Cubby vs Tinybeans (2026): health tracker vs memory book

All ages · Tools & comparisons · Reviewed 12 June 2026 · All articles

Parents searching for a baby app often land on both Cubby and Tinybeans in the same afternoon. The names come up in the same breath, the app-store categories overlap, and both bill themselves as tools for tracking your baby's early months. But they are solving almost entirely different problems. Picking the wrong one for the job will leave you frustrated within a week.

This article explains exactly what each app does, where they overlap, where they do not, and which one your family needs right now.

Disclosure: Cubby is the publisher of this article. Tinybeans features verified from public sources, June 2026.

The short answer

Tinybeans is a memory book and photo sharing app. It is beautifully designed for capturing the moments of your baby's first years, sharing them privately with family, and preserving them in a printed photo book. It does not track feeds, sleep, nappy changes, growth measurements, or vaccines. It was never built to do those things, and that is fine.

Cubby is a baby health and care tracker. It logs every feed, every sleep, every nappy change, every dose of medicine, and every vaccine. It gives you UK NHS, US CDC, UAE MOHAP, and German STIKO vaccine schedules with automatic reminders. It shares the full care log with every caregiver in real time, at no extra cost. It does not compete with Tinybeans as a photo album. It was never built to do that, either.

The reason this comparison needs to be written at all is that both apps touch milestones, and "milestone tracking" is where a parent might reasonably expect overlap. Tinybeans tracks developmental milestones in the photo and memory sense: first smile captured on camera, first steps photographed, first birthday celebrated. Cubby tracks milestones in the clinical and developmental sense: which vaccines are due, whether your baby's weight is tracking on the expected centile, whether their growth chart is following the right curve.

Different things. You probably want both.

What Tinybeans is and what it does well

Tinybeans was founded in Sydney, Australia, and that origin shows in the product: it is warm, family-oriented, and designed for people who want a private alternative to posting baby photos on public social media. The company has reportedly built a user base of millions of families across more than 100 countries, and the core proposition has remained consistent since launch.

Here is what Tinybeans genuinely does well:

• Private photo and video sharing. Photos stay within your family's circle. There is no public feed, no algorithmic timeline, no strangers viewing your baby's first bath. The privacy-first positioning is genuine and has been from the start.
• Family sharing that works for grandparents. Tinybeans is particularly well designed for relatives who are not deep smartphone users. Family members can receive email updates with photos and react to them from inside their inbox, without needing to install anything. This is a genuinely thoughtful design decision for families with older relatives.
• Milestone prompts. The app nudges you to capture specific moments: first smile, first food, first steps. These prompts are photo-focused and act as a guided memory-keeping framework rather than a clinical milestone checklist.
• Printed photo books. Tinybeans can produce physical photo books from your digital archive. For families who want a tangible keepsake, this is a strong differentiator.
• A calming, low-friction experience. The app is not asking you to log data points. It is asking you to share a moment. That low-friction design is exactly right for what it is trying to do.

Tinybeans+ is the premium subscription tier, which unlocks additional features beyond the free experience. Pricing is visible on their website and should be confirmed there, as it changes over time. As of public information available in June 2026, a yearly subscription has been listed at around $79.99 USD.

What Tinybeans does not do, and has never claimed to do: it does not log feeds. It does not log sleep. It does not log nappies. It does not track your baby's weight or head circumference. It does not remind you about vaccines. It does not provide growth charts. If you are a parent of a newborn reaching for your phone at 3am to log a feed before you forget it, Tinybeans is not the app to open.

What Cubby does that Tinybeans does not

Cubby was built to answer a different question: what happened to my baby today, and is my baby healthy? Here are the features that are entirely absent from Tinybeans:

Feed logging

Cubby tracks breast feeds (left breast, right breast, duration, expressed milk volumes), bottle feeds (formula type and volume, breast milk volume), and combination feeding. In the early weeks and months, accurate feed logging is not optional for many families: it is how you know whether your baby is getting enough, how you communicate with your health visitor, and how you keep a sleep-deprived co-parent in the loop without a 2am conversation. Tinybeans has no feed log at all.

Sleep logging

Cubby records every sleep session: start time, end time, duration, and notes. Over days and weeks this builds a picture of your baby's sleep patterns that tells you where you actually are, not where you imagine you are after three weeks of fragmented nights. Tinybeans does not log sleep.

Nappy and diaper tracking

Wet, dirty, mixed. Colour and consistency notes when relevant. In the newborn period, nappy output is one of the primary ways a parent and health visitor assess whether a baby is feeding adequately. Having a log you can show at a weigh-in or a midwife appointment is genuinely useful. Tinybeans does not track nappies.

Growth charts and measurements

Cubby records weight, length and head circumference over time and plots them on a growth chart referenced against standard centile curves. Watching your baby's growth track along an expected centile is reassuring. Noticing a centile drop that needs discussing with your GP or paediatrician is the kind of thing a chart makes visible that a memory book never could. Tinybeans records milestones in the moment; it does not track biometric data over time.

Vaccine schedules and reminders

This is where the gap between the two apps is widest. Cubby includes four complete national vaccine schedules: the UK NHS schedule, the US CDC schedule, the UAE Ministry of Health and Prevention (MOHAP) schedule, and the German STIKO schedule. Reminders are generated automatically from your baby's birth date. Every jab is listed with its name, what it protects against, what side effects are common, and when it is due. When a vaccine is given, you log it and the reminder clears.

For a UK parent, Tinybeans will never tell you when the six-in-one is due. For a US parent, it will not tell you when the 2-month well visit vaccines are coming. For a UAE parent, it has no MOHAP schedule at all. Vaccine reminders are simply outside Tinybeans' scope, and always have been.

Caregiver handoff notes

When your partner takes over, or grandparents come to watch the baby, or you hand off to a nursery, they need to know what has happened: last feed at 10:40am, 120ml, nappy at 11:15am, went down for sleep at 12:00pm. Cubby's shared log gives every caregiver the same real-time view of what happened and when, on any device. Notes can be added to any entry. There is no need for a whiteboard on the kitchen worktop or a chain of text messages. Tinybeans is a photo-sharing app; shared care coordination is not what it was designed for.

Side-by-side comparison

Can you use both?

Yes, and this is probably the right answer for a lot of families.

Cubby and Tinybeans do not duplicate each other. There is no feed log in Tinybeans to conflict with Cubby's feed log. There is no photo album in Cubby to conflict with Tinybeans' photo album. The two apps sit in genuinely separate parts of your parenting life.

A practical setup that many families use: open Cubby to log the 3am feed, the morning nappy, the afternoon sleep, and the vaccine reminder that fires on Tuesday. Open Tinybeans to share the video of your baby's first laugh with grandparents in another country. Neither app is doing the other's job, and neither is in the other's way.

The only real cost is attention. Two apps mean two things to remember. If you are in the deepest sleep-deprivation fog of early parenthood, you may find it easier to start with just Cubby and add Tinybeans later when you have more bandwidth. The photos will still be on your phone camera roll; Tinybeans can be organised retrospectively.

Privacy: what to check on each

Cubby's privacy stance is a design decision, not a policy page. The app runs no advertising at any tier, embeds no third-party analytics SDKs, and does not sell or share user data with advertisers. This is verifiable: open the browser's network panel while Cubby loads and you will see only Cubby's own servers. When you are logging your baby's health, feeding, and daily care data, knowing where that data goes is not a paranoid question.

For Tinybeans, the privacy picture is centred on keeping family photos out of public social media, which it does genuinely well. For information on analytics, advertising and data sharing, read their current privacy policy directly. As with any app handling data about your child, that is worth five minutes of your time.

Who should choose which

You need Cubby if: you have a newborn or young baby and you need to log feeds, sleep, nappies and growth. You want vaccine reminders that actually match the schedule in your country. You want your partner, co-parent, or other caregivers to see the same real-time data without paying an upgrade fee. You want to arrive at your health visitor, GP, or paediatrician appointment with a clean data history you can share. You do not want your baby's health data used by advertisers.

You need Tinybeans if: you want a beautiful private space for your baby's photos, away from public social media. You want to send grandparents a weekly digest of moments without asking them to learn a new app. You want a printed photo book at the end of the first year. The experience of documenting and sharing memories is the primary need.

You need both if: you want to do health tracking well and you want a dedicated memory book. Start Cubby from the first day home from hospital. Add Tinybeans when you are ready. They will not interfere with each other.

You need neither if: you have an older toddler who is past the phase of intensive daily tracking, your family already has a photo-sharing system that works, and you are not looking for vaccine reminders. Though Cubby remains useful for tracking milestones and growth well beyond the newborn stage.

Frequently asked questions

What is Tinybeans used for?

Tinybeans is a photo sharing and memory-keeping app for families. It lets parents capture and privately share photos and videos of their baby, document milestones like first steps and first words, and create printed photo books. It is a digital baby book and private family journal. It is not a health or care tracker.

Does Tinybeans track feeds and sleep?

No. Tinybeans does not offer feed logging, sleep logging, or nappy tracking. It is built around photos, milestones, and family sharing. For daily care data, you need a dedicated health tracker such as Cubby.

Does Tinybeans have vaccine reminders?

No. Tinybeans does not include vaccine schedules or vaccine reminders. It is a memory and photo app, not a health tracker. Cubby includes NHS (UK), CDC (US), MOHAP (UAE) and STIKO (Germany) vaccine schedules with automatic due-date reminders calculated from your baby's date of birth.

Is Tinybeans free?

Tinybeans has a free tier with core photo sharing and milestone features. A Tinybeans+ premium subscription adds enhanced features; pricing is listed on their website and should be verified there, as plans change. Cubby is free with no card required and no ads at any tier.

Should I use Cubby or Tinybeans?

They serve different purposes and the comparison is not really either/or. If you need to log feeds, sleep, nappies, growth, and vaccines, use Cubby. If you want a private photo album and milestone scrapbook to share with grandparents and family, Tinybeans does that well. Many families use both simultaneously, because the two apps do not overlap in any meaningful way. If you can only pick one, and your baby is under one year old, start with Cubby: the health tracking need is more urgent than the photo album, and photos can be added to a memory app at any time.

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