Passboards vs BuddyWave
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Passboards
This app offers a collaborative platform for sharing events, experiences, and ideas. Create shared 'boards' with up to 100 contributors, post unlimited media in original quality, and connect with friends and family in a more creative and unrestricted way.
- Collaborative boards with up to 100 contributors
- Unlimited media posting
- Original quality image export
- Public and private board options
- Activity-based feed
- Direct sharing to Instagram stories
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Passboards is where your people keep their moments together. Start a board for the trip, the wedding, the season, the Tuesday that turned into something, and add the people who were there. Everyone posts to the same place: photos, videos, the songs that played, and the words worth keeping. It all lands on one beautiful board instead of six camera rolls and a group chat that scrolled past it weeks ago. BOARDS • Public, or private to the people you add. • Up to 100 members per board. You choose who can post, who can invite, and who helps run it. • Up to 15 photos and videos in a single post, with a title, a caption, a place and tagged friends. • Every photo shown in its own shape, on a page that takes on the colours of the board's cover. • Ten Passboards looks, plus Auto, and adjustments in a built-in editor that never touch your original. • Arrange a board's posts by dragging them, and position the cover photo. • Uploads keep going in the background, and pick up again on their own if the connection drops. GUESTS • Share a guest link or QR code for an event or a board with dates. Guests add photos from their browser, without the app, and you approve them before they show. • Choose when a board's photos show: as they're posted, or all at once at a time you pick. CLUBS • A home for a group that keeps meeting: a team, a class, the friends you see every week. Group chat, events, announcements, and a board for every gathering. • Club chat with up to 10 photos in a message, replies, polls, and Find a time to settle on a date. • Events with limited spots and a waitlist, RSVP approval, plus-ones, a cohost, a message to everyone going, and reminders a week and 2 hours before. • Repeating events every week, every 2 weeks or every month, and Subscribe to Calendar to keep a club's events in your calendar app. • A weekly club roll, a shared goal, and club recaps of what you did together. • Every club has its own mark, address and QR code. Hand your club to another member when it's time. • Share your posts with a club, and its members see them in their feed and the club's Tagged section. • Public or invite-only, up to 100 members, with an invite link the host controls. MUSIC • Share a song, album or playlist from Spotify or Apple Music, and play a 30-second preview right in the feed. • Open anything in your music app with one tap, or share to Passboards straight from Spotify or Apple Music. WRITE • Post a quick note or a long-form essay, with headings, quotes, lists and links. • Drafts save as you go, and essays open in a full-screen reader made for reading. PEOPLE • Follow friends, or keep your profile private and approve requests. • A home feed of what your people are up to, and Explore for finding more. Both show the latest when you come back. • Find friends already here from your contacts. Matching uses hashes made on your phone; the numbers and addresses themselves never leave it. • Like, comment, save, mention, and message. • Share a post or a board to your Instagram Story as a Passboards card. MESSAGES • One-to-one conversations and club chats, with reactions and read receipts you can turn off. Send any post, board or profile straight into a chat. PHOTOS AND VIDEO THAT LOOK RIGHT • Tap any photo or video to open it full screen and swipe through the whole collection. • Photos are kept sharp at full-screen size; video plays at 720p, up to three minutes a clip. • Location and device details are stripped from every file you upload. Where a photo was taken is never shown unless you add a place yourself. • A Highlights widget brings your favourite moments to your Home Screen. YOUR ACCOUNT • Sign up with an email. No ads today. Delete your account any time from Settings. Passboards is for adults (18+). Free on iPhone, for iOS 26 and later. Support: support@passboards.com Terms of Service: https://www.passboards.com/terms-of-service Privacy Policy: https://www.passboards.com/privacy-policy
BuddyWave
Record and share audio diary entries with friends and family. Preserve daily events and emotions as voice memos, create private sharing spaces, and react to friends' recordings. Ideal for those who find writing tedious or want to share moments easily.
- Record audio diary entries
- Create private sharing spaces (WaveRooms)
- Post short audio clips (Waves)
- React to friends' recordings
- Schedule audio posts
- Receive notifications for activity
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【Who Will Love This App?】 ・People who want to preserve their daily events and emotions. ・Those looking to transform their routine daily life into memorable experiences. ・People who tried keeping a diary but gave up because writing was too tedious. ・People who want to share little everyday events through voice with family or friends who live far away. ・Busy couples who want to exchange short, heartfelt messages. ・People who want to share fun and interesting daily happenings with friends. ・Parents who want to share their children's cute behaviors and milestones with grandparents. ・Anyone who wants to express gratitude easily in the midst of a busy life. ・Language learners practicing new words and phrases and wanting to share their pronunciation. ・People who want to share quick thoughts or ideas with friends and colleagues. ・People who want to keep their ideas as voice memos. ・People who want to send a message to their future selves. 【What You Can Do With This App】 ■ Recording Wave Diary You can preserve daily events and emotions as audio data. The audio data is stored only on your device, ensuring privacy protection. Easily see the days you’ve journaled in a calendar format and the reminder feature also helps prevent forgetting to make diary entries. ■ Create a Private Space (WaveRoom) You can create a new WaveRoom or join a friend's WaveRoom to have a private space. Of course, you can also make a room just for yourself. ■ Post Audio Clip (Wave) Use your smartphone's microphone to record audio clips of about 10 seconds. Capture cherished moments and keep them as audible memories! ■ React to Waves Show that you've received a friend's Wave by pressing the heart icon. ■ Scheduled Posts You can schedule the time to post your audio (Wave). It will fulfill your wish to send a birthday message right as the date changes, without having to fight sleep. ■ Notification Feature Receive notifications when someone joins a WaveRoom or makes a post, allowing you to play the voice without missing it.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: Passboards at none against BuddyWave's shown. Passboards also leads on monetization model (free vs free with in-app purchases) and update cadence (every 2 days vs weekly). BuddyWave's advantage is iOS requirement (15.0 vs 26.0). On price, rating, review sentiment and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Passboards against 5.0 for BuddyWave. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Passboards has 18 ratings behind it against 2, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews split almost evenly too, at 100% and 100% positive.
Passboards ships an update every 2 days, BuddyWave weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 27, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Passboards | BuddyWave |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 5.0 (18 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 100.0% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews |
| Number of ratings | 18 — better | 2 |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Weekly |
| Ads | No — better | Yes |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone | iPhone, iPod — better |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 15.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 38 MB | 75 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Passboards, Inc. | tsubasa ichiba |
Customer experience
Passboards
BuddyWave
In-app purchases
Passboards
No in-app purchases
BuddyWave
No in-app purchases









