VAPHOT is an aperture photometry package for precise time−series photometry of uncrowded fields, geared towards the extraction of target lightcurves of eclipsing or transiting systems. Its photometric main routine works within the IRAF (ascl:9911.002) environment and is built upon the standard aperture photometry task 'phot' from IRAF, using optimized aperture sizes. The associated analysis program 'VANALIZ' works in the IDL environment. It performs differential photometry with graphical and numerical output. VANALIZ produces plots indicative of photometric stability and permits the interactive evaluation and weighting of comparison stars. Also possible is the automatic or manual suppression of data-points and the output of statistical analyses. Several methods for the calculation of the reference brightness are offered. Specific routines for the analysis of transit 'on'-'off' photometry, comparing the target brightness inside against outside a transit are also available.