Baby Daybook vs Little Steps
Checked August 2026
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 If you find something out of date here, tell me and I will fix it.
This is the comparison I find hardest to write, because Baby Daybook and Little Steps want the same thing. Both of us think a baby tracker should not be a subscription. Both of us sell one unlock and then leave you alone. On the thing I usually argue about, we agree.
So this page is mostly about how much the unlock costs, and what you get for the difference. Baby Daybook has 3,300 ratings at 4.8 stars and years of work behind it. It is a good app.
The price gap is the headline
Baby Daybook’s lifetime unlock is listed at $59.99, sometimes shown as 40 percent off $99.99. They also sell monthly and yearly plans, from $1.99 up to $9.99 a month depending on the offer you land on, and $9.99 or $59.99 a year.
Little Steps is $4.99. Once. That is not a sale price and it is not an introductory rate.
I want to be fair about what the gap buys, because it does buy things. Baby Daybook has an Apple Watch app and Siri Shortcuts, so a feed can go in without your phone leaving your pocket. It has a photo album and milestones. It has exportable reports. Those are whole features Little Steps does not have, and if any of them is the reason you are reading this, stop here and go get Baby Daybook.
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
Where I think Little Steps is genuinely better
It runs in a browser. Not a companion dashboard, the actual app, at a web address, on the same account and the same data. The night nanny or the grandparent doing Tuesdays opens a link on the laptop or the iPad they already own and starts logging. Nobody has to be talked through the App Store.
Sleep Trail shows its working. Baby Daybook’s App Store subtitle is Personalized Sleep Predictions, so we are both in the same territory here. The difference is what happens when the data will not support a claim. Little Steps refuses: below a few tracked days, mid night, or when the pattern is still too loose, it shows nothing instead of a number. And every window it does show carries the line explaining what it was based on, so you can judge it rather than trust it.
Nights. Between 7pm and 7am the whole app goes to warm candlelight, every screen, with the buttons in the same places. It is a small thing that turns out to matter enormously at 3am with a baby on your shoulder.
The part that does not fit in a table
We agree on pricing and we overlap on features, so if you are still deciding, it probably comes down to this, and it is the part no comparison table has ever been able to hold.
Baby Daybook is a capable, serious tool with more features than us. What I wanted was something my family would not dread opening.
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 the labels say
Neither of us declares a Data Used to Track You section, which is the heading that means following you across other companies’ apps. Baby Daybook is well clear of the worst of this category on that measure, and it is worth saying so.
There is still a difference. Their label lists Contact Info under Developer’s Advertising or Marketing, and Analytics collecting contact info, identifiers, usage and diagnostics linked to you. Little Steps has no analytics library in it at all, so there is nothing to declare beyond what the purchase and the notifications need.
| Little Steps | Baby Daybook | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Free, then $4.99 once. There is no subscription. |
|
| Where it runs | iPhone, plus any browser on any device | iPhone, Apple Watch and Android |
| In a browser | Yes. The full app runs at a web address, same account, same data, nothing to install. | Not something they advertise. |
| Ratings | A handful. The app is new, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. | 4.8 stars from about 3,300 ratings. |
| Cross app tracking | No Data Used to Track You section. The app ships a purchases library and Apple's local notifications and nothing else: no analytics, no advertising, no crash reporter. | No Data Used to Track You section. Their label does list Contact Info under Developer's Advertising or Marketing, and Analytics collecting contact info and identifiers linked to you. |
What Baby Daybook does better than us
- Apple Watch and Siri Shortcuts, so a feed can be logged without getting your phone out
- Exportable reports, a photo album and milestones, which are a whole side of the app Little Steps does not have
- Growth on both CDC and WHO, real time caregiver sync, and years of polish behind it
So which one
Pick Baby Daybook if
You want the Apple Watch, Siri Shortcuts, the photo album or the milestone side of things, or you simply want the app with thousands of ratings and a long track record. The lifetime unlock is more money but it is still not a subscription, and it is a mature, well liked app.
Pick Little Steps if
$4.99 against $59.99 matters to you, you need caregivers logging from a browser on a laptop or an iPad, you do most of your logging in the dark, or you want a sleep prediction that tells you when it is not sure.
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.
Prices, ratings and privacy labels above were taken from Baby Daybook’s App Store listing in August 2026. Their pricing moves with promotions, so check the listing before you buy.