StoryWorth alternatives in 2026: what kind of book do you actually get?
Ten services here will sell you "a book of their life story". They are not selling the same thing. Before you compare prices, compare what arrives in the box.
The short answer
If the person telling the story is happy to type every week for a year, StoryWorth is good and cheap. If they would rather just talk, four of the ten here will listen. If you want a real written book at the end rather than a folder of answers or a subscription website, three of us do that, and the other two start at $1,099 and $3,250.
We are the third. You talk, it writes, and a printed hardcover arrives. The first hour of talking costs nothing and needs no card, so you can find out in ten minutes whether this is for you instead of reading anyone's comparison, including ours.
Try it now, the first hour is free →| Service | Price | Telling it | Who writes | What the finished book is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| StoryWorth | $59 to $199 | Weekly questions for a year; answer by email, on their site, or record by phone | The storyteller; the family edits | The written answers, bound in question order |
| Remento | $99 first year | Weekly prompts; record voice or video in the browser | Software transcribes and polishes each answer | A hardcover of the separate stories, with QR codes that play the recordings |
| Meminto Stories | $99 to $149 | Weekly email prompts; write, speak, or record video | Software turns answers into clean text | A hardcover compiled from the answers, 100 to 300 pages by tier |
| Storii | $9.99/mo or $99.99/yr | Automated phone calls up to three times a week; a landline is enough | Nobody; it transcribes | Audio recordings plus a transcript e-book; print is extra |
| No Story Lost | from ~$1,099 | Two to eight hours of phone interviews with a human | Professional human writers | A ghostwritten coffee-table book in the storyteller's tone |
| Tell Mel | $39 to $219 | An AI telephones the storyteller. No app, no login, no typing | Software writes the chapters | A private memoir website of chapters and the original audio. No printed book |
| Memoirji | first memoir free | WhatsApp, voice or text, in any language, no account needed | Software turns the messages into a narrative | A digital memoir; a printed keepsake is bought separately |
| Willow Stories | €299 first year, then €29 | A private link; family members add at their own pace | Software; several contributors can add to one story | A digital biography, hosted. Hardcover printing from €79 on top |
| StoryTerrace | from $3,250 | Four to ten hours of interviews with a human writer | A professional human ghostwriter | A properly authored 60 to 120 page book, four hardcovers included |
| Biography Machine | €149 | You just talk with the machine, at your own pace, as long as you like | The machine writes a continuous book from your words; nothing invented | An authored 150 to 200 page autobiography with chapters, a thread, and your voice, printed and delivered |
The real difference is not the price, it is the second job
Turning a life into a book is two jobs. The first is collecting the memories. All ten services do that, each in its own way: weekly emails, browser recordings, phone calls, or a conversation.
The second job is the writing: turning hours of scattered telling into a book with chapters, an order that means something, and one voice from the first page to the last. That job is why a ghostwritten book costs from about a thousand dollars at the affordable end, and from $3,250 at StoryTerrace, and why the question-a-week services skip it entirely. What they print is the collection: each answer on its page, in the order the questions came. Families often discover the editing is theirs to do.
There are only four kinds of service here
Ten names, four actual products. Once you see which kind you are looking at, the price differences stop being mysterious.
The question a week. StoryWorth, Meminto. An email arrives, the storyteller answers it, and at the end of the year the answers are bound in the order the questions came. Cheap, well made, and the work sits with the storyteller and then with whoever in the family volunteers to edit.
The voice capture. Remento, Storii, Memoirji, Tell Mel. The storyteller does not type. They speak, into a browser, a telephone, or WhatsApp, and software cleans up what they said. This is a real advance for anyone who never spent their working life at a keyboard. What you receive, though, is the collection again: separate answers, tidied.
The hosted archive. Willow Stories, and Tell Mel again. The product is a private website that holds the chapters, the audio, and the photographs, and keeps growing. Useful for a family that wants a living record everyone can add to. Notice that the renewal never ends, and that the printed book, if you want one, is a separate purchase on top.
The written book. No Story Lost, StoryTerrace, Biography Machine. Someone, or something, reads the whole of what was told and writes a continuous book from it. This is the only kind where a stranger could pick the result off a shelf and read it as a book rather than as a family document.
What it actually costs, including the parts that are not in the headline
Headline prices on this page run from nothing to twenty-four thousand dollars, which tells you less than it appears to. Three things move the real number.
Printing is often extra. Willow charges from €79 to print the hardcover on top of the €299 year. Storii delivers audio and a transcript, with print separate. Memoirji's memoir is free and the keepsake is not. StoryWorth, Meminto, Remento, StoryTerrace and we all include a printed copy in the price.
Some of them never stop charging. Tell Mel renews at $39 a year, Willow at €29, Storii at $99.99. That is reasonable for a service that keeps hosting and keeps interviewing. It is worth knowing that a hosted memoir is a subscription and a printed book is not.
Time is metered in some places and not others. Tell Mel sells interview hours: two a year at the bottom, twenty-four at the top, and $10 an hour beyond that. StoryTerrace sells four to ten hours of a human writer's attention, which is precisely why it costs from $3,250. Storii calls three times a week. StoryWorth asks one question a week for a year. We do not meter it, because the machine's time is not the expensive part.
Where each one fits
StoryWorth suits a storyteller who enjoys writing and a family happy to edit. It is the best-known name, and the book is the storyteller's own words exactly as typed. That is its charm and its limit: someone in the family becomes the editor, and a year of weekly writing is real work for the person telling.
Remento removes the typing: the storyteller talks to a browser, software tidies the words, and QR codes in the book play the original voice. The book remains a collection of separate prompt-stories rather than one continuous account.
Meminto is similar in spirit with tiered page counts, and Storii is the most accessible of all (an ordinary phone call, no internet needed) but by design delivers recordings and transcripts, not a written book.
No Story Lost is the human ghostwriter option, and the only other service here that performs the second job. Real interviewers, real writers, a genuinely authored book, at a price that reflects the human hours.
Tell Mel solves the hardest practical problem on this page: it telephones your mother or your father, and they simply answer the phone. No app, no login, nothing to learn, which for a person in their eighties can be the whole difference between a story told and a story lost. Read the plans carefully though. The $39 tier buys two hours of interview for the year, and a life takes longer than two hours. What you end up with is a hosted memoir website rather than a book on a shelf.
Memoirji is the most generous thing here: the first memoir is free, no card, and it works over WhatsApp in more than thirty languages. If your family speaks a language the others do not serve, or if you want to find out whether an older relative will engage with this at all before anyone spends money, it is the obvious place to begin. The printed keepsake is bought separately.
Willow Stories is built for more than one person. Several relatives contribute to the same record through a private link, which suits a large family or a grandchild organising siblings and cousins. It also continues after a death, and is sold through funeral homes, which tells you honestly what it is for. The hardcover is an extra from €79 and the subscription renews each year.
StoryTerrace is the serious end of the human option: six hundred ghostwriters, a senior writer assigned to you, four to ten hours of interviews, and a properly authored book with four hardcovers, from $3,250. Their PRO package runs to $24,000 with a team of six. If you want a human being to sit with your father and then write like a professional, this is what that costs, and it is not overpriced. It is simply what six hundred writers and ten hours of one of them is worth.
Biography Machine exists because we wanted the second job done without the ghostwriter's price. You talk with the machine the way you would talk to a patient, curious interviewer. It works out what your life was actually about, then writes a continuous 150 to 200 page book in your own voice, with a hard rule underneath: every fact comes from what you said, and anything the machine imagined to fill a scene is shown to you, marked, for you to keep or correct. You read every chapter, change anything, and approve it before it is printed.
Three questions that decide it
Will the storyteller type? If yes, StoryWorth works. If they would rather talk, you need Remento, Storii, or a machine or human that interviews.
Who does the editing? With answer-compilation services, the family does. With a ghostwriter or the Biography Machine, the writing arrives done, and the storyteller approves rather than assembles.
What should the book read like? A keepsake of answers in their own right, or one story with a beginning, a shape, and an ending. Both are legitimate wants. They are different products.
Do you want a book, or a place? This is the newest fork and the easiest to miss. Tell Mel and Willow give you a living website that keeps growing and keeps renewing. StoryWorth, Remento, Meminto, StoryTerrace and we give you an object that arrives and then belongs to you. A website is better while everyone is still adding to it. A book is better in thirty years, in a box in an attic, when the subscription is long cancelled and the company may not exist.
Questions people actually ask
Is there a free StoryWorth alternative? Memoirji gives you your first memoir free, over WhatsApp, with no card and no account. Several others run free trials. Printing is the part nobody gives away, because paper costs money.
What if my mother will not use a computer? Then the shortlist is short. Tell Mel and Storii telephone her, and a landline is enough for Storii. Memoirji needs only WhatsApp. We need a phone or a browser and someone to press one button. StoryWorth, which is the famous one, expects her to type every week for a year.
Which of these gives a book a stranger would read as a book? No Story Lost, StoryTerrace and Biography Machine. The rest produce a collection of answers or a website, which is a different and perfectly good thing, but it is not a narrative.
Why is StoryTerrace so much more expensive? Because a professional writer spends four to ten hours interviewing and then weeks writing. That is the true cost of the second job when a human does it. Our whole reason for existing is that we thought the second job could be done without those hours.
Can I see a finished book before I decide? Yes, and you should ask every service on this page for one. Ours is readable in full here, a real life, not a sample.
Start my own book, first hour free →Also useful: what it costs to have someone write a book about your life, from €149 to $100,000.
More in the reading room: every piece we have written about recording a life, what it costs, and why most people stop.