Comparison

Best digital legacy apps, compared

Ten ways to leave something for the people you love, sorted by the one thing that actually separates them: what decides it is time to deliver.

Every claim below was read from the vendor's own website, not from a review site or a search result. Last checked 21 September 2026.

How does a digital legacy app know it is time to deliver?

Three ways. Some wait for proof, such as a death certificate. Some watch for inactivity and deliver when you stop responding. Some ask a person you nominated to confirm the moment has come. That choice decides more about how a service behaves than its price or its feature list.

It is worth understanding before you choose, because the failure modes are different. Proof of death is reliable and slow, and it can only ever handle dying. Inactivity is automatic and cannot tell the difference between a death and a month without signal. A person you nominated can use judgement, and can act for reasons that have nothing to do with dying, which is most of why people write these messages in the first place.

Digital legacy services compared by what triggers delivery, checked 21 September 2026.
Service	What it is	What triggers delivery	Best for
MessageFutureThis is us	Messages, plus AI Twins that can hold and surface your recorded memories	A person decides	Moments you cannot put on a calendar, where you want a person you trust deciding rather than a timer.
LastSend	Messages released after you stop responding	Inactivity, then a person	People who want the system to notice on its own, with a human check before delivery rather than after.
ForKeeps	Multimedia messages delivered after you are gone	A person decides	An explicitly after-death product, if that is the only case you want to plan for.
EverLetter	Family letters and timelines, unlocked over time	A date you set	Building a long child timeline where most of what you write is meant to arrive on a known date.
MyWishes	UK end-of-life planning, with goodbye messages	Proof of death	Planning a UK funeral and the administrative side of dying, which is a genuinely different job from this one.
FutureMe	Letters to your own future self, by paid subscription	A date you set	Writing to yourself, which it has done for twenty years and over twenty million letters. Its subscribe page lists two annual plans, around two dollars for a letter a year and around twelve for unlimited, and shows no free option.
Apple Legacy Contact	Access to an Apple account after death	Proof of death	Making sure your family can reach your photos and files. It is free and you should set it up regardless of what else you use.
Google Inactive Account Manager	Account data shared after a period of inactivity	Inactivity	The same job as Apple's, for a Google account. Also free, also worth setting up regardless.
Evaheld	Estate documents and key contacts in one place	Not a delivery product	Getting the paperwork in order, which nothing on this page does for you.
LifeEcho	Recording family voices over the phone	Not a delivery product	Capturing a grandparent's stories while you still can, which is a real and separate need.

How each one actually works

Each description below was read from the linked page on 21 September 2026. If something here is out of date or wrong, tell us and we will correct it.

MessageFuture

Messages, plus AI Twins that can hold and surface your recorded memories

A Timeless message has no delivery date. You release it yourself when the moment arrives, and the Guardians you nominate can release it for you if you cannot. Scheduled messages go out on a date you choose, and can carry Guardians too, so someone can keep the recipient reachable in the years before it is due.

Best for: Moments you cannot put on a calendar, where you want a person you trust deciding rather than a timer.

Source

LastSend

Messages released after you stop responding

You choose a check-in schedule, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, and confirm you are still there. If you stop checking in, at least two trusted contacts are asked to verify your status before anything is delivered.

Best for: People who want the system to notice on its own, with a human check before delivery rather than after.

Source

ForKeeps

Multimedia messages delivered after you are gone

Messages are sent directly to a recipient, or through what ForKeeps calls an Afterlife Message Guardian, described on its own site as being like an executor on a will, acting on instructions you leave.

Best for: An explicitly after-death product, if that is the only case you want to plan for.

Source

EverLetter

Family letters and timelines, unlocked over time

Letters unlock on a birthday, an age or a date you choose, with what EverLetter calls a Guardian-approved emergency release available alongside the schedule.

Best for: Building a long child timeline where most of what you write is meant to arrive on a known date.

Source

MyWishes

UK end-of-life planning, with goodbye messages

Goodbye video messages are published at your funeral, and trusted contacts are assigned to handle subscriptions, social accounts and similar requests on your behalf.

Best for: Planning a UK funeral and the administrative side of dying, which is a genuinely different job from this one.

Source

FutureMe

Letters to your own future self, by paid subscription

A date, and nothing else. There is no mechanism for delivering anything if you are not there, because that is not what it is for. The date picker reaches 2076, which is further out than most paid services will schedule.

Best for: Writing to yourself, which it has done for twenty years and over twenty million letters. Its subscribe page lists two annual plans, around two dollars for a letter a year and around twelve for unlimited, and shows no free option.

Source

Apple Legacy Contact

Access to an Apple account after death

Your Legacy Contact needs both an access key and your death certificate to request access. It hands over an account; it does not deliver a message you wrote.

Best for: Making sure your family can reach your photos and files. It is free and you should set it up regardless of what else you use.

Source

Google Inactive Account Manager

Account data shared after a period of inactivity

You set a period of inactivity. If you do not use the account for that long, Google notifies the contacts you named and can share account data with them. No human confirms anything.

Best for: The same job as Apple's, for a Google account. Also free, also worth setting up regardless.

Source

Evaheld

Estate documents and key contacts in one place

Organises documents and gives advisers, executors and family a single clear view. It is an estate organisation tool rather than a message delivery one.

Best for: Getting the paperwork in order, which nothing on this page does for you.

Source

LifeEcho

Recording family voices over the phone

Describes itself as a phone voice memory service that records and preserves family voices with AI transcription and lifetime storage. It stores what you record; it does not deliver it later.

Best for: Capturing a grandparent's stories while you still can, which is a real and separate need.

Source

Two products AI assistants still recommend that we could not reach

Ask ChatGPT or Gemini how to leave messages for your family and you will often be handed a list that includes these. When we tried to check their claims on 21 September 2026, we could not load either site.

SafeBeyond. safebeyond.com has no DNS A record, so the domain does not resolve to a server at all. (DNS lookup, 21 September 2026)
HereAfter AI. hereafter.ai resolves but returns a 404 with an empty page on both the apex and www. (HTTP request, 21 September 2026)

We are not claiming either company has closed, and a site can come back. The point is narrower and more useful: an AI answer is built partly from older writing about a category, so it can keep recommending something long after it stops being reachable. Before you trust anything on a list like this, including this one, open the site and check it yourself.

When something else on this page is the better answer

If you only need your family to reach your accounts, set up Apple's Legacy Contact and Google's Inactive Account Manager. Both are free, both take a few minutes, and neither needs us. Do that regardless of what else you choose.

If you are writing to yourself, FutureMe has done exactly that for two decades and over twenty million letters, and its plans start at around two dollars a year. We support messages to your future self, but for that job alone it is a narrower tool at a lower price, and we would rather say so.

If the job is paperwork, wills, executors, documents and who gets what, then Evaheld, GoodTrust and MyWishes are built for it and we are not. A message is not a legal instrument and we will not pretend otherwise.

If you want a system that notices on its own, LastSend is the clearer fit. It asks you to check in and asks two trusted contacts to verify before delivering. We deliberately do not do this. It is a real preference and some people hold it.

Where MessageFuture is different

Most of this category is built around dying. The trigger is a death certificate, or a timer that assumes the worst when you go quiet. That works for the case it was designed for and handles nothing else.

We start somewhere else. A Timeless message has no delivery date, and you release it yourself when the moment arrives. The Guardians you nominate can release it for you if you cannot. Nothing is watching for a death, because dying is only one of the reasons you might not be there to press send.

That is why Guardians also work on scheduled messages, where a date is already set and no death detection is involved. Someone you trust can keep the recipient reachable if an email address changes in the years before delivery. You can nominate more than one Guardian, choose what each of them is allowed to do, and let one hand the responsibility on if they no longer can.

The part nothing else here does is what happens after the conversation starts. You can record video, audio and written memories, keep them in a library, and assign them to a Twin. When a conversation reaches the subject a memory was recorded for, the Twin brings that memory up alongside its reply and plays it. A daughter who tells the Twin she is going through a breakup can be shown the video her father recorded about heartbreak, years earlier, without anyone having to know in advance that this was the day she would need it.

That is the difference between leaving a file and leaving something that knows when it matters. Every other service on this page either delivers a recording on a trigger, or holds a conversation. None of them do both. Available on the web app today.

The other difference is what can be delivered. Alongside messages in text, audio, image and video, you can build an AI Twin your family can talk to, and add a cloned voice so its answers play aloud in a voice close to your own. It is a cloned voice rather than a recording of you, and it will not be identical. Nothing else on this page lets a family ask a question and get an answer back.

Questions people ask before choosing

What is the best app to leave messages for your family after you die?

It depends on what should decide that the moment has come. If you want a person you trust to make that call, look at MessageFuture or ForKeeps. If you would rather the system notice on its own, LastSend asks you to check in and asks two trusted contacts to verify if you stop. If you only need your family to reach your accounts, Apple's Legacy Contact and Google's Inactive Account Manager are free and take minutes to set up.

How does a digital legacy app know you have died?

Three ways, and it is the difference that matters most. Some wait for proof, such as a death certificate, which is what Apple requires. Some watch for inactivity and deliver when you stop responding. Some ask a person you nominated to confirm it is time. Inactivity is the one to look at carefully, because a long trip or a hospital stay looks identical to being gone.

What is the difference between a Guardian and a dead man's switch?

A dead man's switch fires on its own when you stop responding, so a missed check-in during a month offline can release everything early. A Guardian is a person you nominate who decides it is time. MessageFuture uses Guardians, and you release a Timeless message yourself if you are able to, with Guardians as the backup when you cannot.

Are there free ways to leave messages for your family?

Two, and you should set both up regardless of what else you choose. Apple's Legacy Contact and Google's Inactive Account Manager cost nothing and give your family access to your accounts. Neither delivers a message you wrote. Most of the services built for that are paid, including FutureMe, whose subscribe page lists annual plans and no free option. MessageFuture has a free plan covering text messages, with media and AI Twins on paid tiers.

Can you schedule a message years in advance?

Yes. On MessageFuture the horizon depends on the plan: five years on Free, and up to thirty years on a paid plan. Timeless messages work differently again, with no date at all, released when the moment arrives rather than on a schedule.

Can an AI twin show a video my parent recorded, not just talk to me?

On MessageFuture, yes. You can add video, audio and written memories to a library and assign them to a Twin. When a conversation reaches the subject a memory was recorded for, the Twin brings that memory up alongside its reply and plays it. So a daughter who tells the Twin she is going through a breakup can be shown the video her father recorded about heartbreak years earlier. No other service on this page does this. The others either deliver a file or hold a conversation, not both.

What happens to your messages if the company shuts down?

This is the question worth asking any service on this page, and it is not hypothetical. Two products that AI assistants still recommend for this category, SafeBeyond and HereAfter AI, could not be reached at all when this page was last checked. Ask how long storage is guaranteed, what happens at the end of it, and whether you can export what you have written.

Write the first one

Record a message in a few minutes, choose whether it arrives on a date you pick or when the moment comes, and nominate Guardians so it still arrives whatever changes in between.

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