MemoriesBox vs Remento
Remento is the better buy for most families: $99 a year, one hardcover included, QR codes in the book that play the original recording. Choose MemoriesBox, $139 a year, if you want the voice cloned and hosted in the EU.
Facts on this page verified
Remento is the better buy for most families: $99 a year, one hardcover included, QR codes in the book that play the original recording. Choose MemoriesBox, $139 a year, if you want the voice cloned and hosted in the EU.
Prices checked 17 August 2026 from each company's own site.
The short version
| MemoriesBox | Remento | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $139 / year, first 14 days free | $99 / year |
| How it captures the story | A long guided interview, split across many sessions | Weekly prompts, answered by self-recording |
| Original audio kept | Yes | Yes. A QR code in the book plays it |
| Printed book | Not included. From $139 as a separate product | One hardcover included |
| Written text | Transcript of what was said | "Speech-to-Story" rewrites the spoken answer into prose |
| Voice clone | Yes, after about 30 minutes of recordings | No |
| Family can ask a new question later | Yes | No |
| Languages | Four: English, Russian, Ukrainian, Spanish | Not compared here. Check their site |
| Data hosting | European Union. Data does not leave Europe | Not disclosed |
| Best for | Keeping the voice and being able to ask it something later | A finished book this year, with the audio inside it |
How each one actually works
Remento
A prompt arrives once each week. The person opens it and answers out loud, recording themselves on a phone rather than typing. Remento then runs a step it calls Speech-to-Story, which turns the spoken answer into readable written prose for the page. The original recording is not thrown away: each story in the finished hardcover carries a QR code, and scanning it plays the voice that produced the words. One hardcover is included in the $99 annual price. The result is a book that sits on a shelf like any other book, and also plays. Of everything in this comparison, it is the neatest answer to the problem of audio being stranded inside an app nobody opens.
MemoriesBox
The interview is long rather than weekly. It runs across many sittings, asks follow-up questions inside a session instead of moving on to a new topic each week, and the audio is the deliverable rather than the raw material for a page of prose. After roughly thirty minutes of recordings there is enough to build a voice clone, so what is kept is the person's own voice rather than an AI narrator reading a transcript. Later, a question that was never put during the sessions can be asked and answered in that voice, in five languages. Everything is hosted in the European Union and exportable at any time. A book costs from $139 extra.
What they cost
| Remento | MemoriesBox | |
|---|---|---|
| Year one | $99 | $139, first 14 days free |
| Hardcover | One included | From $139, sold separately |
| Cheapest way to get a book | $99 | $278 |
| Done-for-you option | Not published | VIP Setup $299, VIP Complete from $790 |
| Physical device | None | $79 one-time, ships 2027 |
Remento is $40 a year cheaper and includes the book. If a printed hardcover is the outcome you want, Remento costs $99 and we cost $278, and no amount of feature comparison changes that arithmetic.
Renewal behaviour is where buyers in this category get caught, and it is not consistently published. Before paying either company, read its own terms on what happens to your recordings, your written stories and your book credit when a subscription lapses. We have not independently verified those terms for Remento and are not going to characterise them from memory.
Where they genuinely differ
The rewrite. Remento converts a spoken answer into written prose. That is the feature that makes the book readable, and it also means the printed text is not word-for-word what your mother said. MemoriesBox keeps a transcript of what was actually said. Which means: Remento gives you a better book, and MemoriesBox gives you a more literal record.
What survives the subscription in a form you can hold. Remento's answer is the QR code: the audio lives in the object. Ours is export: open formats, at any time, without a subscription. Which means: if your worry is that a company disappears, Remento hands you a printed artefact and we hand you your files, and both beat a login that stops working.
A clone, and a question asked later. Remento does not build a voice model and cannot answer anything that was never asked. MemoriesBox does both, with the answer drawn from what the person actually said and labelled as AI. Which means: the year after a death, one product is finished and the other still has something to say.
Where the recordings sit. Remento does not disclose a hosting country. MemoriesBox is hosted in the European Union and states so. Which means: for a family in Europe, or anyone who wants to know whose law covers a recording of their father's voice, only one of these two answers the question.
What Remento does better
It is cheaper, and the book is included. That is the whole ballgame for most people, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
The QR code is also, genuinely, the better piece of design. Putting the original audio inside the printed object solves a problem the rest of this category has not solved, ours included. A book gets handed round a kitchen table. An app does not.
And Remento's weekly rhythm asks less of the storyteller. A prompt a week is a small commitment. A long interview across many sittings is a bigger one, and some people will never agree to it.
Our own weak points, plainly: MemoriesBox is pre-1.0 and shows v0.4.1 publicly. We have no published security certification and no independent review footprint. The $79 device does not ship until 2027. Our book is a separate purchase from $139 and is not as good as theirs.
Which to choose
Choose Remento if you want a hardcover included at $99, you want the audio embedded in the printed book, the storyteller prefers one small question a week, or a printed object matters more to your family than a searchable archive.
Choose MemoriesBox if the voice matters more than the book, you want the family to be able to ask something in ten years' time, the storyteller speaks Russian, Ukrainian or Spanish, or the recordings need to stay in the European Union.
Neither is right for everyone. A voice memo on any phone costs nothing and keeps the same voice. StoryCorps is free, has recorded more than 700,000 people since 2003, and its archive is held at the Library of Congress (storycorps.org/about).
Questions people ask
Is Remento or MemoriesBox cheaper?
Remento, by $40 a year, and it includes a hardcover book. Remento is $99 a year against $139 for MemoriesBox, where a book costs from $139 more.
Does Remento keep the original voice recording?
Yes. Each story in the printed book carries a QR code that plays the original recording. Remento does not build a voice clone from it and cannot answer a new question later.
Does Remento rewrite what my parent said?
Its Speech-to-Story step turns the spoken answer into written prose for the book, so the printed text is a rendering rather than a word-for-word transcript. The original audio is kept and playable through the QR code.
Where does Remento store your recordings?
Remento does not disclose a hosting country on its site, checked 17 August 2026. MemoriesBox is hosted in the European Union: where your recordings actually live.
Which is better for a parent who won't sit for a long interview?
Remento. One prompt a week is a much smaller ask than a guided interview across several sittings, and a product that gets used beats a product that does more on paper.
Related: MemoriesBox vs StoryWorth · StoryWorth vs Remento · Everything compared · What happens if we shut down
If it is the voice you want kept, and kept in Europe, that is what we sell: MemoriesBox pricing, $139 a year, first 14 days free.