Set it up once.
Connect the places your documents already land. From then on they arrive filed and understood, every date with what to do.
Everything in Family for your first 14 days, then free forever for your first 100 documents. No card to enter.
A hosted document vault
Thaw vs Granite
People comparing hosted "life admin" document vaults. Granite (granite.co) is the closest product to Thaw in intent.
Granite is a hosted vault that reads what you drop in, links it to people, places and things, answers questions with citations, and ships a new feature every few days. It is good, and it is the product we would use if Thaw did not exist. The differences are in what happens next: Thaw turns every date into an obligation with a proposed solution that the next document resolves, keeps a checkup of what should be on file and is not, holds a family and a business in one account with separate walls, and keeps the master key in a separate key service rather than on its own servers. Details below are from Granite's public pages and changelog as of September 2026 and will have changed.
Side by side
| Thaw | Granite | |
|---|---|---|
| How documents get in | Connected once to email, a scanner, a Google Drive or Dropbox folder, Gmail, and your phone; documents arrive on their own from then on. Forward or drop in anything yourself, and bring the pile you have through an Evernote, paperless-ngx or folder import. | Upload (PDF, images including HEIC, text), folder upload, email forwarding on the paid plan, Dropbox folder sync, an Evernote notebook import, and an iPhone app in beta. |
| Document types | About 120 kinds of document, a list that grows from what it sees; a kind it has never seen is proposed and filed, never "uncategorized". The UI shows plain words. | More than 110 types "and growing weekly"; you can teach it a new one. Types appear as paths like medical/prescription. |
| People & things | Every document linked to the people, vehicles, properties and businesses it concerns. Each page shows the current facts, what is due, and what is missing for that person or thing. | Pages for people, places, things and pets, with AI-assisted curation, drag-to-merge and manual linking. Auto-collections around tax years, vehicles and policies. |
| Dates and deadlines | Every renewal, expiry, due date and notice period becomes an item with what happens if missed and what to do, from the document itself. Resolved by the next document. | Reminders on the dates it extracts, which you can mark as handled. No proposed solution, and the next document does not close the item. |
| What is missing | Knows what a person, vehicle, property, pet or business should have on file; lists what is missing, lapsed, expired or duplicated, worst first, with where to get it. | A checklist for moving house ("Move Mode", paid), built from the vault. No standing checkup of what a person, vehicle or property should have on file. |
| Family and business | A family and a business in one account, kept apart, with the CPA invited to one and not the other. Business expectation sets for licenses, filings and the year-end package. | Multiple vaults on the paid plan. Household types are the focus; LLC formation is among the types. |
| Sharing and emergency access | Members and roles per family or business, share links that expire, and emergency access that opens after a heartbeat you set, every use of it logged. | Vault sharing with view or edit access, document links that expire, opt-in audited emergency access with an approval workflow and an inactivity heartbeat. |
| Where the keys live | Master key in a separate key service, never on our servers; every use logged. Per-account and per-document keys. | Per-upload keys wrapped by a per-user key derived from a master key that, per their security page, lives in the application servers' environment. |
| Search index | Identifying numbers blanked before anything is indexed, and the page text behind the index stored encrypted. | Search index and embeddings stored unencrypted, per their security page. |
| Sign-in | Passkeys first, email link fallback, no passwords. | Password with magic link, Apple ID, optional TOTP; 30-day sessions. |
| Audit log | Only ever grows, each entry fingerprinting the one before it, kept for the life of the account. | Append-only, 12-month retention, included in the export. |
| Your own assistant | Ask inside the app, and your own assistant (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor) can be connected and ask your documents. | Access for Claude and Cursor, a Raycast extension. |
| Price | Everything in Family for the first 14 days, then free for the first 100 documents sorted, with what you have and what is missing; Personal from $79 a year, Family $119. | $99 a year, annual only, 100 GB, unlimited documents. Free: 25 documents for life, 1 GB, without Ask or email-in. |
Stay with Granite if
- You already use its sharing, emergency access or Dropbox sync and they work for you.
- You want a product that has been public longer.
Move to Thaw if
- You want to be told what to do and by when, with the reminder.
- You want to know what is missing as well as where things are.
- You run a business as well as a household.
- You care where the master key lives.
Emaila rule you set once3 this week
Google Drivethe Family folder, watched2 this week
Scannersends straight to Thaw1 this week
Phonethe camera, for what only exists on paper
This week: 6 arrived, 6 filed, none touched by hand.