The Best Sleep Apps, According to a Therapist

Cost: $79.99 for annual subscription, $399.99 for lifetime subscription

• Essential Info

  • Free Version Available: Yes

  • Free Trial: Yes, 7 days

  • Operating System: iOS, Android

• Pros & Cons

  Pros

  • Wide variety of content

  • Sleep stories read by celebrities and meditation leaders

  • Can set reminders, flag favorites, download content for offline use, and set sleep timers

  Cons

  • Not much content in free version

  • Need to use consistently to be worth the cost

• What I Like About Calm

  If you have insomnia, one of the most frustrating aspects is the hours of tossing and turning, trying to no avail to fall asleep. Calm can help. Calm offers fall-asleep-and-stay-asleep resources like soundscapes (ambient noise to play in the background), music (playlists curated to promote sleep), sleep meditations (exercises to get your body and mind ready for sleep), and sleep stories (short stories designed to lull you to sleep) that all help you drift off quickly. And with hundreds of options to choose from, you’re sure to find something that works for you.

  My Calm tester, who tried its services for a month, was especially impressed with the app’s soundscapes and sleep stories. As someone who always needed some kind of white noise to sleep, my tester was thrilled with just how many soundscape options there were (including 15 different kinds of rain!), which never failed to help him relax and fall asleep more quickly than when he didn’t use them. But his favorite part of his Calm experience was undoubtedly the sleep stories—in particular, a story called “Mr. Calm,” which he knew for certain helped him fall asleep almost immediately because he never got past the first 10 minutes. So if you struggle to fall asleep at night, Calm is definitely the app for you. 

• Things to Consider

  Although you can use Calm without paying for the premium subscription, most content is locked behind a paywall. And because the subscription is a little pricey, my tester felt that he had to use the app every day in order to make it worth the cost.

• What Users Say

  “I can say that on nights where ‘Mr. Calm’ or rain sounds played in the background, I fell asleep faster. Conversely, on the night my cell phone battery died and I sat in a bedroom that was too dark and quiet, I did miss it. Had I used it that night, maybe I’d have slept better or maybe I wouldn’t have, but I could imagine that several quiet nights without it would leave my mind racing and my sleep cycle off.”

  — Calm tester who noticed he fell asleep faster using the app

Cost: $4.99 for monthly subscription, $39.99 for annual subscription

• Essential Info

  • Free Version Available: Yes

  • Free Trial: Yes, 7 days

  • Operating Systems: iOS, Android

• Pros & Cons

  Pros

  • Easy-to-use sleep tracker

  • Tracks weekly and monthly sleep trends

  • Customized recommendations and tips based on personal data

  Cons

  • Limited free features

• What I Like About SleepWatch

  When it comes to analyzing your sleep (or lack thereof), things like your heart rate and blood oxygen levels are important indicators of sleep quality—but how do you measure that when your phone is sitting next to you on the nightstand? This is where smart tracker devices come in. SleepWatch works with your smart tracker device, like an Apple Watch, to get those statistics that your phone can’t manage. And not only does SleepWatch collect all this data, it also breaks it down for you in a way that’s easy to understand and makes it clear what changes need to occur in order to get you sleeping faster and longer.

  My tester who tried SleepWatch for a month was pleasantly surprised at how much information she was able to glean from using the app. When getting set up, she set her goal to “better understand my sleep,” and she found it refreshing that the app was so user-friendly and made it easy to find what she needed. 

  SleepWatch’s central feature is its sleep tracker, and my tester was impressed by how well it worked—each morning, she got a report about her sleep the night before, including any sleep debt (when she got less sleep than is recommended), her sleeping and waking times, how close she was to her sleep goal (7 hours), and her overall “SleepWatch Score” (which compared her sleep quality to other users with similar ages and BMIs). SleepWatch then offered personalized recommendations, tips, and optimal bedtime reminders based on that report. Ultimately, SleepWatch helped my tester improve her sleep by drawing her attention to her poor sleep habits, like how widely her bedtime routine varied—and she was able to adjust her sleep hygiene for the better.

• Things to Consider

  While SleepWatch offers tons of data and information about sleep, my tester didn’t find all of it useful when it came to actually improving her sleep quality or duration. You might have to parse it all out yourself to figure out the best way for the app to help you. In addition, while there is a free version of the app, its features are very limited. If you want more than just the very basics from the sleep tracker, you’ll have to subscribe.

• What Users Say

  “My experience with SleepWatch was generally positive. It was easy to jump in and get started with tracking my sleep right away. That’s always important to me, as I don’t like to spend too much time bogged down in trying to learn the ins and outs of a new app. I think SleepWatch helped improve my sleep by drawing my attention to several of my poor sleep habits. For example, I sleep much more consistently when I try to go to bed at the same time every night. I don’t think I would have realized how wildly my bedtime routine varied from night to night without the help of the tracker.”

  — SleepWatch tester who was able to improve her sleep

Cost: $9.99 for monthly subscription, $39.99 for annual subscription

• Essential Info

  • Free Version Available: Yes

  • Free Trial: Yes, 7 days

  • Operating Systems: iOS and Apple Watch

• Pros & Cons

  Pros

  • Tracks tons of sleep metrics

  • Explanation of data analysis is clear and easy to understand

  • Large collection of meditations, stories, soundscapes, and music

  Cons

  • Only for Apple users

  • Cannot record much of the data without an Apple Watch

• What I Like About Pillow

  Enhancing your sleep hygiene isn’t all about tracking when you fall asleep and when you wake up—the more information and resources you have at your disposal, the better you’ll be able to improve your sleep. And that’s exactly what Pillow offers. Along with a sleep tracker that’s “scientifically backed” and offers in-depth sleep analysis (like tracking your sleeping and waking times and heart rate), there’s also a wide array of other offerings. There’s audio recordings of all the noises that you might have made in the night (like snoring) or noises that might have woken you up and disrupted your sleep; a collection of meditations, soundscapes, stories, and music to help you prepare for sleep; and easy-to-understand sleep metrics that you can delve into deeply to better understand your sleep trends.

   My Pillow tester, who tried the app for a month, was impressed with just how many resources the app offered. The sleep tracker itself tracks sleep duration, sleep disruptions, REM sleep, light sleep, deep sleep, heart rate, temperature, bedtime, and snoring, and it aggregates this information into easily digestible data points that helped my tester understand what her body and brain were doing at night. 

  She was surprised by the results of the audio recordings that Pillow took during the night—she often woke up to over a hundred recordings, which helped her understand what might have disrupted her sleep. She especially appreciated the nightly reminders to go to bed and seeing how much (or little) she slept the night before: they were good reminders to prioritize going to bed on time in order to wake up rested, and learning about how her evening and nighttime choices impacted how she felt the next day helped her develop better bedtime habits.

• Things to Consider

  The Pillow app works best when used with both an iPhone and an Apple Watch, the latter of which you’d wear during the night—but my tester found this uncomfortable, and her watch often died mid-sleep because of all the use it got during the day. But without your Apple Watch, much of the data that Pillow would otherwise collect is unavailable. My tester also found that a lot of the data that Pillow gathers is actually available for free on the free iPhone Health app, and felt that the app didn’t really give her actionable ways to actively improve the quality of her sleep. Plus, Pillow is only available to Apple users, so Android folks, you’re out of luck.

• What Users Say

  “I saw (over and over) that I went to bed far later than I thought I did and learned that my bedtime routine is quite a bit longer than I’d thought, aka, when I head upstairs to ‘go to bed,’ I don't often actually get into bed and fall asleep for almost an hour. Knowing this helped me set more realistic goals for wrapping up my evening earlier so that I could get to bed at a reasonable hour and get more sleep.” 

  — Pillow tester who appreciated the app helping her build better sleep hygiene

Cost: $39.99 for annual subscription

• Essential Info

  • Free Version Available: No

  • Free Trial: Yes, 7 days

  • Operating Systems: iOS, Android

• Pros & Cons

  Pros

  • Provides statistics of sleep habits over time

  • Offers “smart alarm” that gently wakes you up over 30 mins

  • Features sleep stages data, sleep aids, and sound recordings

  Cons

  • No free version

  • No FAQs on website

• What I Like About Sleep Cycle

  There are many different aspects to healthy sleep, and Sleep Cycle covers them all. Its patented sleep tracking measures your sleep duration, how often you wake up, and your sleep stage dynamics (when you enter each different phase of sleep and for how long). It teaches you how to make adjustments to regulate your sleep stages and provides tips and tricks for when sleep is evasive—two kinds of education we found lacking in other apps—and offers sleep aids like sleep stories and ambient sound that slowly fade out to lull you to sleep. 

  Sleep Cycle also records at night, so you can understand the noises you and your surroundings are making that might be affecting your sleep, and offers information on sleep health from scientists, doctors, and sleep experts. One feature that none of the other apps on this list have is the “Smart Alarm,” which slowly wakes you up over a period of 30 minutes when you’re in your lightest sleep stage. All these offerings make Sleep Cycle an incredibly versatile tool.

  My month-long tester was impressed with her experience with Sleep Cycle. She predominantly used the sleep tracker and its resulting statistics, but found other aspects of the app incredibly helpful: the sound recordings helped her realize how poor her sleep health was and that she needed a change, and she especially appreciated a cognitive focusing technique recording from an expert that aimed to refocus negative thoughts by guiding them to more positive associations rather than trying to quiet them. This exercise was meant to improve her association with her bed and bedroom, helping her fall asleep in a more pleasant way—and it worked. 

  While not all of Sleep Cycle’s recommendations were right for her (she wasn’t about to start sleeping in a different room from her spouse, for example), she felt as though the app was personalized to her experience, offering suggestions based on the data from her previous night’s sleep. My tester ended her Sleep Cycle trial recommending the app to people who are trying to figure out the best way to improve the quality of their sleep.

• Things to Consider

  Unfortunately, there is no free version of Sleep Cycle available—everything is locked behind a paywall. My tester was also frustrated that there was no FAQ section on the website that she could look up before trying the app, especially considering that there’s no free version and you have to commit to a yearly subscription (albeit with a 7-day free trial) in order to sign up.

• What Users Say

  “I felt the app was very personalized to my experience. Each morning, it would offer me a quick tip based on my previous night’s sleep, such as how exercise or a brisk walk can help improve sleep efficiency, or how tossing and turning is worse for my sleep than just getting up and doing something relaxing before returning to bed. I liked that the programs and exercises were only a few minutes long, but sometimes offered more thorough explanations if I wanted them.”

  — Sleep Cycle tester who appreciated all of the app’s many features

Cost: $297 for monthly subscription

• Essential Info

  • Free Version Available: No

  • Free Trial: No

  • Operating Systems: iOS, Android

• Pros & Cons

  Pros

  • Pairs you with a licensed sleep clinician

  • Utilizes clinically recognized therapeutic modality to treat insomnia

  • Sleep clinic in-network with several insurance plans

  Cons

  • Much more expensive than other apps

  • Program is rigorous and requires constant dedication in order to see results

• What I Like About Sleep Reset

  For more serious sleep issues, like chronic insomnia, you might need more support than just an app that tracks your sleep cycles and offers white noise at night. But with the cost of at-home sleep tests and in-lab sleep clinics ranging from $500 to over $10,000 out of pocket, accessibility to scientifically and clinically supported treatment for sleep disorders just isn’t a possibility for most people.

  This is what makes Sleep Reset so valuable. It offers cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), an evidence-based treatment for chronic insomnia recommended by institutions like the NIH and Harvard Medical School, and connects you with a licensed sleep clinician who acts as your personal coach through the rigorous Sleep Reset program. Plus, the price is apparent—$297 every four weeks, with no surprises. And while this price is certainly higher than the other apps on this list, the services provided for the cost are worth it.

  The most important thing to know about Sleep Reset’s program is that it requires true dedication—you are actively trying to change the way you sleep, after all. For my tester, who tried the app for eight weeks, this meant sticking to her personalized “sleep reset plan,” which involved “sleep compression,” or matching the time she was physically in bed with the number of hours she slept, in order to increase sleepiness and decrease the time it takes to fall asleep. The first few nights of this were brutal, resulting in brain fog, exhaustion, and irritability, and feeling hopeless and tortured—until she reached out to her coach, who had designed her plan. 

  My tester reported that personal access to her coach was an invaluable part of the program, because she provided consistent and accessible support, responding to messages (of despair) almost immediately, and offering constant reassurance and help. With her coach walking her through the worst parts of her reset plan, my tester found that within days, it was easier to fall asleep—a big payoff for a few days of discomfort.

• Things to Consider

  If you are considering Sleep Reset, keep in mind that it is not for the faint of heart. This is a rigorous, highly structured program that is meant to clinically treat insomnia, and will require dedication and effort on your part. And while the monthly price of treatment is relatively expensive, especially compared to much simpler sleep apps, Sleep Reset is in-network with a number of insurance plans. Be sure to ask about coverage before you sign up.

• What Users Say

  “As I make my way through the Sleep Reset program, I’m finding the personal coaching aspect invaluable. I appreciate that I can send my coach a quick text message at any time of day to ask for clarification on a sleep strategy or advice for adjusting the program to better fit my needs. While her responses aren’t always instant (she’s a human being, after all), I typically hear back within 10 to 20 minutes, depending on the time of day. While making significant changes to my sleep has been a bit uncomfortable and overwhelming, having consistent and accessible support from Jill makes the process so much easier.” 

  — Sleep Reset tester who felt supported and cared for by her coach