MemoriesBox compared with every other way to keep a voice

Prices below were checked on 17 August 2026 from each company's own site. They change. If you find a stale figure, write to hello@memoriesbox.org and we will correct it.

This is a map, not a ranking. For several of these jobs we are the wrong answer.

The four kinds of service

Knowing which one you want removes most of the confusion.

A book service sends a question each week, collects the answer, and prints a hardcover at the end of the year. A calling service telephones the person and records what they say, with no app involved. An AI legacy service builds something the family can put a question to later. A digitising service converts tapes, slides and photographs that already exist into files.

These are four different jobs, not four versions of one product. Most people looking for a StoryWorth alternative want a different job done, not a cheaper way to do the same one.

Services that send questions and print a book

This is the largest and most mature group. If you want an object on a shelf that a grandchild can read without a password, buy from here and stop reading. StoryWorth has been at it longest and its book is the one the others are measured against. Remento's is the most interesting design: the printed page carries a QR code, and scanning it plays the person saying those words.

The limit is the same across the group. The book is the product. The audio is a by-product, and it is usually not what you were trying to preserve.

Services that phone the person, or talk to them out loud

Storii owns the thing nobody else here has solved: it works on an ordinary telephone, so the person needs no smartphone, no app and no account. They answer the phone, as they have for sixty years. Note that the Storii gift box, $59.99 on sale against a $119.99 list, contains a card with a phone number. There is no hardware in it.

HeritageWhisper at $39 a year is the cheapest way we know of to be asked a real follow-up question rather than the next one on a list.

Services that build an AI you can ask

Read this group carefully, because it is the one with a failure record. StoryFile filed for Chapter 11 in the US Bankruptcy Court at White Plains, New York, case 7:24-bk-22398, on 5 May 2024, owing $150,000 in customer refunds. HereAfter AI's site 404s and its iOS app has not been updated since 1 September 2023. MyHeritage confirmed DeepStory’s discontinuation in an August 2025 notice; users reported it had stopped accepting new creations by July 2025, and MyHeritage is large and profitable.

Before handing a company your parent's voice, ask what happens to it when the company stops. Our own answer is at what happens if we shut down, including the uncomfortable parts.

Services that digitise what already exists

These compete with nothing else on this page. They rescue what was already recorded. If there are eight VHS tapes in a cupboard, a digitising service is the right purchase and it is urgent, because tape degrades. Do that first. Then record what has never been said out loud.

The free options, said plainly

StoryCorps has recorded more than 700,000 people since 2003 and the archive sits at the Library of Congress. It costs nothing. The Prego and StoryCorps "Connection Keeper", launched 27 April 2026, is a $20 screen-free recorder with prompt cards, no app and no AI. A voice memo costs nothing at all.

47% of Americans regret not recording or documenting a conversation with someone who has since died, and 59% have never done it (YouGov, June 2022, n=6,090). The gap between those two numbers is not a pricing problem.

Where the others are better

StoryWorth's hardcover is better than ours today, and it is included in a $59 plan. Remento's QR-coded book is the best single idea in the category and costs $40 less a year than we do. Storii works on a landline right now; our device that does the same job is $79 and does not ship until 2027. HeritageWhisper is $39 a year against our $139, and its adaptive interviewer is genuinely good. Meminto charges once, from $99, and nothing lapses. Legacybox will save tapes that we cannot help you with at all.

What none of them do

Of the eleven life-story services we compared in August 2026, none clones the storyteller's real voice and none lets the family ask a new question later. Two AI-legacy products do — Avataari, a Melbourne company that does not disclose its hosting region, and Afterlife AI, operated from New South Wales. MemoriesBox is the only one hosted in the European Union.

A voice clone is a synthetic model of a person's voice, built from recordings of that person speaking, which can then read text aloud in the same timbre and cadence. Every service in the first two groups keeps audio. None builds that model, so none can answer a question nobody thought to ask at the time.

Choose one of the others if

• You want a printed book and the book is the point. Start with StoryWorth or Remento.
• The person has no smartphone and will not use one. Storii calls a landline today.
• Your budget is under $50 a year. HeritageWhisper is $39.
• You want to pay once and never see a renewal. Meminto is one-time, from $99.
• The material already exists on tape. Use Legacybox, iMemories or Capture.

Choose MemoriesBox if

• You want the voice itself kept, not a transcript of it.
• You want your family to be able to ask a question in ten years and hear an answer in that voice.
• Where the recordings are stored matters. Ours stay in the European Union.
• The family speaks English, Russian, Ukrainian or Spanish, and you want all four.
• You would rather record one long interview across many sessions than answer one prompt a week.

And what we are not: MemoriesBox is at version 0.4.1, with no independent review footprint and no SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, which Avataari does publish. If a track record is what you are buying, StoryWorth has ten years of one and we have not.

Questions people ask

What is the best alternative to StoryWorth?

It depends which part of StoryWorth you are replacing. For a cheaper book, Remento at $99 a year includes a hardcover and QR codes that play the original audio. For a parent without a smartphone, Storii calls a landline. For the voice rather than the text, that is what we built. Read the full StoryWorth comparison.

How much do life story services cost?

Between free and $595 one-time, checked on 17 August 2026. StoryCorps is free. HeritageWhisper is $39 a year, StoryWorth from $59, Remento $99, Meminto $99 one-time, MemoriesBox $139, LifeTales about $239.88, trylifestory $595 for a single human-led video interview.

Which life story service keeps the person's actual voice?

StoryWorth, Remento, Storii, Meminto, HeritageWhisper, LifeTales and Autobiographer all keep the original audio in some form. None of the eleven builds a voice clone from it. Memoirji is the exception in the other direction: voice goes in, text comes out, and the audio is not preserved.

Is it worth paying for a life story service at all?

If the alternative is doing nothing, yes, and the cheapest paid option is fine. 53% of people in a UK survey learned something new about a family member only after that person died (Ancestry.co.uk, November 2022, n=2,000). A $39 subscription that gets used beats a $139 one that does not.

If you want to keep the voice itself

Every service above preserves something. One of them keeps the voice in a form your family can put a question to afterwards, and holds it inside the European Union. The trial runs 14 days and the first session takes about forty minutes.

See what MemoriesBox costs

Related: StoryWorth alternative · HereAfter AI alternative · Remento · Storii · HeritageWhisper · Meminto · Every option, side by side · What happens if we shut down