Baby trackers, compared honestly
When my son was three weeks old I had four tracking apps on my phone at the same time, because I could not work out from anybody’s marketing page what the actual differences were. Everything says it tracks feeds and sleep. Everything has a nice screenshot. None of it told me the things I ended up caring about.
So these pages are the comparison I wanted then. Every figure comes from the other app’s own App Store listing or their own website, and I have been specific about where they beat us, because there are several places where they do.
Who is writing this. I am a dad with a newborn, and I make Little Steps, so I am obviously not a neutral party. What I can promise is that every number about the other app comes from their own App Store listing or their own site, checked in August 2026, and that I have said plainly where they are better. If you find something out of date here, tell me and I will fix it.
The three things worth checking on any of them
What it really costs over a year. A tracker is something you open twenty times a day for two years. The gap between one payment and $14.99 a month is not small by the end of it.
Whether it tracks you. Apple makes every app publish a privacy label. The heading to look for is Data Used to Track You, which means data used to follow you across other companies’ apps and websites. Two of the three apps below declare one. Your baby’s health data is not covered by medical privacy law, so nobody is doing this on your behalf.
Whether other people can actually use it. The tracker only works if everyone who holds the baby writes things down. If joining means installing an app and making an account, half your household will not.
The comparisons
Little Steps vs Huckleberry
4.9 stars, about 72,000 ratings · Plus, $11.99 a month or $58.99 to $68.99 a year
SweetSpot, a next nap prediction trained on a very large number of babies, which means it can tell you something useful on day one
Declares a Data Used to Track You section
Little Steps vs Baby Daybook
4.8 stars, about 3,300 ratings · Premium monthly, $1.99 to $9.99 depending on the offer
Apple Watch and Siri Shortcuts, so a feed can be logged without getting your phone out
No Data Used to Track You section
Little Steps vs Nara Baby
4.9 stars, about 23,000 ratings · Free, with no in app purchases listed
Genuinely free, with nothing behind a paywall, and 23,000 ratings at 4.9 saying it works
Declares a Data Used to Track You section
The one thing none of them do
Little Steps runs in a browser. Not a companion dashboard, the whole app, at a web address, on the same account and the same data as the phone.
I did not think this would matter and it turned out to be the thing that made our household actually log anything. My wife’s mum has the baby two days a week. She was never going to install an app, make an Apple account and learn a new interface so she could record a nap. She opens a link on the iPad that already lives on her kitchen counter, and the day comes back whole.
The same goes for a laptop at work, or an Android phone, or a partner who has not got round to it. Huckleberry’s own site offers the App Store and Google Play and nothing else. Nara is native on more Apple devices than we are, including a real iPad app that ours is not, but it is still an app you have to install.
The part that does not fit in a table
Every app on this page is filed under Medical on the App Store, and most of them look it. That is a defensible choice and I am not going to pretend it is wrong. But you open a tracker twenty times a day for two years, most of it exhausted, and a lot of that in the dark.
That is what happens when you save a feed. The little round picture on the button grows into the video, some confetti drifts down in whatever colour theme you picked, and it is gone in three seconds. Every one of the nine categories has its own creature and its own clip: a deer for sleep, a hedgehog for diapers, an otter for pumping, a beaver for growth. Custom events get to pick from ten more.
Look at those two clips again. The night one is not the day one with a filter over it. It is the same bear painted a second time, by moonlight, with fireflies. There are two of everything, all the way through, because the app you use at 2am should not be the daytime app with the brightness turned down.
There is a bear in the feeding timer, too. Start a feed and after a moment a cub rises up from behind the timer card, has a look around, and ducks back down. It does nothing. It is not a feature. My wife found it at four in the morning on about day nine and it is the only thing about any of these apps that has ever made her laugh at that hour.
Judge this one yourself, in thirty seconds
I am the last person who should be telling you which app is nicer to look at. So do not take my word for it: open all four App Store listings and swipe through the screenshots. That is a fair test, it costs you half a minute, and you will know immediately which one you want to be holding in a dark room at 3am. Some people want a clinical tool and would find all of this twee, which is a completely reasonable way to feel.
What Little Steps costs
Free, and then $4.99 once if you want the rest. The free tier is not a trial and does not expire.
Free, forever
- All nine categories, logged as often as you like
- Growth percentiles on the WHO and CDC charts, birth to 36 months
- In app timers for feeds, pumping and sleep, shared with your caregivers
- Night mode, themes, units, and as many little ones as you have
- Five custom events of your own
- Your data out as a file whenever you want it
Pro, $4.99 once
- Sleep Trail, the rhythm read back from your own baby's sleeps
- Live timers on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island
- Insights, and a printable report for the pediatrician
- Reminders per activity
- Inviting other caregivers to a little one
- Jumping straight to any day in your history
- Custom events without a limit
Try it for a week before you decide.
The free tier is not a trial, and it does not expire. Log a few days, see whether the app gets out of your way at 3am, and buy the unlock only if you want the parts that need it.
A caregiver you invite can use the browser version on a laptop or an iPad without installing anything. They sign in with their own account, same as you.
All figures checked in August 2026 against each app’s own App Store listing and website. These change. If you spot something out of date, tell me and I will fix it.