Storyworth Alternatives in 2026: 9 Options Compared (Book, Audio, and Video)

The best Storyworth alternative depends on what you want at the end. If you want a book but your parent won't type, Remento, Memorygram, or Storii let them talk instead. If you want someone else to do the interviewing, Heirloom (remote video) and LifeBook Memoirs (ghostwritten book) handle it, at very different prices. If you want your parent's voice and face on video in a private family archive, Telloom offers professional interviews from $1,750 or a self-serve plan at $10 a month.

Why people look for Storyworth alternatives

Storyworth is a good product for what it is. You pay once, your parent gets a question every week by email or text for a year, and the answers become a hardcover book. The Basic plan is $59 and works by writing, either in a reply email or on the website. The Color plan ($109) adds the option to tell a story over the phone with automatic transcription and a monthly Family Call. The Unlimited plan ($199) adds weekly guided phone interviews for each storyteller. Source: welcome.storyworth.com/storyworth-pricing.

Three complaints come up over and over in reviews and forums.

The weekly typing burden. On the Basic plan, your parent answers by writing. A question every week for 52 weeks is a real commitment for someone who doesn't like writing, has arthritis, or just isn't a "sit down at the keyboard" person. When the emails pile up unanswered, the book stays thin. The phone options help, but they sit on the higher tiers, and the result is still text on a page.

You get a book. You don't get them. Even when a story is dictated by phone, what you hold at the end is a transcript. You don't hear the pause before a hard memory, or see the smile when your dad talks about meeting your mom. For a lot of families, that's the whole point of doing this. And on the two cheaper plans there's no interviewer at all, nobody asking the follow-up question that turns a two-sentence answer into the real story. The Unlimited plan's guided phone interviews are automated; there's still no person on the other end.

A few parents will write every week without a nudge. Most stop after the first month or two.

If none of that bothers you, Storyworth is a fine choice and you can stop reading. If one of them does, keep going.

Quick comparison: 9 Storyworth alternatives

Prices come from each company's own website and change often. Check before you buy.

One service you may see in older comparison posts is No Story Lost, which did professional phone interviews and turned them into a book. Its website was offline when we checked in August 2026, and a competitor's comparison page says the company has permanently closed. We've left it out.

Book-first alternatives

These keep the Storyworth idea (prompts now, book later) but fix the typing problem.

Remento

Remento is the closest thing to "Storyworth, but spoken." Prompts arrive by email or text, your parent taps a link and records on any device with no app or login, and Remento turns the recording into a written story. The book has a QR code on each page that plays the original recording.

Price: $99 for the first year, which includes unlimited prompts, unlimited collaborators, and one color hardcover book up to 380 pages. Extra copies are $69. Renewal after year one is optional at $99 a year or $12 a month, and you keep access to the recordings if you don't renew. Source: remento.co.

Where it falls short: you still end up with a book as the main product, the recordings are audio only, and there's no interviewer. We compared it in more depth in our Remento alternatives post.

Memorygram

Memorygram is a book product with a strong phone option. Weekly questions go out by email, and your parent can type, use voice-to-text, or take a scheduled call from an automated phone interviewer that works on any phone, including a landline, with up to 30 minutes per answer. Each printed story gets a QR code that plays the audio.

Price: $123.50 for one 8.5 x 11 full-color hardcover, regularly discounted (it was $98.80 on sale when we checked). Extra copies are $77 on sale, $89 regular. Source: checkout.memorygram.com.

Read our Memorygram alternatives post if you're weighing it against similar book services.

Meminto

Meminto sells a one-time package rather than a subscription. Your parent answers through the web or mobile app, by speech-to-text, or by phone interview, and you get up to two years to finish the book.

Price: Essential $99 (up to 100 pages, one copy), Complete $149 (300+ pages, unlimited photos, one copy), Premium $397 (three copies, digital flip book included). Extra copies from $49. Source: meminto.com/pricing.

Good for a family that hates subscriptions. Same limits as the others: it's a book at the end, and nobody's interviewing.

Audio-first alternative

Storii

Storii records life stories over ordinary phone calls. It schedules up to three calls a week, asks a question from a library of over 1,000 prompts, records the answer, and transcribes it. Family members get notified after each recording. You can download an audiobook and eBook any time.

Price: $9.99 a month, $59.99 a year, or a $59.99 gift box that includes the annual plan (checked in a browser on August 30, 2026). Source: storii.com/pricing.

This is the option for a grandparent without a smartphone or computer. It's audio only, and an automated system asks the questions. We wrote up Storii alternatives separately.

DIY app alternative

LifeTales

LifeTales is a private, app-based scrapbook: photos, video, text, and audio in one story, with weekly prompts if you want them. Up to six collaborators on the basic plan, 200 GB of storage, and export to PDF, e-book, or a downloadable website.

Price: $10 a month on the annual plan (a beta discount on $19.99), or $49.99 month to month. Printed books with QR codes from $69. Source: lifetales.com/pricing.

It's a solid tool for a family already comfortable with apps. Nobody records for you, and the video is whatever your phone captures.

Video-first alternatives

This is where the format itself changes, rather than only the way answers get collected. Video keeps the voice and the face. You can print a transcript from a video later. You can't get the video back from a book.

Telloom

Telloom is the service we run, so read this section knowing that.

Telloom records guided, podcast-style video interviews with parents and grandparents and keeps them in a private family platform. Every video gets a transcript with timestamps and an AI-written summary, and the whole library is searchable, so you can find the moment your grandmother talks about the farm without scrubbing through three hours of footage. You can give viewer accounts to as many family members as you want, and you can download everything at any time.

There are two ways to use it:

Professional interviews. A trained interviewer runs the conversation, which is the part that's hardest to do yourself. Launch pricing runs from $1,750 to $5,500; standard pricing is $3,500 to $8,000.

• Remote Essentials ($1,750): one three-to-four-hour session over video, anywhere in the United States, with tech guidance for camera, lighting, and audio, and a custom prompt list.
• In-Person Signature ($2,500): a crew with professional camera, lighting, and microphones comes to a home in the New York metro area for about three hours on camera, plus up to 25 printed photos digitized.
• In-Person Legacy ($5,500): two recording days, up to three edited topic films, and one highlight film, with five years of platform access.

We travel outside New York for multi-day productions. Full details are on the Telloom professional interview packages and pricing page.

Self-serve. $10 a month or $99 a year to record on your own phone or camera, organize by person and topic, and get the same transcripts, summaries, and sharing. There's a library of 640+ prompts across 50 categories to work from, and our guide to recording family video interviews covers gear and setup at every budget.

What Telloom isn't good for: if your parent wants a printed book as the final product, this isn't the right tool. It's also not a fit for one-off event videography or anything you'd want public. And in-person sessions are limited to the New York area unless you're booking a multi-day production.

Heirloom Family Documentaries

Heirloom ships a smartphone-based video kit to your parent, a professional interviewer guides the session remotely, and each story is edited into its own short video. It's video that's a step up from a phone propped on a shelf, without a crew in the house.

Price: Silver $2,000 (2-hour interview, 12 to 15 videos), Gold $3,000 (3 hours, 25 to 30 videos), Platinum $4,000 (4 hours, 36 to 45 videos). All include the video kit, two USB drives, and six months of online hosting. Source: heirloomdocs.com (Pricing page).

The clips are the deliverable. There's no transcript search or ongoing archive, and hosting is six months rather than years.

StoryFile Life

StoryFile Life has your parent record video answers to questions from a library of 1,600+ (grouped into topics like family traditions, weddings, and vacations), then indexes them so that later, someone can ask a question and the recorded video answer plays back. When we checked, the product was on a waitlist and no prices were listed on the public page. Source: life.storyfile.com.

Interesting if the idea of "asking Grandpa a question" years from now appeals to you. Ask hard questions about what happens to the recordings if the company changes direction.

The premium end: ghostwritten memoirs

LifeBook Memoirs

LifeBook is the top of the book market. A ghostwriter and project manager conduct 11 to 14 face-to-face interviews, scan and restore photos, and produce a full-length memoir.

Price: The Royal $18,000 (200 pages, 10 hardbacks), The Imperial $27,000 (250 pages, 15 hardbacks), The Signature $42,000 (300 pages, 24 hardbacks), each billed over six months. Each package includes produced audio highlights, from one 1-hour recording on The Royal to ten 2-hour recordings on The Signature. You don't get the raw interview recordings. Source: lifebookmemoirs.com/pricing.

If you have the budget and a parent with a long, complex life story that deserves a real book, this is the one to look at. At four times the price of the next most expensive option here, it's a different purchase for most families.

Which one fits your family

Ask three questions.

Will your parent write, talk, or neither?

• Happy to write: Storyworth still works.
• Will talk but won't type: Remento, Memorygram, Meminto, or Storii if there's no smartphone.
• Won't do either without a person prompting them: a video interview service like Telloom or Heirloom, or LifeBook if you want a book and have the budget.

What do you want on the shelf in twenty years?

• A book: Storyworth, Remento, Memorygram, Meminto, or LifeBook.
• Their voice: Storii, or any of the book services with QR codes.
• Their face and voice, searchable: Telloom, Heirloom, StoryFile Life.

What's the budget?

• Under $150: Storyworth, Remento, Memorygram, Meminto, Storii, LifeTales, or Telloom self-serve.
• $1,500 to $5,500: Heirloom or a Telloom professional package.
• Above $15,000: LifeBook Memoirs.

One more thing. Whatever you pick, the interview matters more than the tool. Our guides on how to interview your parents and questions for elderly parents apply no matter which service you use, and the full question library is free.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best alternative to Storyworth?

There's no single best one. For a parent who'll talk but won't type, Remento is the closest swap because it keeps the book and adds recordings. For a family that wants a professional to do the interviewing, Telloom (video) and Heirloom (remote video clips) are the strongest options under $6,000. For a grandparent with only a landline, Storii.

Are there gifts like Storyworth that don't require typing?

Yes. Remento, Memorygram, Storii, and Meminto all let the storyteller answer by voice or phone. Storii's $59.99 gift box and Remento's $99 first-year plan are both sold as gifts, with delivery on a date you pick. A Telloom professional session also works as a milestone-birthday or anniversary gift; the family books it and the interviewer does the rest.

Is there a video version of Storyworth?

Remento adds phone-recorded audio to a printed book, which is the closest hybrid. For video as the main product, look at Telloom (guided interviews, transcripts, and a searchable family archive) or Heirloom Family Documentaries (remote interviews cut into short clips).

What are Storyworth's competitors that do the interview for you?

Heirloom Family Documentaries runs remote video interviews from $2,000. Telloom runs remote video interviews from $1,750 and in-person sessions in the New York area from $2,500. LifeBook Memoirs does in-person interviews for a ghostwritten memoir from $18,000. No Story Lost used to do phone interviews into a book, but it appears to have closed.

Can I use more than one of these?

Plenty of families do. A video interview captures the person; a book is easy to hand to a relative who'll never log into anything. If you want both, record the video first. You can always write from a transcript, but you can't film a book.