | Official /pricing |
| Privacy / data | No PhraseVault account, no server; the library is a local file on your own disk; to sync two machines you point it at a folder your own cloud drive already syncs | Official site FAQ |
| Open source? | No — source-available. The 3.0 source is on GitHub but the license restricts redistribution | Official site FAQ |
| Platforms | Windows 10+; macOS 13 Ventura+; works offline | Official site “at a glance” |
| Maker | Solo developer Gerhard Petermeir; third hunt (1.0 in 2024, 2.0 Feb 2026, 3.0 Sep 2026) | Product Hunt product page |
This is an official-information entry: we have not bought a license or run the app against a real snippet library, so there is no score.
Why a text expander shows up on an AI-tools site
The connective tissue is the prompt library. Anyone driving ChatGPT, Claude, or Midjourney seriously accumulates a private pile of prompts that work — long, finicky, full of structure they do not want to retype. PhraseVault’s pitch is that this pile is just another set of snippets: keep the best ones locally, fuzzy-search one by a word you remember, and drop it into the chat box with three keystrokes. That is the same “retrieve your own private material” bet as the Marqly 6.0 bookmark manager (saved articles → AI context), minus the cloud and the subscription, and it sits next to Pastea’s local clipboard MCP in the small but growing “local-first personal text tools” cluster. Unlike both of those, PhraseVault has no AI of its own and no MCP server — it is a dumb, fast insertion tool that happens to be very good at feeding prompts into tools that do have AI.
Where to stay honest
- It is not open source. “Source-available” means the 3.0 code is on GitHub and you can read it, but the license forbids redistribution. Do not file this next to MIT-licensed tools like Oats on the openness axis — they are different commitments.
- $29 is a forever license with an asterisk. Updates inside the 3.x line are free; ClickUp-style this is not, but a future 4.0 “may be offered separately.” Treat it as a purchase for the version line, not a perpetual free-upgrade contract.
- The 20% launch discount is a moving target. It is tied to the hunt window and auto-applies with no code; the durable number to budget against is the $29 list price, which the homepage prints independent of the banner.
- PIN lock is per-snippet, manual. You choose which sensitive phrase to lock; it is not a vault that automatically detects and protects passwords or API keys the way dedicated secure-clipboard tools do.
- No cloud sync of its own. “Your snippets never leave your machine” is the privacy win; the cost is that multi-device sync is DIY via a shared cloud-drive folder.
- Single-developer tool. The upside is direct support and a focused roadmap; the risk is bus-factor — the source-available repo and a local, standard file format partly mitigate lock-in, but weigh that on a team purchase.
Who it’s for
- Support and sales people who answer the same twenty questions in consistent wording but have never maintained a shared-inbox macro system
- Heavy AI-prompt users who want a searchable, offline home for prompts they reuse across ChatGPT, Claude, and Midjourney
- Developers who store boilerplate, commit messages, and connection strings and resent retyping them
- Anyone who prefers a $29 one-time payment over yet another $4–$6/month subscription for a single-purpose utility
Who it’s not for
- Teams that need shared, centrally-administered snippet libraries with permissions (this is a per-user local tool)
- People who specifically want an OSI-approved open-source license they can fork and redistribute
- Anyone hoping for AI expansion, variable fields, or MCP integration — PhraseVault stores and inserts text; it does not generate or connect to agents
Sources
- Official homepage (features, $29 price, local-file privacy, source-available clarification) — phrasevault.app, fetched 2026-09-18
- Official pricing page (licensing, trial, 30-day refund, update policy) — phrasevault.app/pricing, fetched 2026-09-18
- Product Hunt PhraseVault 3.0 launch listing (PIN-lock feature, launch discount, launch history) — checked 2026-09-18
Check date
Prices and terms verified 2026-09-18.