The best end-of-life planning app for you
A practical, honest buyer's guide to end-of-life planning apps: what to look for, how the main options compare, and where preserving the person fits alongside the paperwork. Written by Afterlife AI, with our own product included transparently.
An end-of-life planning app helps you get your affairs in order so the people you love are not left guessing. In practice that means organising the admin of dying: your will and directives, accounts and passwords, funeral wishes and key documents, in one place you can securely share. Most apps in this category are, at heart, organisers and legal-document tools. A separate, newer kind of product does something different: it preserves the person, your memories, stories and voice, so loved ones keep a sense of you afterward. The two are complements, not rivals, and the best plan usually involves both.
This guide is published by Afterlife AI, so read it with that in mind. We have described every other product fairly, and we are clear about the line we sit on: we preserve the person, not the paperwork. We are not a will, a legal service or a substitute for proper estate and admin planning. Where you need that, the planners below are the right tools, and we say so plainly.
What to look for
Before comparing names, get clear on the criteria that actually matter.
Scope: legal, admin, or the person. Wills and directives are legal documents. Accounts, passwords and funeral wishes are admin. Memories, stories and voice are the person. Few apps do all three well, so know which job you are buying for.
Document creation vs storage. Some tools draft real legal documents (will, trust, power of attorney, advance directive). Others only store documents you create elsewhere. These are very different, and the price reflects it.
Sharing and access. Can you nominate trusted people, and what do they see, when? A plan no one can find or open helps no one.
Governance after death. What happens to the plan, and to anything personal you have stored, once you pass? Is there a verified process before anyone gets access? Most apps say least here.
Data location and privacy. Where is your content stored, under which country's privacy laws, and how is it protected? For sensitive material like a voiceprint, jurisdiction matters.
Free build and price. Check whether a free tier is a one-time build you keep or a countdown that expires, and match the pricing model to the outcome you want.
The main options
Pricing below reflects publicly listed figures at the time of writing and can change, so confirm current pricing on each provider's own site.
Everplans
Everplans is a digital vault built around organising the whole picture: personal, healthcare, financial and legal information, plus funeral and burial wishes. A guided questionnaire flags gaps, and you can share securely with deputies.
Best if you want one organised, shareable home for documents, wishes and account information, with strong checklists.
It organises and stores; it does not draft your legal documents, though it guides you toward obtaining them.
Publicly listed pricing has included a limited free tier and a Premium plan around $99.99/year.
Trust & Will
Trust & Will focuses on creating the legal documents themselves: state-specific wills and trusts, powers of attorney and living wills, with one year of unlimited edits.
Best if your priority is producing valid estate-planning documents online, a middle ground between DIY templates and a full attorney.
It is a document-creation service, not a personal vault or memory tool.
Publicly listed pricing has included a Will plan around $199 individual / $299 couple and a Trust plan around $499 individual / $599 couple, plus optional add-ons such as attorney support.
GoodTrust
GoodTrust combines estate-document creation with a digital vault and online-account management, so you can draft a will, trust and directives and also handle digital assets and accounts after death.
Best if you want legal documents and digital-account logistics bundled in one integrated system, broader than a pure will tool.
Publicly listed pricing has centred on a one-off estate plan (around $149) plus a smaller annual fee (around $39) for updates.
Lantern
Lantern offers step-by-step guidance for both pre-planning and after-loss tasks, with checklists covering wills, finances, healthcare, funerals and digital presence, plus document storage and collaboration. It was acquired by Wellthy in 2023.
Best if you want a clear, free starting point and an after-loss checklist for those handling a death.
Its core checklists are free; published figures for expanded access have varied, so confirm current pricing directly. It guides and organises rather than drafting documents.
Cake
Cake was a free end-of-life planning tool for discovering, storing and sharing your preferences and documents. Note an important change: as of mid-2025 Cake became part of Altogether, and the old Cake login and file access were retired, with users invited to start again with Altogether's tools. It was historically a strong, simple free option, but confirm the current Altogether offering before relying on it.
Afterlife AI™
Afterlife AI is the odd one out here on purpose: it is not a planner. It is an Australian company, built and Australian-hosted, that lets a living person preserve themselves, their memories, stories, values and way of speaking, as a governed, interactive Persona, with consent-based voice preservation as the next layer.
It preserves the person, not the paperwork. Use a planner above for your will, accounts and directives; use Afterlife AI for the part of you documents cannot hold.
Consent and governance first. The Persona is built by you, while alive. Executor Lock™ governs what happens after death: your consent for posthumous playback is recorded, then locked, so what your family receives is exactly what you agreed to and cannot be changed afterward.
Voice by consent. Your real voice is preserved from your own recordings, with explicit consent that covers playback for family later. Nothing autoplays; a family teaser is always a chosen tap.
Generous free build. Start with 60 memories and 100 conversations, free, no card, and your free build never expires.
Three clear plans. Free, Legacy at $14.99/month, and Eternal at $29.99/month. Family inherits the time you have paid for.
Where Afterlife AI fits
Think of end-of-life planning in two halves. One half is administrative: the will, the trust, the directives, the accounts, the funeral wishes. That is what Everplans, Trust & Will, GoodTrust and Lantern are built for. Afterlife AI does not draft documents, store passwords as a legal vault, or replace proper legal and admin planning.
The other half is the person. When the paperwork is done, the question your family is left with is not where the documents are; it is what you sounded like, what you would have said, the stories only you knew. That is the gap Afterlife AI is built for: a consent-based, governed Persona, preserved by you while alive, with your voice preserved by consent, and Executor Lock™ deciding in advance exactly what your family can access and keeping it unchanged after death.
So the honest answer is that the best end-of-life plan is usually two products, not one: a planner for the affairs, and Afterlife AI for the person. If lasting presence, consent and after-death governance matter most, those are the criteria we built Afterlife AI around.