Vaultaire App: Founder Rasty Turek Reports Up to $3,000 a Day

Slovak-American founder Rasty Turek says his first iPhone app brings in $2,000 to $3,000 in revenue per day. He said so in an interview published in October on the YouTube channel Starter Story.

He said he built the app, Vaultaire, an encrypted vault for photos, videos and files, in about three weeks. In its first month it reportedly earned $66; about six months later it made $41,000 in a single month. The app has more than 60,000 downloads. According to Turek's own posts on X, Vaultaire generated $83,530 in revenue in October 2026, and on October 30 took in $4,000 in a single day for the first time. The figures are based on Turek's own statements and cannot be independently verified.

The basic version is free but limited. Options include a weekly subscription for $1.99, an annual subscription for $19.99 and a lifetime license for $39.99; according to the App Store, there is also a monthly subscription for $5.99 and family plans. According to Turek, about 60 percent of purchases are the lifetime license, which accounts for more than 80 percent of revenue. The purchase rate is about 5.5 percent on the first day and peaks around day 60, unlike many trend apps whose users pay right away.

No server, no account, no access

Vaultaire works similarly to Dropbox but encrypts all content directly on the device (AES-256-GCM). According to Turek, there are no user accounts and no shared keys. According to the website, Vaultaire does not operate a server that receives readable vault contents or keys. Neither Turek nor Apple can access content or recover data. The vaults are unlocked with self-drawn patterns, and different patterns open separate vaults.

The app is aimed at people who want to store items such as ID cards, birth certificates or crypto keys locally and privately. According to Turek, the idea grew out of his own wish to keep such data securely on his device. Technically, the app is built on Swift and SwiftUI and uses iCloud features with client-side encryption.

According to Turek's account, an agent of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) called him one Friday. The agent allegedly suspected that a suspect was using the app for sensitive information and asked for help opening the vault. Because of the architecture, that was impossible, and the agent was frustrated, he said.

A guide a day, written by AI

Turek says he spends no money on advertising and does not post on TikTok. Growth comes mainly through search engine optimization of his website. Many established competitors are 15 years old or older, have millions of downloads and are favored by Apple, but neglect the web, he said.

He therefore covers all the search terms that work in the App Store on the web as well, and publishes a guide every day, for example on how to store photos securely on the iPhone. The texts and calls to action in the articles are largely produced by AI coding agents such as Claude and Codex. He himself has written practically no line of code and no text on the website, he said.

About 10 percent of visitors choose the app via the website, and most traffic now comes from the web. For the daily analysis of search terms, he uses the Google Keyword Planner through his own open-source library.

From the Gmail team to his own app

Turek grew up in a Slovak village of about 700 residents. After school he moved to Boston and worked for a security company that was later acquired by Google. At Google he was part of the Gmail team.

He then founded several startups, first in security, later in the entertainment industry; Amazon acquired one of them. Most recently he sold the venture-funded company PEX, which offers copyright services mainly for music and entertainment.

Turek advises other founders not to overthink. Getting started is the hardest part, he says, and many projects stay unfinished in a drawer. Until something is released, it doesn't exist. One should stay open, put one foot in front of the other every day and get a little bit better.