At a glance
| Feature | Chapter One | The Short Years |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A private journal you write in | An app that fills a printed hardcover baby book |
| How you add a memory | Type or record a voice note, whenever you want | Answer a weekly prompt with a photo and a couple of questions |
| Printed book | Coming soon | Yes, and it is the whole point of the product |
| What you pay | $5.99 a month, $49 a year, or $119 once | From $129 once. No subscription |
| Add-ons | None | The Toddler Years $89 at checkout or $99 later, keepsake envelope $9, ink pad $9 |
| Printing and shipping | Nothing to print | Included, all 119 first-year pages |
| Free tier | Unlimited written entries, 60 photos, 30 days of voice | The app is free. The book is the purchase |
| How long it covers | No end date | The first year, 119 pages. To age five with The Toddler Years |
| Voice recording | Yes, transcribed | No |
| Platforms | iPhone, iOS 26.2 or later | iPhone and iPad, iOS 14.0 or later |
| App Store rating | 5.0 from 13 ratings | 4.9 from 4,832 ratings |
| Who makes it | One parent, independent | Unbound Applications, Inc |
Where The Short Years is the better choice
You want a physical book at the end of it. This is the entire product and they are built around doing it well. A fabric hardcover, 119 printed pages of your first year, pages arriving in the post as you fill them in. Chapter One does not print anything. If the object is the point for you, buy theirs.
You want to pay once and never think about it again. $129 covers the book, the printing and the shipping, with no subscription behind it. That is a genuinely better answer to subscription fatigue than any subscription can give, including ours.
You want the documenting to have an end. 119 pages, a prompt once a week, and a finished thing on a shelf. Plenty of parents want a project that completes rather than a habit that continues, and that is a real preference rather than a lesser one.
You are not on a recent iPhone. The Short Years runs on iOS 14 and up and works on iPad. Chapter One needs iOS 26.2, which rules out a lot of phones.
You want the safety of a proven product. Nearly 4,900 ratings at 4.9, and years of books already printed and delivered. Chapter One launched in July 2026. That gap is real and you should weigh it.
Where Chapter One is different
There is no end date. The Short Years covers the first year, or to age five if you add The Toddler Years. The book gets finished, which is the point of a book. Chapter One does not finish. It is built for the sentence your eight-year-old says at breakfast and the one your fifteen-year-old says in the car.
You write when you have something to say. A weekly prompt is a good system and it is also a schedule. Chapter One has prompts if you want them and nothing happens if you ignore them for a month. Nothing is behind and nothing is incomplete.
You can talk instead of typing. Record a voice memory and it gets transcribed. Useful at 3am, and useful for the things you would never sit down and write.
Writing is free forever. You can keep a complete written journal without paying, with no limit on entries. Photos and voice recording are what the subscription is for.
$119 once, if you would rather stop paying. Close to what The Short Years costs, for something with no end date and nothing to ship. An app claiming it will hold your child’s childhood for twenty years should offer a way to stop renting it.
What about Qeepsake?
qeepsake vs the short years is the comparison most parents actually search, and the two are less alike than the shared category suggests. Qeepsake is a subscription that texts you questions and sells photo books on top. The Short Years is a one-off purchase where the book is the product and the app exists to fill it. We wrote a separate honest comparison of Chapter One and Qeepsake, including where Qeepsake is the better buy.
Which one should you pick
Pick The Short Years if you want a printed book, if you would rather pay once, if you like a weekly prompt, or if you want a finished object rather than an open journal.
Pick Chapter One if you want something with no end date, if you would rather write when the moment happens than when you are asked, if you want to talk instead of type, or if the phone is where you will actually do it.
Plenty of parents should own both, and that is not a diplomatic answer. A printed first-year book and a running journal are different things, and $129 once plus $49 a year is not a wild amount of money for the only record of this that will exist.
About this comparison
Written by Stepan, who makes Chapter One, so read it with that in mind. Every Short Years figure here came from their own shop page and App Store listing on 18 August 2026. Prices change: check https://www.theshortyearsbooks.com/shop/the-short-years-baby-book before deciding. We have not seen a Short Years book in person, so there is nothing here about how it is printed or how it holds up. Their own reviews are at https://www.theshortyearsbooks.com/app-reviews and on the App Store, and both are worth reading. If anything here is out of date or wrong, email dear@chapteronejournal.app and it gets fixed.