How much does Storyworth cost? $69 to $199 a year.
Storyworth costs $69 to $199 a year. The Basic plan is $69 and prints one black-and-white hardcover. The Color plan is $99 and prints one full-color book with phone recording. The Unlimited plan is $199, prints two color books, adds weekly guided phone interviews, and renews at $99 a year. Prices checked 17 September 2026.
Storyworth pricing in 2026, plan by plan
Storyworth sells three annual plans for its Memoirs product. Each one includes a year of weekly questions and at least one printed hardcover. What separates them is whether the interior prints in color, whether the storyteller can use their voice, and how many books and storytellers the plan covers.
Here is the same three plans by feature, which is the comparison the price alone does not give you.
| Basic $69 | Color $99 | Unlimited $199 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Books included | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Interior | Black and white, up to 480 pages | Full color, up to 300 pages | Full color, up to 300 pages each |
| Questions arrive | Email or text | Email or text | |
| Voice recording | None | Phone recording, auto-transcribed | Phone recording |
| Guided phone interviews | No | No | Weekly, per storyteller |
| Family Calls | No | One a month | Weekly, per storyteller |
| Personalized questions | No | Yes | Yes |
| Built-in proofreader | No | Yes | Yes |
| Storytellers | One | One | Unlimited while active |
| Renews | No | No | Yes, at $99 a year |
Two things in that table do more work than the price does. Voice recording starts at Color, so the $69 plan is a typing plan. And guided phone interviews, the feature closest to an actual interview, exist only on Unlimited.
Storyworth also sells Celebrations, a separate format that collects stories from many people rather than one. It is free to start and you pay only for books, at $79 up to 300 pages or $99 up to 480. It has no question prompts, so it is a group keepsake rather than a memoir.
Why does Storyworth say $59 when the plan card says $69?
Because two different numbers are live on Storyworth's own site at the same time, and they have been for weeks.
Every buy button on the home page and the gift page reads "starting at $59". The FAQ block at the foot of the pricing page says a Basic plan is $59 and a Color plan is $109. Scroll up that same pricing page to the plan cards, the part that lists what you actually get, and they read $69 and $99. The help center's book-pricing article agrees with the plan cards.
We report $69 and $99 because those are the numbers attached to the feature lists and corroborated in the help center, and because a "starting at" line on a landing page is the surface most likely to go stale. Unlimited is $199 everywhere, on every surface, with no disagreement.
This matters in a specific way. The old pair, $59 and $109, is what almost every page currently ranking for Storyworth pricing still quotes, ourselves included until this update. If you were shown $59, expect $69 on the plan card, and check the total on the payment screen before you confirm. It is a $10 swing on Basic and a $10 saving on Color, not a trap, but it is the kind of thing a pricing page should say out loud.
Is there a $20 per page charge on Storyworth?
No, and this is the most expensive misreading in circulation.
The Color plan caps its full-color interior at 300 pages. Storyworth's help center describes what happens above that cap in plain terms: the Color plan includes "one full-color book up to 300 pages, with an additional 180 pages available for $20, paid at the time of printing". Its printing-costs article says the same thing again, that you "pay $20 at the time of printing to cover the additional pages up to the max of 480 pages".
That is twenty dollars, once, to unlock the remaining 180 pages.
Two of the pages ranking on the first result page for Storyworth pricing describe it instead as a per-page surcharge, one of them explicitly as "a +$20/page surplus fee at print time". Read literally, that turns a $20 charge into $3,600 and would make a long memoir cost more than a ghostwriter. It is not what Storyworth charges, and a buyer who believes it will pick the wrong plan or abandon the purchase.
We had our own version of this error on another page and corrected it rather than deleting it, because a pricing page that will not admit a correction is not a pricing page worth trusting.
What Storyworth actually costs a family, not one buyer
The plan price is the price of one book for one storyteller. Almost nobody stops there.
Extra copies are the big line. Additional books cost $79 in full color up to 300 pages, $99 in full color above that, and $39 for a black-and-white interior with a color cover. Unlimited takes $10 off each. Three siblings who each want a color copy add $237 to a $99 plan, which is more than the plan itself.
The page unlock. A color book past 300 pages costs $20 once at printing to reach the 480-page maximum. On a talkative storyteller with a year of weekly answers and a lot of photographs, this is a normal thing to hit rather than an edge case.
The renewal, but only on one plan. Unlimited auto-renews at $99 a year until you cancel. Basic and Color do not renew on their own. A buyer who renews Unlimited for a second storyteller has spent $298 across two years.
Shipping. Economy shipping inside the US is free for the book included with a subscription. Faster shipping and extra copies are priced at order time by destination and quantity, and international orders can attract customs or import fees paid by the recipient. Third-party breakdowns quote international shipping anywhere from $10 to $40 a book, and they disagree with each other, so treat the number on the order screen as the only real one.
Put together, the common case lands somewhere between $130 and $220: the Color plan, one or two extra copies, and the page unlock if the book runs long. A single buyer on Basic who wants one black-and-white book pays $69 and nothing more, and that is a genuinely cheap way to end up with a printed memoir. A family of four each wanting a color copy is closer to $340.
The whole memoir market, from a bound transcript to a five-figure ghostwriter, is on one table in how much it costs to make a memoir book. What buyers make of Storyworth in practice, renewal complaints and shipping delays included, is collected in Storyworth reviews.
Which Storyworth plan do you actually need?
Is Storyworth worth it?
For a specific buyer, clearly yes. Storyworth has printed a million books since 2013, it is the cheapest credible way to get a parent's stories into a hardcover, and at $69 the downside is small. If the storyteller is a willing writer who will answer a question a week for a year, it does the job and very little else on the market comes close on price.
The failure mode is not the price. It is the calendar. Storyworth is fifty-two weekly prompts spread across twelve months, and the most common bad outcome in its own review corpus is a subscription that stalls in month three and prints a thin book in month twelve. Nothing in the product can fix that, because the product is a year of reminders and the constraint is a person's willingness to keep going.
That is the question worth asking before the price question: not "can we afford $99", but "will this still be happening in March".
Buy Storyworth if the storyteller likes writing, if a year of weekly prompts sounds like a pleasure rather than a chore, or if you want the cheapest printed memoir that exists. It is the incumbent for good reasons, and on the Color and Unlimited plans it records real voice, keeps the audio, and hands you a free audiobook. We are not going to pretend otherwise.
We are the better answer when the project needs to finish rather than run for a year. Yourtale is $199 once. An AI interviewer asks about a life across as many sessions as it takes, up to 25 hours, and follows up on what was actually said. We draft each chapter from the recordings, you edit the book yourself before it prints, and you keep the real voice recordings and the full transcripts. There is no annual renewal and no feature held back behind a tier.
One subscription every year, or one book once
The two products are priced on different shapes, and that is the comparison rather than the headline number.
Storyworth is a subscription. You pay for a year, the storyteller answers one question a week, and a hardcover prints at the end of that year if the year went well. Want a second storyteller or a second book, and you are paying again. The features are split across three tiers, so the version most families actually want is the $99 one and not the $69 one.
Yourtale is one payment of $199, with no renewal and no tiers. The interviews are voice from the start, the book is drafted from what was said rather than assembled from answers in prompt order, and you edit it yourself before anything prints. You keep the recordings and the transcripts.
For the ghostwriting tier above both of these, at $3,250 and up, see Storyworth vs StoryTerrace vs Yourtale. For the wider field of subscription and one-time services, see six Storyworth alternatives that ship a real book.
What a Yourtale memoir costs
- Up to 25 hours of interviews with an AI interviewer
- A hardcover book, written from her own words, yours to review and approve
- Her real voice archive, the actual recordings, kept for the family
- Full transcripts and a lifetime cloud archive
- Unlimited photo upload, up to 100 AI restorations
- The first printed copy, free shipping in the US
- Full refund after the first session if it isn't for you
Every dollar is a real competitor's real price. You pay $199, one time, the founding rate while we print the first ten books.
No card to start, and no card yet at all. We are finishing the first books by hand, so the checkout is not open. Ten minutes a day are free until it is, and we will send one email the day the book can be ordered.
Questions
How much does Storyworth cost?
Storyworth costs $69 to $199 a year, checked 17 September 2026. The Basic plan is $69 and prints one black-and-white hardcover up to 480 pages. The Color plan is $99 and prints one full-color hardcover up to 300 pages. The Unlimited plan is $199, prints two full-color hardcovers, adds weekly guided phone interviews, and auto-renews at $99 a year.
Why does Storyworth say $59 on its buy buttons?
Every buy button on Storyworth's home and gift pages reads "starting at $59", and the FAQ block at the foot of its pricing page says Basic $59 and Color $109. The plan cards higher up that same pricing page say $69 and $99, and the help center agrees with the plan cards. The $59 and $109 figures look like marketing copy that has not been updated. Check the total on the payment screen before you confirm.
Is Storyworth a one-time payment or a subscription?
It is an annual subscription. You pay for a year of weekly questions and a hardcover is printed at the end of it. Only the Unlimited plan auto-renews, at $99 a year until you cancel. Basic and Color simply end, and Storyworth emails you the option to renew.
Does the Storyworth price include the book?
Yes. Every plan includes at least one printed hardcover, and Unlimited includes two. The Basic book has a black-and-white interior with a color cover. The Color and Unlimited books are full color. Economy shipping inside the US is free for the book included with a subscription.
Is there a $20 per page charge on Storyworth?
No, and this is the most commonly repeated error about Storyworth's pricing. A Color book is capped at 300 pages, and Storyworth's help center states that the additional 180 pages are "available for $20, paid at the time of printing". That is $20 once, not $20 a page. Several pages currently ranking for Storyworth pricing describe it as a per-page fee, which would turn a $20 charge into $3,600.
How much do extra Storyworth copies cost?
Extra copies are $79 for a full-color book up to 300 pages, $99 for a full-color book up to 480 pages, and $39 for a black-and-white interior with a color cover up to 480 pages. The Unlimited plan takes $10 off each additional book. Copies are the line that moves a family's total most, because every sibling who wants one is another $39 to $99.
Can you cancel Storyworth after one year?
Basic and Color do not renew on their own, so there is nothing to cancel. Unlimited auto-renews at $99 a year and can be cancelled at any time. Storyworth also offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. After a plan ends you keep account access to edit stories, add to them, and order new copies.
What does Storyworth really cost a family?
Around $130 to $220 for the common case: the $99 Color plan, plus one or two extra copies at $79 each, plus the $20 page unlock if the book runs past 300 pages. A single buyer taking Basic and one book pays $69 and nothing more. A family of four each wanting a color copy is closer to $340.
Does Storyworth record your voice?
On the paid-up plans, yes. Color adds phone recording with automatic transcription. Unlimited adds weekly guided phone interviews that ask follow-ups during the call. Recordings stay on the account, the printed memoir carries a QR code to them, and a free audiobook is downloadable. The $69 Basic plan has no voice recording at all.
Is Yourtale cheaper than Storyworth?
It depends what you compare. Storyworth's entry plan is $69 for one year and a black-and-white book. Yourtale is $199 once, with no renewal, for a full-color hardcover, up to 25 hours of interviews with an AI interviewer, and the real voice recordings and transcripts kept for the family. One is a yearly subscription with features split across tiers, the other is a single payment with nothing withheld.
What do you get for Yourtale's price?
Up to 25 hours of interviews with an AI interviewer, a full-color hardcover drafted from the recordings and edited by you, the real voice recordings and full transcripts kept for the family, unlimited photo upload with up to 100 AI restorations, and the first printed copy. One book, one price of $199, no subscription.