You want an app that tracks your baby's milestones and lets you share photos with family without blasting them across social media. Simple enough. But the moment you start looking, you find out that "simple" apparently costs $8 a month and still shows you ads.
Here's the thing most comparison posts won't tell you: the two biggest names in this space — Tinybeans and FamilyAlbum — don't actually track milestones. Not real ones. Not the kind your pediatrician asks about. They store photos and let you share them. That's it. If you want structured milestone tracking based on actual pediatric guidelines, there's really only one option right now.
Aanvi
Aanvi is built around one idea the other apps skip entirely: your baby's development matters as much as their photos.
The app uses the CDC's developmental milestone checklist as the backbone of its tracking. That means 40+ structured milestones across physical, social, and cognitive categories — not freeform journaling where you type "she smiled today!" and hope you remember the context later. When your pediatrician asks "is she rolling over yet?" or "does he respond to his name?", you have the actual answer with the actual date.
That alone sets Aanvi apart. Neither Tinybeans nor FamilyAlbum offers anything like it.
Everything else it does
Photo, video, and quote capture with an age-aware timeline that shows your baby's exact age alongside every memory. Family sharing with defined roles — grandma, grandpa, aunts, uncles — so everyone gets the right access without you managing permissions constantly. A globe view that pins memories to locations on a map. Multi-baby support. Privacy controls that let you keep certain moments parent-only.
Aanvi costs $6.99/month or $49.99/year, with a 7-day free trial. No free tier, but also no ads, no upload limits, and no feature gating. One plan, everything included. No tiers to compare, no features locked behind a higher subscription.
It's indie-built by one developer, not a corporate team. That comes with trade-offs: smaller user base, updates from one person instead of a team of 50. But it also means no business model pressure pushing toward ad revenue and growth metrics over your family's privacy.
The free tools
Aanvi also has 30+ free web tools that work without downloading anything or creating an account. Sleep calculator, growth percentile checker, feeding schedule, diaper size guide, contraction timer, due date calculator. None of the other apps offer anything like this.
How the alternatives compare
So what about the big names? Here's where Tinybeans and FamilyAlbum actually stand.
Tinybeans
Tinybeans has been around since 2012. It has over 150,000 five-star reviews across app stores. The design is clean, the onboarding is smooth, and grandparents generally figure it out without a phone call.
The catch is the free plan. You get 20 uploads per month. Twenty. If your baby does something cute on March 21st and you've already uploaded 20 photos that month, you're either waiting until April or paying up.
Videos on the free plan are capped at 30 seconds, which means you'll capture the buildup to your baby's first steps but not the actual steps. Even on the paid plan, you still see ads.
What Tinybeans costs
Tinybeans+ runs $7.99/month or roughly $50-75/year depending on the plan you pick. That gets you unlimited uploads, 5-minute videos, and 200GB of storage — but you still see ads even on the paid plan. There's also a "Hidden Moments" feature that lets you hide certain photos from certain family members, which is only available on the paid plan.
The problems
The upload cap on the free plan is the most common frustration. But even paying users report issues. Captions added to photos sometimes get erased randomly, and some bugs persist across updates without being fixed. Customer support responses can take weeks.
The bigger concern: Tinybeans is a publicly traded company (ASX: TNY). That means their incentive structure points toward growth metrics and ad revenue, not necessarily toward what's best for a small family sharing baby photos privately. The free plan includes ads, and the company has expanded into branded content partnerships.
And the milestone tracking? Tinybeans has it, but it's freeform journaling. There's no structured checklist, no CDC-based developmental markers, no way to track whether your baby is hitting the milestones that actually matter clinically.
FamilyAlbum
FamilyAlbum is the other big option, particularly popular in Japan where it originated as Mitene. It has over 216,000 ratings on iOS and a 4.9-star average. The free plan is more generous than Tinybeans: unlimited photo uploads and unlimited storage.
The trade-off is a 2-minute video limit on free, and ads. A lot of ads.
What FamilyAlbum costs
FamilyAlbum Premium is $5.99/month or $59/year. That gives you longer video uploads (up to 10 minutes), personal pages sorted by child, and free shipping on physical products like photobooks. Premium Pro at $10.99/month ($109/year) adds high-quality video uploads and photo tags.
One nice touch: when one family member subscribes, everyone in the album gets premium features.
Where it falls short
The ad situation is the biggest issue. Users on the Google Play Store report seeing 4+ pop-up ads every time they open the app, even with a premium subscription in some cases. For an app where you're looking at photos of your baby, ad interruptions feel especially out of place.
FamilyAlbum doesn't offer milestone tracking at all. Not freeform, not structured, nothing. You can mark moments and dates, but if you want to know whether your 9-month-old is hitting the right developmental markers, you're googling it separately.
There's no bulk download feature either. If you decide to leave, getting your photos out is a manual process.
The comparison table
| Feature | Aanvi | Tinybeans Free | Tinybeans+ | FamilyAlbum Free | FamilyAlbum Premium |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $6.99 ($49.99/yr) | $0 | $7.99 | $0 | $5.99-$10.99 |
| Photo uploads | Unlimited | 20/month | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Video length | 5 min | 30 sec | 5 min | 2 min | 10 min |
| Ads | No | Yes | Yes | Yes (heavy) | Reduced |
| CDC milestone tracking | Yes (40+) | No | No | No | No |
| Family sharing | Yes (with roles) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Privacy controls | Yes | Paid only | Yes | Basic | Yes |
| Web tools | 30+ free | No | No | No | No |
| Multi-baby | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Physical prints | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes (free shipping) |
| Globe/map view | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Which one should you pick
If you've already been on Tinybeans for two years and your family is used to it, switching is a pain. The export process isn't seamless on any of these apps, and getting grandma to download something new is its own project.
If you're starting fresh — new baby, first baby, or just fed up with your current app — the math is straightforward.
Tinybeans' free plan caps you at 20 uploads a month. You will take 20 photos on day one. Removing that limit costs $7.99/month. FamilyAlbum's free tier is more usable, but the ads are aggressive enough that you'll either pay or get annoyed. FamilyAlbum Premium runs $5.99-$10.99/month depending on the tier.
Aanvi is $6.99/month ($49.99/year) with a 7-day free trial. No ads, no upload caps, and no features locked behind a higher plan. The milestone tracking alone makes it the clear pick — no other app in this space uses the CDC checklist as a structured, trackable system. The free web tools on the website are a bonus that none of the others offer.
The print shop features on Tinybeans and FamilyAlbum are real advantages if you want physical photobooks. Aanvi doesn't do that yet. But if the priority is tracking milestones, sharing with family, and getting everything without ads or upload limits, Aanvi costs less than Tinybeans+ and gives you more than FamilyAlbum Premium.
If you want milestone tracking, family sharing, and no upload caps, try Aanvi free for 7 days. The Milestone Tracker and 30+ other tools on the website work without an account or subscription if you just want to check where your baby stands.