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A free alternative to TD Snap

TD Snap is a capable, well-supported AAC app that costs around $9.99 a month, or arrives bundled with a Tobii Dynavox device. SayThrough is free, open source and runs in a browser. Here is an honest account of where each one wins.

What TD Snap does that SayThrough doesn't

This matters more than the price does. TD Snap is a mature commercial product with a clinical organisation behind it, and there are real things it offers that a free project does not.

• Professionally authored page sets. Core First, Motor Plan, Aphasia and PODD-style layouts, each developed and validated with clinicians. SayThrough ships one core-vocabulary system in three sizes; TD Snap ships a shelf of them.
• Dedicated device integration. Eye-gaze hardware, mounted speech-generating devices, environmental controls and partner-assisted scanning on Tobii Dynavox hardware. SayThrough runs on ordinary phones, tablets and laptops.
• Funding support. Tobii Dynavox will help build an insurance or education-authority funding claim, and that process often covers the device and the software together — in which case your out-of-pocket cost is not $9.99 a month at all.
• Paid support and training. A phone number, a support contract, structured training and implementation help. SayThrough has an issue tracker and an email address.

What SayThrough does that TD Snap doesn't

• It costs nothing, permanently. No subscription, no per-seat licence, no separate purchase for professionals. A school can put it on every device it owns without asking anyone for a budget.
• It runs on any device with a browser. Chromebook, Windows laptop, Android tablet, iPad, an old phone in a drawer. TD Snap is iPad and Windows.
• Four languages, each authored separately. English, Spanish, Polish and Brazilian Portuguese, with boards built for the language rather than translated from English — including gender agreement in Spanish and Portuguese and all seven cases in Polish.
• An open symbol library. ARASAAC, openly licensed and used by AAC tools worldwide. Nothing you build is tied to a proprietary symbol set you could lose access to.
• It is open source. You can read the code, verify the privacy claims rather than trust them, fork it, or keep it running yourself if the project ever stops. No vendor can discontinue it out from under you.

Side by side

Prices as of 2026 and may change. SayThrough is independent and not affiliated with these products.

Moving your boards across

SayThrough reads and writes Open Board Format (.obf and .obz), the open interchange standard for AAC boards. Where you can export a vocabulary in that format, SayThrough will import it — buttons, labels, the links between pages, and the layout.

Two honest caveats. Proprietary symbols such as PCS cannot travel with the file, because their licence does not permit it — imported buttons keep their words and are re-matched to the nearest ARASAAC symbol, which you can change. And anything with no equivalent in the format, such as vendor-specific action buttons, arrives as a plain button. Check a copy before you rely on it.

Who should switch, and who shouldn't

Stay with TD Snap if it is funded and working, if the user relies on eye gaze or a dedicated speech-generating device, if your team is trained on Core First or PODD and the motor plan is established, or if you need someone contractually obliged to answer the phone. Do not disrupt a communication system that works in order to save money.

Try SayThrough if you are paying for TD Snap yourself, if you are waiting on a funding decision and need something in the meantime, if you need AAC across a classroom or a whole school, if you need a language TD Snap does not author boards for, or if you want a free second system on a device the user already carries. It costs nothing to find out, and it imports what you have built.