Limitless or Omi — which should I buy in 2026?

If you already own a Limitless, keep wearing it; the hardware is excellent and still pairs fine. If you're buying fresh, Omi ($89, open-source) is the answer. New Limitless pendants haven't been for sale since Meta acquired the company in December 2025, and 'find one on eBay' is a sketchy on-ramp for a category where the data plumbing matters.

Is Limitless hardware better than Omi?

Yes, on most dimensions. Limitless has a better mic, a more reliable magnetic mount, and ~100 hours of battery life. The industrial design is finished in a way Omi's isn't. Wearing a Limitless doesn't feel like wearing a beta product. Omi is plastic, smaller, and openly hobbyist-feeling — that's the open-source-hardware tradeoff.

Why is Omi open-source pendant hardware important?

Because every other pendant has acquisition risk. Limitless was acquired by Meta. Bee was acquired by Amazon. When a closed-source pendant company gets bought, your data plumbing future is whatever the acquirer decides. Omi's firmware is on GitHub and the backend is self-hostable, which means the answer to 'will this still work in three years' is 'as long as you keep the code running.'

Can I use my Limitless pendant with non-Limitless software?

Yes. Fluent (iOS, $9.99–19.99/mo) ingests Limitless audio directly and produces transcripts, person profiles, meeting summaries, and daily insights without depending on Limitless's cloud or Meta's roadmap. This is the recommended setup for current Limitless owners — keep the hardware, swap the software layer.

How long will my old Limitless pendant keep working?

The hardware itself is fine indefinitely — Bluetooth pairing, mic capture, battery. The risk is on the software side: Limitless's cloud sync depends on Meta keeping the backend running. Pairing the pendant with an independent software layer (Fluent, or a self-hosted setup) hedges against that. Don't throw the device out; replace the software around it.

Limitless vs Omi: Which Pendant Fits Your Life

Short answer: if you already own a Limitless, keep it — the hardware is excellent and still works. If you're buying fresh in 2026, Omi ($89, open-source). New Limitless pendants haven't been for sale since Meta's acquisition. For most users the right move is hardware you own + software that doesn't depend on Meta's roadmap.

Two AI conversation pendants. Two very different bets on what AI capture should be. One just got bought by Meta. The other one's firmware is on GitHub.

If you're reading this, you already knew that. You're shopping. You're trying to figure out if your old Limitless pendant is worth replacing, if the Omi is real, and which of the two will still exist in a year. This is the comparison without the marketing.

Quick answer

If you already own a Limitless, you have hardware that the original team built better than anyone else in the category. Keep wearing it. The hardware still pairs and captures fine. What's murky is the software future after the Meta acquisition, and the right move there is to pair the pendant with a software layer that doesn't depend on Meta's roadmap.

If you're buying fresh, Omi ($89, open-source). It's the only one of the two you can actually buy. Sales of new Limitless pendants halted in December 2025, and "find one on eBay" is a sketchy on-ramp into a category where the data plumbing matters.

So this comparison is really two questions: keep what I have, or replace with Omi? and if I'm buying for the first time, is Omi the move? Both questions get the same answer for most people: Omi for new purchases, your existing Limitless for as long as the hardware keeps working.

Hardware

Limitless was always the more finished pendant. Better mic, better battery (rated for 100 hours of capture), nicer industrial design, a magnetic mount that didn't fail. The hardware was a real piece of engineering, and you could feel it in your hand. Wearing one didn't make you look like you were beta-testing a startup.

Omi is a smaller device with an openly hobbyist feel. The case is plastic. The mount is functional but not subtle. Battery is rated similarly but real-world numbers are noisier. Reddit threads about it run the gamut from "lasts all day" to "died at lunch." That's an open-source-hardware problem more than an Omi problem.

If you're optimizing for I want to wear this and not think about it, Limitless wins on hardware. If you're optimizing for I want to be able to take this apart, flash my own firmware, and not pay the polish tax, Omi wins.

Software

Here's where the picture inverts.

Limitless's software was good, in the past tense. The Mac and web app were genuinely useful, the daily summaries were sharp, and the chat-with-your-conversations feature was the best in the category. As of December 2025, all of that has an unclear future. Meta hasn't said what's getting deprecated, what's getting integrated into Facebook Memories, or what happens to your historical data. The product still works. The product is also no longer being developed in any direction the original team controls.

Omi's software is the inverse. It's hobbyist-tier. The app feels like it was built by someone who read about UX once. The daily summaries are mediocre. The chat interface works but isn't impressive. But — and this is the entire point — you can swap it. The firmware is open. The backend can be self-hosted. If you don't like Omi's app, you can use someone else's. Including, for example, Fluent.

So: Limitless ships better software but you no longer control its future. Omi ships rougher software but you can replace whichever piece you don't like. Pick which trade you're more comfortable with.

Privacy

Limitless was cloud-default. Your conversations live on Limitless's servers. Now they live on Limitless's servers under Meta's umbrella. Whatever your prior level of trust was, it should not survive the acquisition unchanged.

Omi is the closest thing to "your conversations never touch a cloud you don't own" that exists in this category. Self-hosted Omi is a real path: a meaningful number of users run the entire stack on their own infrastructure. If you're a privacy researcher, an attorney, a journalist, or someone who's been radicalized by Section 702, Omi self-hosted is the answer.

Hosted Omi is cloud too, but the cloud is run by Based Hardware (the company behind Omi), not Meta or Amazon, and the open-source codebase means you have an exit at any point.

Acquisition risk

Limitless was acquired in December 2025. Bee was acquired by Amazon. Rewind was folded into Limitless before Limitless was folded into Meta. The pattern is real and the pattern doesn't have an off-switch.

Omi is the only pendant on this short list whose business model is not build a brand, sell to Meta or Amazon, distribute the data wherever the acquirer wants it. Open-source-hardware companies can still get acquired, but the open-source codebase is the rip cord. If Based Hardware sells, the firmware is on GitHub. The community can fork. The product survives.

That's not a guarantee. It's an exit ramp, which is more than Limitless owners had in November 2025.

Community and longevity

Limitless had a more active, more public community than Omi for most of its life. Twitter activity, customer testimonials, founder presence in public, polished marketing. That community is in flux now. The Discord is still there. The energy is not.

Omi's community is smaller, more technical, and concentrated in places where open-source-hardware people hang out. GitHub issues, the Based Hardware Discord, occasional Hacker News threads. It's not a vibe community. It's a project. If you're allergic to vibe communities, you'll like Omi's. If you wanted the camaraderie of being on the cutting edge of consumer AI hardware, the Limitless Discord still has the hangover energy of that, and it's still real.

Where Fluent fits

Fluent integrates directly with both pendants today. If you have a Limitless pendant and you're trying to extract value from your existing recordings without depending on Meta's roadmap, Fluent is the most direct path. If you have an Omi pendant and the default app feels rough, Fluent is the polished software layer Omi's hardware deserved. The integration is identical from your perspective: pair the pendant once, let Fluent ingest the audio, get transcripts and meeting summaries and person profiles built from cited evidence over time. Encrypted at rest. Per-user encryption is on the roadmap.

This isn't "Fluent vs Limitless" or "Fluent vs Omi." It's "use either pendant with Fluent and get more out of either device than the default app does."

How to decide

If you don't own a pendant yet, the choice is between Omi and waiting. Limitless sales halted in December 2025; the only way to "get one" now is a used unit from someone who already quit the platform, which is a sketchy on-ramp into a category where data plumbing and ongoing support both matter.

Want privacy first, comfortable with rough edges — Omi.
Want to wait six months and see who's still standing — wait. The category is going to thin out further.

If you already own a Limitless and you're wondering whether to switch:

The hardware still pairs and captures — keep wearing it. Pair it with Fluent. You already have hardware that works; the open question was always the software stack, and that's now portable.
The hardware is dead or you've stopped wearing it — if you're going to buy new hardware, buy something whose company isn't going to get acquired in 2026, which means Omi.

If you already own an Omi:

The pendant is doing its job. The question is whether the default Omi app is doing the one output job (see our pendant-use guide). If yes, keep it. If no, the issue is the software layer, not the hardware. Try Fluent or fork the open-source repo.

The pendant category is going to thin out over the next twelve months. Some of the names on the alternatives list won't exist by 2027. Open-source hardware (Omi) and software that doesn't depend on the pendant company's roadmap (Fluent) are the two strategic moves that survive consolidation. Everything else is a bet that the next acquirer will treat your data better than the last one did.

For the wider category — Plaud, Bee, Friend, Granola, Otter, the rest of it — see the full comparison.