The Limitless Pendant is gone. Meta acquired Limitless in December 2025 and ended sales, with support running through late 2026, which leaves a lot of people holding a device on a countdown and no obvious replacement. The closest substitutes are Bee at $49.99 for the cheapest always-on capture, Plaud NotePin S at $179 for the best transcription accuracy, Omi at around $89 if you want to own and modify it, and Legend at $499 for always-on capture that keeps no raw audio. Which one is right depends on one question: did you want the Pendant listening all day, or only when you told it to?

What Happened to the Limitless Pendant?

Meta acquired Limitless in December 2025 and stopped selling the Pendant. Existing devices keep working with support committed through late 2026, so this is a wind-down rather than an overnight shutdown, but the direction is clear.

The Pendant was the most recommended device in this category for most of two years, which is why so many outdated guides still point at it. It ran $99 with a free tier covering 1,200 minutes a month and a $19 monthly Pro plan. Advertised battery was 100 hours, though real-world use with recording enabled landed closer to 6 to 14. Its most thoughtful feature was Consent Mode, which used voice identification to pause capture for people who had not agreed to be recorded.

Two things matter for anyone shopping now. Get your data out before support ends. And understand that Limitless going to Meta, Bee going to Amazon, and Humane shutting down entirely are the same story: this category consolidates fast, and the device you buy may outlive the company behind it.

Limitless Pendant Alternatives Compared

Device Price Capture Subscription Closest to Limitless on
Bee $49.99 Always-on Currently free Price and always-on capture
Omi ~$89 Always-on Varies Price, plus open source control
Plaud NotePin S $179 Press to record Free tier, Pro $99.99/yr Transcript quality
Friend 2.0 $249 Always-on $10/mo optional Nothing, different job entirely
Sandbar Stream $249 Press and hold Free tier, $10/mo Pro Discreet capture, ring form
Legend $499 Always-on First year included, $499/yr Always-on capture and privacy design

If You Bought Limitless for the Price

Bee is the obvious landing spot. At $49.99 with the subscription currently waived after Amazon's acquisition, it is cheaper than the Pendant ever was, and it is always-on, so the daily experience is familiar. It wears as a wristband or a clip rather than a necklace.

Temper two expectations. Advertised battery is seven days standby, but active recording runs closer to a day and a half. And it stayed iOS-only through mid-2026. You are also swapping one acquired company for another, so if Meta owning your transcripts bothered you, ask yourself the same question about Amazon. We put the two head to head in Plaud NotePin S vs Bee.

Omi at around $89 is the other budget answer, and a better one if you want control. It is genuinely open source across hardware, firmware, and app, with a plugin store and an active community. Nobody else in this category lets you change what the device does.

If You Bought Limitless for Meeting Notes

Plaud NotePin S at $179 is the upgrade. Claimed transcription accuracy sits in the 95 to 98% range across 112 languages, and it took Tom's Guide's Best Wearable AI award in 2025. The free tier covers 300 minutes a month, with Pro at $99.99 a year and Unlimited at $239.99.

The real change is behavioral. Plaud records when you press it. For scheduled conversations that is arguably better than always-on, since you get clean session boundaries and no clutter. For the hallway exchange you did not know mattered, it captures nothing at all.

If You Bought Limitless to Never Miss Anything

This is the group with the hardest replacement problem, because always-on capture is exactly what most of the market moved away from. Bee and Omi cover it cheaply. The other option worth understanding is what happens to the audio afterward.

The Pendant's Consent Mode showed that Limitless took the social problem seriously. If that was part of why you bought it, the successor question is not just whether a device listens continuously, but whether it retains recordings and whether the people around you can tell it is running. Those two design choices separate the current field more than price does, and we walk through how to handle it in Is It Creepy to Wear an AI Pendant?

Before You Switch: Export Your Data

Support ends in late 2026, and the safest assumption is that access to your transcripts ends with it. Whatever the shutdown timeline turns out to be, exporting is a one-time task that costs you an hour now and is impossible later. Do it before you decide on a replacement, not after, because the export is the part with a deadline attached.

It is also worth deleting what you do not want retained. If your Pendant history is moving into a larger company's infrastructure, the transcripts you actively want are a much smaller set than the transcripts you happen to have.

The Takeaway

Buy Bee at $49.99 if price drove your original decision and you want always-on capture back cheaply. Buy Plaud NotePin S at $179 if what you actually valued was clean, accurate meeting transcripts and you can live with pressing a button. Buy Omi at $89 if you want to own and modify the thing. And before any of that, export your Limitless data, because support ends this year.

If the reason you wore a Pendant was that you did not trust yourself to remember to hit record, Legend is built for that exact case. It is a voice-first pendant made for people with ADHD, worn at chest height, transcribing conversations in real time without waiting to be triggered. It keeps no raw audio, only transcripts, so there is no archive of recordings sitting anywhere. A Halo light shows when it is active, which answers the same social problem Consent Mode was reaching for. Everything arrives as daily summaries and auto-generated to-dos in the Legend App on iOS and Android, and at $499 the first year of membership is included. It is the most expensive option here, and worth it only if always-on capture is the feature you would miss most.

Keep Reading

FAQ

Why was the Limitless Pendant discontinued? Meta acquired Limitless in December 2025 and ended Pendant sales. Support for existing devices runs through late 2026.

What is the cheapest Limitless Pendant alternative? Bee at $49.99, with its subscription currently waived following Amazon's acquisition. Omi is next at roughly $89 and is fully open source.

Does my Limitless Pendant still work? Yes, support is committed through late 2026. Export your data before that window closes.

Which alternative is closest to Limitless? For always-on capture at low cost, Bee. For the same always-on behaviour with no stored audio, Legend. For accuracy on meetings specifically, Plaud NotePin S, though it records only when pressed.

Should I export my Limitless data before support ends? Yes. Access to transcripts should be assumed to end with support in late 2026, and exporting is not something you can do afterwards.

Sources: CNBC: Meta acquiring AI wearable company Limitless; Big Guy on Stuff: AI Wearables Review 2026; Layer3Labs: Best AI Wearable Pendants 2026.

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