Trove vs Tinybeans: Which Family Photo App Is Right for You?
Short answer
Tinybeans built the most thorough milestone checklist in the category — 300+ entries, and journal prompts good enough that people actually write. Credit where it is due. It is also $74.99 a year now, and it is still a place your family has to remember to visit. Trove marks the same moments as they happen — first steps, first words, first tooth, birthdays — and then does the part Tinybeans leaves to you: every Sunday it emails the week to every grandparent, aunt and uncle on your list, none of whom install an app or make an account. Free, for unlimited photos, children and recipients. Pay Tinybeans for the checklist. Use Trove for the audience.
Tinybeans is one of the oldest and best-known private family photo apps, and for a long time it was the default recommendation. Then in 2024 it raised its subscription by roughly 87%, to $74.99 a year, and a lot of parents started looking around.
We build Trove, so treat our opinion accordingly. What follows is the factual comparison, including the two things Tinybeans genuinely does better than we do.
At a glance
| Trove | Tinybeans | |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | Free forever, unlimited photos | Limited; most features are paid |
| Paid plan | $4.99/mo or $39.99/yr | $74.99/yr |
| Works without an app for relatives | ||
| How family sees photos | Emailed weekly newsletter | They open the app |
| Milestone tracking | First steps, first words, first tooth, birthdays, custom | 300+ tracked milestones |
| Journal prompts | ||
| Photo curation | AI picks the best shots | You choose |
| Smart photo search | Faces, people and places | |
| Automatic face grouping | ||
| "This time last year" resurfacing | ||
| Unlimited recipients | Invite-only, capped by plan | |
| Photo books |
Where Tinybeans is genuinely better
Tinybeans is the more exhaustive product in one specific respect, and it is worth saying where.
The size of the milestone checklist. Both apps track milestones — Trove marks moments as first steps, first words, first tooth, birthdays, holidays, graduations or a custom label of your own, and those moments lead the weekly newsletter and come back as flashbacks a year later. Tinybeans ships a far longer pre-written checklist, 300+ entries with developmental context. If you want a clinical-style checklist to tick through, that is genuinely more thorough. If you want the moments that actually happened, marked as they happen and then shown to your family, Trove does that and Tinybeans does not.
Journal prompts. Tinybeans nudges you to write, and the prompts are good. Trove takes the other route: it writes the weekly summary for you from your captions, so the words get recorded without you having to sit down to a blank box. Different bet on what people will actually keep doing.
These are not mutually exclusive
Some families run both — Tinybeans as the private journal, Trove as the thing that gets photos out to relatives. Trove is free, so this costs nothing extra to try.
Where Trove is genuinely better
The difference that matters most is not a feature. It is delivery.
Tinybeans, like almost every app in this category, is a destination. You post photos, and relatives see them if and when they open the app. In practice, the pattern is familiar: everyone installs it in the first excited month, grandparents check it weekly, then monthly, then not at all. The photos are there. Nobody is looking at them.
Trove inverts that. You upload photos during the week, and every Sunday it emails a curated newsletter — the best shots, laid out properly, with a short written summary — to everyone on your list. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, the family friend who is not technically family. They need no app and no account. If they can receive email, they are already set up.
- Nothing to install for recipients, so nobody is excluded by a phone they find confusing.
- Unlimited recipients on the free plan — there is no per-seat cost to adding another grandparent.
- AI picks the photos, so there is no weekly editing chore that you will eventually skip.
- Arrives on a schedule, so seeing the kids becomes a habit rather than an errand.
The second difference is price. Trove's free plan includes unlimited photos, unlimited children and unlimited newsletter recipients. Tinybeans at $74.99 a year is the most expensive option in the whole category.
Pricing, in detail
| Trove | Tinybeans | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost to start | $0 | $0, limited |
| Annual cost | $0, or $39.99 for Premium | $74.99 |
| Cost per extra recipient | $0 | $0, but each needs the app |
| What you pay for | Ad-free, branding, highlight reels, book credit | Full app access |
Worth being precise about what Trove's paid tier is for: the free plan is not a trial. The weekly newsletter, unlimited photos and unlimited recipients are all free permanently. Premium at $39.99/year removes ads from the newsletter and adds custom branding, multiple newsletter streams, monthly highlight reels and a free hardcover book each year.
The short version
- Pick Trove ifyour real problem is that relatives never see the photos. Free, and they need no app.
- Pick Tinybeans ifyou want structured milestone tracking and journal prompts, and $74.99/year is worth it for that.
- Honestly, for most familiesTrove. It is free, it costs nothing per extra relative, and it is the only one of the two where the photos actually arrive. Milestone tracking is a real reason to pay Tinybeans — "nobody opened it again" is not.
Is Tinybeans still free in 2026?+
Tinybeans has a limited free tier, but most of what people use it for now sits behind the subscription, which is $74.99 a year after an increase of roughly 87% in 2024. Trove's free plan has no time limit and includes unlimited photos, children and newsletter recipients.
Can I export my photos out of Tinybeans?+
Yes, Tinybeans provides a way to download your content, and you should do that before cancelling any subscription. As a general rule, never let a single app be the only copy of your family photos — keep an original archive somewhere you control.
Do grandparents need a smartphone to use Trove?+
No. Trove's weekly newsletter is an ordinary email. It renders on a phone, a tablet, an old desktop computer, or anything else that opens email. There is no app to install and no account to create, which is the single biggest reason relatives stop looking at photos in other apps.
Does Trove have a milestone tracker?+
No. That is Tinybeans' clearest advantage. Trove is built around getting photos to the people who want to see them, not around structured developmental tracking. If milestone logging is your priority, Tinybeans does it better.
What happens to my photos if I stop paying?+
With Trove, nothing — the free plan is the product, and Premium only adds extras on top. Your photos, your newsletter and your recipients all keep working. Check the current terms of any app before you rely on this, because policies change.
Try the thing Tinybeans does not do
Upload your photos. Every Sunday, Trove emails a beautiful newsletter to your whole family. No app for them, no cost for you.
Get Trove — FreePricing and features were checked on August 17, 2026. Competitors change their plans — if you spot something out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
