Is Livescribe Still in Business? October 2026 Status Check

Yes, Livescribe is still in business. At our October 9, 2026 check, its US store at us.livescribe.com was taking orders for notebooks and ink, but both smartpens it lists, the Echo 2 and the LivePen A5 bundle, showed as sold out. Its parent company, renamed INQ Group AB in August 2026, now sells its newer pens under a separate brand called inq.

We make Ophaya smart pens, so we compete with Livescribe. Everything below about Livescribe and INQ Group comes from what they publish themselves: the US store, the Livescribe help center and the company's press releases, all opened on October 9, 2026. Stock can change at any time, so look again before you order.

Is Livescribe still in business? The October 2026 store check

The store is open, and six of its 11 products were in stock when we looked. The top banner still offered free standard shipping to the continental US over $35. What you can't buy is a pen: the smartpens collection page showed "In stock (0)" and "Out of stock (2)".

We saw no closing notice or "discontinued" label on the homepage, the smartpens page or the Echo 2 page. The homepage does have a "Think in inq" section with a button to inq.shop, and the first link in its Quick Help menu is "Migrate LivePen Data to inq."

Who owns Livescribe now

Livescribe is owned by INQ Group AB, the Swedish company listed on Nasdaq Stockholm that was called Anoto Group AB until August 2026. In a May 21, 2026 press release, still under the Anoto name, it said its core business lines include "inq and Livescribe retail products as well as enterprise workflow solutions."

The new name was announced on August 28, 2026, after shareholders approved it at the July 31 annual general meeting and the Swedish Companies Registration Office registered it. That release calls inq the company's commercial brand and doesn't mention Livescribe. Nasdaq Stockholm changed the trading symbol from ANOT to INQ from September 1.

Is Livescribe going out of business?

We found no announcement that it is. None of INQ Group's releases from May through October 8, 2026 says the Livescribe store is closing or that a Livescribe product is discontinued.

The company's interim report for January to June 2026, published August 31, says retail net sales rose 39% to SEK 2.3 million in the second quarter, without splitting that figure by brand or naming Livescribe. The newest release we found, from October 8, says holders of its secured convertible loan converted about USD 5.43 million of principal and interest into shares, and that a LAMY Edition inq-01 is "progressing towards commercial availability ahead of the holiday selling period." We won't read more into the company's finances than those documents say.

Our reading, as a competitor, is that the company's new consumer work is going into inq while the Livescribe store keeps selling paper and ink. INQ Group hasn't said that; it's our judgment from the pages above.

Is the Livescribe Echo 2 discontinued?

Livescribe hasn't said so. At our check the Echo 2 page listed the pen at $119.95 with a "Sold Out" label, and we saw neither a discontinuation notice nor a restock date. The homepage still links an Echo 2 Help Center. For now, though, you can't buy a new Echo 2 from Livescribe's US store.

That matters because of the microphone. Livescribe's help center says the Echo 2 "has a built-in microphone and stores around 200 hours of audio" in the pen, with room for up to 20,000 A4 pages of writing. inq and Ophaya both record audio through the phone app instead. Our Echo 2 alternatives guide goes through the options, used Echo 2 pens included.

The store lists no Livescribe 3, Symphony or Aegir pen either. Our Livescribe 3, Symphony and Aegir guide covers apps, paper and refills for each.

What is Livescribe inq?

inq is the newer brand from the same company. Anoto announced it on April 29, 2025 as "a completely re-imagined lineup of smartpens, notebooks, accessories and software under a bold new consumer brand." It has its own store at inq.shop.

At our October 2026 check the inq writing set cost $165 for the pen, one notebook and an app inq calls "free-to-use" on iOS, Android and the web. The store's product data showed the Moon White sets available and the black ones unavailable. inq says the pen holds up to 75 pages before it needs to sync, you record audio on your phone, and there's a 100-day trial with free return shipping.

Livescribe's inq FAQ tells LivePen owners that the LivePen app will keep getting bug fixes and customer support, that new LivePen features would stop no later than August 31, 2025, and that switching to the inq app is free. Its migration guide says the move copies "all of your handwriting, transcripts, voice recordings, and voice transcripts" and needs LivePen app 1.15.1 or later. Neither page covers the Echo 2, Livescribe 3, Symphony or Aegir, so ask inq support before assuming those pens carry over. Our Livescribe inq explainer has the full costs.

If you already own a Livescribe pen

Nothing we found sets an end date for the pens or the Livescribe+ app, and the Livescribe+ download page still links versions for iPhone, Android, Windows and Mac.

We'd still export the notebooks you care about this week. Livescribe's help center says the Livescribe+ iPhone app can share pages as a Livescribe PDF, with or without audio, or save a pencast as a video. Keep those files somewhere you control, and if you use LivePen and plan to move to inq, make copies before you start.

The paper you've already bought is worth finishing, since Livescribe's store says its smartpens only work with Livescribe dot paper. The 3-subject notebooks and the A5 4-pack were in stock at our check, and our Livescribe paper guide shows which notebooks fit which pen.

If you were about to buy one

Start with what you need the pen to do. For long lectures or interviews where you don't want to rely on your phone to record, the Echo 2's built-in microphone is the feature to look for. For the newer platform from the same company, there's inq. Neo smartpen, Moleskine, Rocketbook and others are compared in our best smart pens of 2026.

Then there's ours. The Ophaya 3-in-1 set is $99.95 for the pen, a dot-code notebook and a 10-inch LCD writing tablet. Handwriting syncs live over Bluetooth to the free Ophaya Pro+ app on iPhone, iPad and Android, with no subscription for syncing, OCR or app audio recording, and notes export as PDF, Word, PNG, GIF or MP4.

The catch for a Livescribe buyer is the microphone, because our pen doesn't have one. The app records audio on your phone or tablet and links it to what you wrote, so you can replay it from your notes. If you need the recorder in the pen, buy elsewhere. Our pen also captures handwriting only on Ophaya dot-code paper or the Ophaya LCD writing tablet, so Livescribe notebooks won't carry over. Ophaya vs Livescribe has the spec comparison, our Livescribe alternative page puts the two side by side, and is Ophaya legit covers who we are. To try only the pen, the pen with a mini notebook is $69.95.

Questions to ask any smart pen brand

Nobody can promise you a company will be around in five years, and that includes us. These four answers take about ten minutes to find:

1. What formats do my notes export to? PDF and image files open in ordinary software.
2. Is the app free, and is anything I'd use behind a paid tier?
3. What does a year of paper cost at the rate I write?
4. How long is the return window if the pen doesn't suit me?

Frequently asked questions

Is Livescribe the same company as inq?

They're separate brands with separate stores, owned by the same parent, INQ Group AB (Anoto Group AB until August 2026).

Does Livescribe still sell the Symphony smartpen?

Not on its US store at our October 2026 check. The only pens listed were the Echo 2 and the LivePen A5 bundle, both sold out, and the LivePen / Symphony refills were sold out too.

Will my Livescribe pen stop working?

We found nothing announcing that it will. We think the bigger long-term risk is app support and paper supply, so export your notes and keep a spare notebook.

Can a Livescribe pen write on regular paper?

It leaves ink, but Livescribe says its smartpens only work with Livescribe dot paper, because the pen's infrared camera reads the printed micro-dot pattern to find its place on the page. Our explainer on what a smart pen is covers how that works.

Can I use Livescribe paper with an Ophaya pen?

No. Livescribe pens need Livescribe dot paper, and Ophaya pens capture handwriting only on Ophaya dot-code paper or our LCD writing tablet.