If you have decided to have someone's life story turned into a book, the next question is which service to use, and the prices run from £49 to well over £18,000. The cheap end sends weekly questions by email and prints whatever gets typed back. The expensive end sends a human writer to interview them for ten hours. The middle is where almost everyone actually buys, and what separates the middle is not price. It is whether your relative has to write, whether there is a clock running, whether anyone asks a follow-up question, and what you are handing over on the day.
A disclosure, up front. Chronicle is one of the services below. We have written the comparison we wanted when we were researching this category, which means showing the rows where we lose as plainly as the rows where we do well. Every figure was checked on the company's own pricing page on 22 and 23 September 2026. Prices move; verify before you buy.
In brief
- The usable range is roughly £49 to £399. Above that you are paying for a human ghostwriter, which is a different product.
- The biggest practical difference is whether your relative types their answers or speaks them.
- Some services run a one-year clock and renew annually. Others are one-off with no expiry. Check which.
- Ask every service what happens if the storyteller stops halfway. The answers differ a lot.
- Nothing here is a bad product. They are built for different families.
The services, compared
| Service | Price | Clock | How the story is captured | Printed book included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Storyworth | £49 · £89 · £159 | A year of questions, then £90 annual renewal | Typed answers. Voice from £89. Guided phone interviews on £159 | Yes: one, or two on £159 |
| Remento | £75 | A year of prompts | Spoken. A weekly prompt arrives, they talk into any device | Yes: one full-colour hardback |
| StoryKeeper | £79 | None | Typed, dictated, audio or video | Yes: one hardcover, free UK delivery |
| Chronicle | £99 · £199 · £399 | None | A guided conversation, spoken or typed, across thirteen sessions | Not on £99, a digital edition. Yes on £199 and £399, printed in the UK |
| StoryTerrace | From £2,600. Their PRO line starts at £18,500 | A project, roughly five months | A human ghostwriter interviews them for four to ten hours | Yes: four copies |
The four questions that decide it
1. Will they write, or will they talk?
This determines whether you end up with a book at all. Services built around typing send a question and expect prose back, which works beautifully for people who enjoy writing and stalls completely for people who do not. The commonest failure here is not a bad book. It is an unfinished one, abandoned in February by someone for whom a weekly writing task felt like homework.
Remento built its entire product around that problem, and its founder is explicit that it came from watching his mother abandon a memoir-writing book. StoryKeeper takes dictation or video. Storyworth added voice from its middle tier.
Chronicle takes it either way, and mixes the two: they can speak or type in any session, switch between them, and when they speak they see the transcription and can correct anything it misheard before it goes anywhere. That last part matters more than it sounds. Accents, names and places are where speech-to-text fails, and those are exactly the words a life story is made of.
2. Is there a clock?
Storyworth states a year of questions and a £90 annual renewal. Remento describes a year of prompts, and notes you keep access to your recordings even if you do not renew. StoryKeeper markets no time limit. Chronicle is one-off with no clock.
One clarification, because it would be unfair to leave it hanging: you do not have to renew to get a book. Storyworth includes at least one with every plan and their FAQ confirms you can order it after the year expires. What is worth checking is what happens if the year runs out and the story is not finished – Storyworth asks you to order within three months of expiry, or renew to keep writing, so the decision then is print what you have or pay again. Their Unlimited plan auto-renews unless you switch it off; Basic and Color do not.
This is also the point at which to ask every service the harder question: what happens if they stop halfway? Chronicle's answer is that you get a finished book from whatever exists, whatever happens, with sixty days' money back on top. Ask the others what theirs is, because it decides whether an unfinished year leaves you with something or nothing.
So the honest comparison is not £49 against £199. It is one year, one book and a decision at the end, against no clock and finish whenever. If the person you are buying for will work steadily through a year of questions, the lower price is real and worth weighing. If they will not, the year stops being a deadline and becomes the reason the book never gets finished.
3. A list of prompts, or a conversation?
This is the difference that shows up in the finished book rather than at checkout, and it is the hardest thing to judge from a pricing page.
Most services work from a prompt library. A question goes out, an answer comes back, that answer becomes a chapter. The libraries are large and well made, and some personalise: Storyworth's Color plan includes questions written for your storyteller, and Remento lets you pick prompts and upload photos to prompt from.
What a prompt cannot do is react. What was your wedding day like? produces a paragraph about a wedding day. It does not notice your mother mentioned, in passing, that her father did not come, and it does not ask why. That second question is where the story actually is.
Chronicle is built around the second question. When something surfaces with any feeling in it, the interviewer works through the same five moves a good interviewer makes: take me into that moment, what did it look like, who else was there, what were you thinking right then, and why has it stayed with you. That sequence comes from established life-story interview research rather than from us, and it sits underneath a bank of 210 questions across thirteen chapters you can rename or remove before it starts.
We are not claiming this equals what a professional writer gets from ten hours in someone's front room. It does not, and we say so below. The narrower claim is the one we stand behind: being asked a follow-up gets you somewhere a list of questions does not.
4. What are you handing over on the day?
If this is a present, the book cannot exist yet. It gets made out of stories they have not told you. So every service hands over something that stands in for it, and it is worth checking what.
With Chronicle an invitation lands at a time of your choosing: a personal note with their first chapter ready to begin. That is the gift, which is why there is no order-by date and no posting deadline. You could order on Christmas Eve and it still works. Others handle this differently – read their gift pages rather than assuming.
If you are looking for a Storyworth alternative in the UK
People arrive here wanting one of three things.
- They would rather speak than type. Remento, StoryKeeper and Chronicle all take spoken answers, Remento at the lowest price. Only Chronicle asks a follow-up based on what was just said, and only Chronicle lets them switch to typing mid-session.
- No annual renewal. StoryKeeper and Chronicle are both one-off with no expiry. We cannot claim that one as ours alone.
- Something made closer to home. Chronicle's books are printed and bound in the UK on the £199 and £399 tiers. StoryKeeper also delivers free within the UK, so this is a narrower difference than it was a year ago, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
Where Chronicle is the right choice
When you do not know how they will take to it. They can speak, type, or move between the two session by session, correcting the transcription as they go. The sessions are a conversation rather than a questionnaire, and the follow-up is the whole point.
When nobody in the family has time to run it. There is no project to manage. Reminders keep them moving, they pause whenever they like, and nothing expires, so it can take a fortnight or two years.
When the family is large, or scattered. Every tier produces a full-colour digital edition the whole family can read, with sharing included throughout. A printed book goes to whoever you post it to. The digital edition goes to everyone at once, which for families spread across countries is often the part that matters most.
When you would rather decide about printing later. This is the case for the £99 tier, and it is not the consolation prize it looks like in the table. Start there, let them tell the whole story, share it with everyone, and then decide about print once you can see the finished thing and know how many copies the family actually wants. Upgrading to Memoir or Heirloom costs only the difference, so nothing is wasted by starting at the bottom. It also means you are not betting £199 or £399 on whether they will take to it before they have begun.
When the finished object matters. Memoir is a full-colour casebound hardback on 130gsm paper. Heirloom is Smyth Sewn – thread-sewn sections that let the book open flat – on 150gsm, with a ribbon marker and printed endpapers. Both A5, both printed and bound in the UK.
When you want to see it first. Try a story yourself in a few minutes without paying, and read a sample chapter to judge the writing. We would rather you did that than take our word for any of this.
Where Chronicle is not the right choice
If price decides it and they are happy to type, buy Storyworth. £49 with a printed book is below anything we offer, and a willing writer will get a real book out of it. Not every family needs what the extra buys.
If you want a printed book under £100, do not buy our £99 tier. It is a digital edition. Storyworth at £49, Remento at £75 and StoryKeeper at £79 all include a hardback. Ours starts at £199.
If you have already decided you want a human writer, use StoryTerrace. Four to ten hours with a professional ghostwriter is a different thing from what any software-led service does. Note that £2,600 is an entry price for their shortest Classic package: longer books, more interview hours and their PRO line all cost considerably more, so get a quote for what you actually want rather than assuming the headline figure.
If you want a proven track record, weigh the review counts. StoryKeeper has over a thousand Trustpilot reviews, Remento around 1,500, and Storyworth has been printing books since 2012. Chronicle is newer than all of them. That is fair to hold against us.
How to check this yourself
On each pricing page, look for five things: the headline price, whether "annual", "renewal" or "per year" appears near it, what the person has to do to produce the content, whether a printed book is included or extra, and what additional copies cost. That last one catches people out. Most families want more than one copy, every service charges separately for them, and the per-copy price varies a great deal between them. Check ours alongside everyone else's before you commit, not after.
And there is one more we are deliberately not answering for you: who ends up owning the story. Open each company's terms and search for "licence". You are looking for how broad the rights are that you grant over what your relative records, and whether you can withdraw them later. Terms change, and we are not going to characterise four companies' legal documents and risk getting one wrong. Read them yourself. It takes five minutes and it is the part of this decision that is hardest to undo.
If you are still working out what one of these books actually is, what is a life story book covers it without the shopping list.
And if you want to judge Chronicle rather than read about it, the honest order is: try a story for a few minutes to see what being interviewed feels like, read a sample chapter to see what comes out the other end, then look at the pricing. If it is not for you, one of the others above probably is, and we would rather you bought that than nothing at all.
Prices and features checked 22 and 23 September 2026 against each company's own public pricing page. We review this post quarterly. If you spot something out of date, tell us and we will correct it.