Dear You vs Tinybeans: an honest comparison

These two apps get lumped together, but they're built for different jobs. Tinybeans is a private photo-sharing feed for your extended family. Dear You is a daily journal written to your kids. Plenty of families could reasonably use both — here's how to tell which one you actually need.

Prices and features verified July 2026 — subject to change; see each provider's site for current pricing.

At a glance

  Dear You Tinybeans
Core job Daily one-line journal, written to each kid Private photo/video feed for family
Free tier Unlimited memories & kids, no ads 20 uploads/month, with ads
Full price $44.99/yr or $4.99/mo $74.99/yr or $7.99/mo
Ads Never, on any plan On the free tier
Written memories The whole point Captions and milestone tags
Printed book 25% off with annual plan Extra cost
Audience You and your kids, someday The grandparent audience, today
Platforms iOS iOS, Android, web
Company Bootstrapped by a parent Public company (ASX-listed)

The core difference: an audience vs. a record

Tinybeans is at its best as a Facebook-replacement for families: you post photos, grandma gets a daily email, everyone hearts everything. If your main problem is "my in-laws want photos and I refuse to put my kids on Instagram," Tinybeans solves it well and has since 2012.

But an audience changes what you post. Feeds fill with the photogenic moments — the pumpkin patch, the birthday cake — and quietly skip the ordinary ones: what she mispronounced, what he asked at bedtime, the thing that made everyone laugh at dinner. Those are the memories that actually vanish, and a photo feed doesn't catch them, because they're not photos.

Dear You is built for exactly that layer: one line a day, written to each kid, in your voice. No audience to perform for. The photo anchors the memory; the sentence is the memory.

Pricing (and the price-hike history)

Tinybeans' free tier caps you at 20 uploads a month and includes ads; the full product, Tinybeans+, costs $74.99/year or $7.99/month — a price that jumped roughly 87% in 2024, to sustained frustration from long-time users. Dear You's core app is free with no caps and no ads — unlimited memories, unlimited kids — and the full annual plan is $44.99, with a 25% discount on the printed book. Dear You is independent and bootstrapped; there are no quarterly earnings pressuring the price.

Choose Tinybeans if…

  • Your main goal is sharing photos with extended family, especially less-techy grandparents — the email digests are genuinely good
  • You need Android or web access
  • You want bulk photo and video storage (200GB on Tinybeans+)

Choose Dear You if…

  • You want to write down memories, not just photograph them
  • You want free to actually mean free — unlimited, no ads, no upload caps
  • You want a discount on the keepsake baked in: the $44.99 annual plan gets you 25% off your printed book
  • The journal is for your kids to read someday, not for a feed today

FAQ

Yes. Dear You's core app is free with no upload caps or ads, while Tinybeans' free tier is limited to 20 uploads a month with ads. At full price, Dear You is $44.99/year with a 25% discount on the printed book, vs $74.99/year for Tinybeans+ (books cost extra).
Tinybeans shows ads on its free tier; Tinybeans+ removes them. Dear You has no ads on any plan.
Yes, and some families do: Tinybeans as the photo feed for grandparents, Dear You as the journal you write to your kids that becomes a printed book.

Comparing other memory apps? See Dear You vs Qeepsake or Dear You vs 1 Second Everyday.