Local-first · Android

The card scanner that never phones home

CardVault reads a business card with on-device machine learning and files it in a database that lives on your phone. No account. No cloud upload. No subscription. Export everything to Excel whenever you want.

Download the APK

Android 6.0+ · Free · Sideload install

🔒 Zero network permissions for your card data ✈️ Works fully offline 🚫 No sign-up

Why it beats the other card scanners

Most business card apps are a front end for someone else's server. Your contacts become their asset, and the features you need sit behind a monthly fee.

  CardVault Typical cloud card scanner
Where the card is read On your device, by on-device ML Uploaded to a server, sometimes transcribed by staff
Account required None — open the app and scan Email signup, often a work email
Works offline Every feature, including scanning Scanning needs a connection
Getting your data out Excel (.xlsx) and CSV, unlimited, free Export commonly capped or paywalled
Cost Free — no subscription, no seat count Per-seat monthly subscription
Custom fields Typed custom fields per category Fixed schema, or premium-tier only
If the company shuts down Nothing happens — the app is on your phone The service goes away, and so does access

What's in the app

Built for the person who comes home from a conference with forty cards in a jacket pocket.

🔍
On-device OCR
Google ML Kit text recognition runs locally, then a parser sorts the raw text into name, job title, company, email, phone, website and address.
Batch mode
Shoot a whole stack of cards back to back without stopping, then review and correct them one after another in a single pass.
✏️
You confirm every field
No OCR is perfect. Each scan opens in a review screen where every field is editable before it is saved — and the original card image is kept alongside it.
🗂️
Categories with custom fields
Colour-coded categories, each able to carry its own extra fields — text, email, phone, URL, number or long text — for things like Project or Contract ID.
📊
Excel & CSV export
Export any selection of cards to a formatted .xlsx workbook or a plain CSV, with ten columns ready for your CRM or address book.
💾
Backup and restore
Write a full backup file to your own storage and restore it on another device — merging into or replacing the existing library, your choice.

How it works

STEP 01

Point and capture

Frame the card in the camera and tap once. Turn on batch mode first if you have a stack of them.

STEP 02

Check the fields

Text recognition runs on the phone and fills the fields in. Fix anything it misread, pick a category, add notes.

STEP 03

Save, search, export

The card lands in a local SQLite database — searchable, filterable, and exportable to Excel or CSV at any time.

Privacy is architecture here, not a policy page

Plenty of apps promise not to misuse your contacts. CardVault is built so that it cannot: card images are processed by a recognition model bundled into the app, and the results are written to a SQLite database in the app's own private storage. There is no CardVault server for that data to be sent to.

That matters more than it sounds. A business card is somebody else's personal data — their name, direct line, and work email — handed to you in confidence. Uploading a stack of them to a third-party service is a decision you are making on their behalf. With CardVault there is no such decision to make.

The trade-off, stated plainly: nothing syncs. If you lose the phone without a backup, the cards are gone. Use the backup feature, and keep the file somewhere you trust.

Read the official Google Play Privacy Policy →

Installing

CardVault is distributed here as a direct APK download, so Android will ask you to approve it.

  1. Tap Download the APK above — or the build link pinned at the top of this page.
  2. Open the downloaded file. Android will warn that it came from an unknown source; allow installs from your browser or file manager when prompted.
  3. Install, open, and grant camera access — it is what the scanner uses. Storage access is only requested when you export or back up.
  4. Scanning needs a real device build; this APK is that build. Requires Android 6.0 or newer.