The comparison

Vellum vs Tinybeans

Tinybeans is a shared family album with the grandparents in it. Vellum is a private archive one parent builds to hand over. If you got here searching for a Tinybeans alternative, the useful first fact is that the two apps are doing different jobs — which is what makes an honest comparison possible.

Every claim about Tinybeans on this page carries the date it was checked, in the page itself and in its source. Nothing here is guessed.

The short version

Tinybeans is a shared album for the extended family. You post photos of your kid; grandparents, aunts and uncles follow along and comment. It's built for an audience that loves the same child from four different cities, and it has been doing that job for years.

Vellum is a private archive for one household. It asks you one question and one small mission a day, files every answer with the prompt that caused it, and builds something you eventually hand to your kid. Nobody follows it. There is no feed. It isn't made for the audience — it's made for the person it's about.

One more piece of the map: Tinybeans has owned Qeepsake, the text-message journaling app, since November 2025. If a prompted journal is the thing you're actually shopping for, the closer comparison is Vellum vs Qeepsake.

What a Tinybeans alternative needs to get right

People rarely switch because they want a different feed. The searches behind this page are about specific things: whether there's advertising near a child's photos, what the free tier actually holds, what a year costs, and what happens to the archive when the paying stops. Those are the rows below.

Prices in this category move — Tinybeans raised its annual price by roughly 87% in 2024 — which is why every number here carries the date it was checked, and gets re-checked.

Tinybeans figures verified August 17, 2026 · re-checked quarterly

Vellum and Tinybeans, side by side. An em dash means the feature doesn't exist there.
Dimension	Vellum	Tinybeans
What it's for	A private archive one parent builds to hand over	A shared album the whole family follows
Ads	None, on any tier	Shown on the free tier
Free tier	Every prompt, forever. 100 photos, lifetime	About 20 uploads a month, with ads
Price	$59.99/yr or $5.99/mo	$74.99/yr or $7.99/mo
Daily prompts	One question and one small mission a day, never metered	—
What's stored with a moment	The answer, the date, and the question that caused it	The photo, and the family's comments on it
Export	Full, free, always — with an offline viewer included	Limited
If you stop paying	Free tier. Everything stays readable; text is never deleted	Drops to the free tier
Platforms	iPhone only	iOS, Android, and web

The real differences

Where they differ most

Three of those rows are the whole decision. Here they are without the table around them.

The ads question

Tinybeans shows advertising on its free tier, alongside the photos. That's a normal way to pay for free storage, and it isn't hidden — it's the business model. Vellum has no ads on any tier, because a private record of a child shouldn't have a second customer. Neither position is a trick. They're two different answers to the question of who pays, and the useful test is which answer you want to live with for eighteen years.

What travels with the moment

Tinybeans stores what you decide to post. Vellum asks first — one question, one small mission — and stores the question with whatever it produced. A picture of a half-eaten sandwich is nothing; the same picture filed under “what will they eat only if it's cut a specific way” is a story. Twenty years from now, that's the difference between scrolling and finding.

What happens when you stop paying

On Tinybeans, lapsing means dropping to the free tier: about 20 uploads a month, with ads displayed. On Vellum, lapsing means the same free tier everyone else gets. The whole archive stays readable, text and did-it entries never stop, and the complete export stays free — forever, including the offline viewer. The full policy, including what happens if we're the ones who go away, is written out on the promise page.

Choose Tinybeans if

You want grandparents in it daily — comments, reactions, an activity feed the whole family checks.
You need Android or a web browser today. Vellum has neither.
You want printed books and photo products from the same app.
Sharing photos is the point, and a caption is all the context you want.

That's a real list, not a formality. If the job is keeping a far-flung family looking at the same kid, Tinybeans is built for exactly that, and it's good at it.

Choose Vellum if

You want a private record, not a feed. Nobody sees it unless you invite them.
You want to be asked, instead of having to think of what's worth saving.
You want the question stored with the moment, so you can find it in twenty years.
You're building something to hand over one day, as a real object your kid can keep.
You never want advertising near any of it, on any tier, at any scale.

Where Vellum is weak today

As of August 17, 2026: Vellum is iPhone only. There is no Android app, no web app, and no printed books. It has no users yet, so it has no reviews — and there are no testimonials on this site, because inventing them would be worse than not having them. It's built by one person; Tinybeans is an established company that has run this category for years.

If any of that is disqualifying, Tinybeans is the safer choice today, and it would be odd for a page about honesty to pretend otherwise. The export exists so that choosing Vellum anyway never has to be a permanent bet on us.

Still deciding?

The comparison most people should read first is the one against the camera roll you already have — it's the objection everyone actually has. And the pricing page says exactly what Vellum costs before anyone asks you for a card.

Get tomorrow's prompt

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