Guide
What a home inventory app should do
By the WhereKept team. Updated September 15, 2026.
Most home inventory apps are built around the insurance claim: a long form per item, a PDF at the end, and no reason to open the app again. That is the wrong job to design for. The list is only worth keeping if it answers the question you actually ask every week, which is where something is right now.
Six things worth checking before you pick one
- Does it answer with a place you can walk to? Categories and tags tell you what you own. An address tells you where to go. Look for places that nest, so a room holds a cabinet, which holds a drawer.
- Can the rest of the household use it? If only one person can add and move things, the list goes stale the first time someone else puts something away.
- How much typing does an item take? If adding one thing takes a minute, you will stop at the first drawer. A name and a place should be enough, with details optional.
- Can you get your data out? A spreadsheet export, at any time, on any plan. Your inventory should not be trapped in one app.
- What happens when you stop paying? Some apps lock the list. Look for one that keeps everything readable and exportable and only limits what you add next.
- Who can see it? An inventory is a list of everything valuable in your house. It should be private to the people you invite, and photos should not be used to train anything.
How WhereKept answers those
You describe the places in your house once, as deep as your house actually goes. Every item gets a place, which gives it an address: Garage · Tool chest · Bottom drawer. Search for the item and the answer is that address, not a photo of a drawer.
With Plus, the household shares one inventory. Everyone has their own account, and a move by one person shows for everyone within seconds. Every add and move records who did it and when. You can print a label for a bin and scan it later to see what is inside. Both exports, the spreadsheet on any plan and the insurance PDF on Plus, come from the same data.
What WhereKept is not for
- Business stock. No purchase orders, no barcodes for reordering, no multiple warehouses. Sortly and its kind do that, and cost accordingly. See the Sortly comparison.
- Collections that need valuations. WhereKept stores the price you enter. It does not estimate what anything is worth today.
- Android households, for now. iPhone only.
A reasonable first hour
Do not try to catalogue the house. Pick the ten things you have hunted for in the last year, add them with their places, and put a label on the two bins you open least. That is enough to find out whether the habit sticks. If it does, add a room at a time. See how to remember where you put things for the habits that do the rest, and the printable checklist if you are working toward an insurance list.
Questions
- What is a home inventory app?
- An app that records what you own, where it is, and the details you would need later: photos, brands, model and serial numbers, purchase dates and prices. People use one to find things day to day and to have a list ready if they ever file an insurance claim.
- Do I need one if I already have photos of every room?
- Photos prove you owned something. They do not tell you which bin it is in, and they are hard to search. A list with a place for each item answers the everyday question; photos support the once a decade one.
- Is WhereKept free?
- The free plan holds 25 items for one person, with one photo per item, and includes places, search, labels, the move record and the spreadsheet export. WhereKept Plus is $19.99 a year or $2.99 a month and covers the whole household.
- Does it work offline?
- No. WhereKept needs a connection, because the household shares one live inventory. If you keep things in a basement with no signal, add and move items where you have signal.
- Is there an Android version or a web app?
- No. WhereKept is an iPhone app today. If someone in your household uses Android, they cannot join yet.