We Asked Experts What Sleep Apps They Recommend — Here’s What They Said

Headspace is one of the most well-known meditation apps out there. It offers guidance for better sleep, focus, anxiety management, and more, with structured recommendations alongside the option to choose whichever meditation practice you want from their vast library.

In addition to having a limited free version for those who want to benefit from Headspace’s meditations but do not want to pay for a premium subscription, many employers offer a Headspace membership as a benefit to their workers. You can ask your employer if your benefits package includes a Headspace membership. Kaiser Permanente members can also access a premium headspace membership for free.

The free version is accessible to anyone who wants access. You can try the premium version for 7 or 14 days for free (depending on the current offer), and students can purchase a premium plan at an 85 percent discount. If you choose to purchase the premium plan, you have the option to set up a family plan so that up to six members of your household can share it.

While Headspace’s library is expansive, it also provides a structured approach to learning meditation, so users who are not familiar with these practices can learn without getting overwhelmed. At the same time, you can choose which aspects of the app to use and craft your own meditation practice, if you prefer.

If you have an Oura ring, you may have already come across Headspace meditations and soundscapes via the Oura app.

While the premium version has some fantastic offerings, Headspace’s free offerings and availability through employer programs and other memberships sets it apart as a meditation resource.

Calm advertises itself as the No. 1 meditation app, and with good reason. It offers a wealth of meditation resources not only for sleep but also to reduce anxiety and promote positive mental health. Premium users can pay monthly or annually or purchase a lifetime subscription, and the app is available on any device, including desktop computers.

For users on a budget, Calm has a free version that offers access to a limited selection of its library. The app has no ads, even for free users. You can try out the premium version for 14 days to see if you want to upgrade, and Calm often has promotions for longer free trials if you need more time to make a decision.

Calm offers resources to reduce stress, improve sleep, and promote mindfulness. The app recommends daily meditations, and you can create your own playlists of meditations for different moods and needs.

In addition to meditations, Calm has music tracks and soundscapes geared toward helping you relax, sleep, or even focus at work. The app developers have used research involving sound frequencies to develop soundscapes for different energies, based on what you need.

The kids section makes this app great for the whole family — you can help your child build skills for good mental health, stress management, and healthy sleep habits. New content is added regularly, so you will never run out of fresh meditations to explore.

Some users report that the vast amount of resources available in the Calm app can be overwhelming, making libraries difficult to navigate, but that can happen when there are hundreds of tracks to choose from. It also encourages users to invite friends to use the app, with some saying that they find these invitations annoying. However, overall, Calm is one of the most frequently downloaded meditation apps available.

Calm is available in English, German, Spanish, French, Korean, and Portuguese. This sets it apart from many resources that are only available in English, or only in a couple of languages.

If you are struggling with sleep, it can be difficult to know where to start. As with many things, when it comes to quality sleep, knowledge is power. Pillow is an excellent resource for tracking your sleep habits, so that you can make positive changes.

Pillow offers an extensive personalized breakdown of your sleep, with recommendations just for you. It tracks sleep duration, quality, movement, and more, and when you wake up it breaks down your sleep into handy, easy-to-read graphs so that you can analyze your sleep.

Pillow pairs with the Apple Watch to analyze your heart rate, oxygen levels, and respiration, though you can use the app without a watch by placing your iPhone near your pillow when you go to sleep, and it will track other data.

Sleep cycles need to be manually activated each night, and Pillow’s alarm system is automatic, so if you want to sleep in with no alarm, you will have to forego Pillow’s monitoring that night. However, since sleep quality is better when you have a consistent sleep schedule, this feature might actually improve your overall sleep quality, even if it feels annoying to be woken up on a Saturday morning.

White Noise Deep Sleep Sounds offers more than just white noise. It has a library of more than 80 sounds, and users can also create custom combinations of different sounds to develop their own mix. If you are on a budget, there is a lifetime free version of the app with 30 sound options to choose from. The premium plan unlocks several benefits, including the ability to listen to sounds when you are offline and an add-free experience. An annual family plan is also available, so that you can share mixes with family members — a great option for parents helping their kids learn good sleep hygiene.

It has a sleep timer function in case you don’t want it to play all through the night, though some have reported that it will shut off even when they are not using the timer. Many describe the app as user-friendly, with many different options. White Noise Deep Sleep Sounds may have sleep in the title, but it also has mixes and sounds designed for focus, relaxing, and other situations.

White Noise Deep Sleep Sounds has compatible versions for various devices, with no external hardware required. The lifetime free version makes it accessible, and there are affordable options to pay weekly, monthly, or annually for those who want premium access. Its affordability, user-friendly interface, and wide variety of sound options makes it the clear winner in this category.

Consistent sleep cycles are vital to quality sleep and overall well-being. For those who want to set up and maintain a strong sleep routine, Sleep Cycle stands out. It not only tracks your sleep but also provides educational materials to help you understand the science behind quality rest and gives you daytime exercises to improve the quality of your sleep. In addition to these tools, it has a sleep journal, so that you can track which factors in your life contribute to when you feel rested or tired.

Although you have to activate the premium version in order to access the app, you can cancel before the end of the seven-day free trial and use the free version of the app. While more limited than the premium version, Sleep Cycle’s free version (called “Freemium”) includes an alarm that wakes you during light sleep, so that you wake up feeling rested, plus an analysis of your sleep that includes a sleep graph, soothing sounds to help you sleep, sleep goals, integration with Apple Health and Google Fit, bedtime routines, and more.

The paid version includes everything from the Freemium version as well as online backup, ambient noise, more statistics about your sleep, snore and sound detection, tracking body temperature, personalized sleep notes, weather reports, and even more tracking features.

Many sleep apps that monitor your vitals during sleep rely on an external device, but Sleep Cycle also uses your phone’s camera and microphone to monitor your movements, snoring, coughing, and more through the night.

Some users have trouble reading the small text on the graphs and note that the app can drain your phone’s battery. However, the amount of data that the app is gathering likely explains why it takes a lot of power.

Sleep Cycle is available on both Apple and Android devices.

Any parent will tell you that good sleep is vital to kids’ well-being, and an overtired child can sometimes feel impossible to handle. Moshi Kids is our hands-down favorite app for helping kids fall asleep and stay asleep. Rated for kids less than a year old and up, according to the website, the app includes hundreds of stories and sleep sounds to help children rest.

The tools on Moshi Kids range in length from one minute to one hour, so you can choose the length that you consider appropriate to help your child fall asleep. You and your child can also create a custom playlist of their favorite resources. But with more than 500 tools available and more added regularly, you can always change it up, and your child is unlikely to get bored with the app’s offerings.

Not only are the stories on Moshi Kids designed to promote calm rest — they also explore themes like empathy, reducing anxiety, and regulating emotions in healthy ways, promoting mental wellness in addition to quality sleep.

The stories feature over 100 characters with different personalities and backgrounds, so any child can find a character they relate to.

Moshi Kids has a limited free version that provides a sampling of the stories and sounds. Unlike many sleep apps, the free version of Moshi Kids is ad-free, so that kids can safely use the app regardless of whether their parents opt into the premium subscription. The full library is available with a monthly or annual subscription, unlocking hundreds more tools and resources.

Chorus Sleep offers soundscapes, white noise, guided meditations, and breathing exercises to help you fall asleep and stay asleep. It has a sleep tracker and provides you with data about the quality of your sleep, in order to help you make decisions about your sleep and health. You can use the app independently in a self-guided manner, but Chorus Sleep also has sleep coaches who can help you in your sleep journey.

Chorus Sleep operates in four areas: tracking your sleep habits and quality, helping you fall asleep, improving your overall quality of sleep, and giving you access to trained coaches to help you implement CBT-I techniques into your sleep habits. The app creators have studied the outcomes from app users to ensure its effectiveness and improve the tools offered.

In addition to support for adults, Chorus Sleep has pediatric resources available. Our research found that it supports families by including resources for sleep during pregnancy, infant sleep training, and healthy sleep for young children.

Although Chorus Sleep is on the more expensive side for sleep apps, the tools it offers have significant research backing their approach to helping improve sleep. Additionally, it has an option for employers to give their workers access to Chorus Sleep as a benefit. Check with your job to see if you can get access to Chorus Sleep at no cost to you.

Another thing that makes Chorus Sleep stand out is its commitment to privacy. Their privacy policy maintains that no personal information is shared outside their system. With so many apps sharing data with third parties these days, that is a breath of fresh air.

While many sleep apps have research-backed programs to help improve your quality of sleep, algorithms and premade programs can only do so much. Sleep Reset stands out because it combines a CBT-I program to improve sleep quality with a human coach to help personalize your plan and reach your sleep goals.

Sleep Reset provides a four-week program to help you overcome sleep problems. Although the cost per week is a bit higher than average for sleep apps, you are only meant to pay for the time you spend in the program. It aims to help you sleep long after you stop using and paying for the app. Long term, Sleep Reset is likely to cost less than other apps that you use indefinitely.

Not only that, but Sleep Reset is approved for flexible spending account (FSA) and health savings account (HSA) payments and is covered by some insurance plans. That means that your health insurance might cover some or all of the cost. That certainly sets it apart from other apps that do not take insurance.

Sleep Reset offers education about sleep hygiene to ensure that you understand what changes will most positively impact your sleep. It provides data on your sleep quality, and then you and your coach can work together to create a custom plan to meet your needs. If you do not click with your coach, you can switch to a different one and find someone who is a good fit.

Because you are working with a real person and not an AI or a bot, you may not get immediate responses to your messages — but that is a tradeoff that comes with getting real, human feedback and not automatically generated messages. Plus, the daily lessons provide educational materials that can be helpful to read while you wait to hear back from your coach.

The time-limited, evidence-based nature of the program, option to use your insurance, and ability to do personalized work with a coach set Sleep Reset apart as providing a truly personalized sleep program.

SleepScore’s tracking system is based on multiple peer-reviewed studies conducted by the app developers to ensure that you are getting the best possible information. In fact, the team at SleepScore continues to conduct sleep studies, and you may be eligible to participate.

The app tracks your breathing and movement during the night, and you can get a PDF printout of the last 30 days to provide to your physician. This is incredibly helpful for anyone who is being treated for a sleep disorder or who is working with a medical team to improve their sleep. The alarm aims to wake you up gently, so that you do not feel groggy regardless of what your sleep hours are.

There is a lifetime free version that tracks your sleep, calculates a sleep score based on your data, and shows your sleep analysis so that you can make changes to your habits. The premium version includes doctor’s reports and more in-depth, enhanced sleep data.

You do not have to wear a smartwatch or other external device to use SleepScore, although that means that it does not track heart rate or other vitals that require a wearable watch. It also does not have white noise or sleep meditations that can play while the sleep tracker is operating. However, this app still is a great fit for anyone who wants to track their sleep habits.

So many apps use a subscription model that can add up over time. If you want an app that allows you to purchase a lifetime membership, with no recurring costs, BetterSleep is a great option. You can purchase one that is monthly, annual, or for life. While the lifetime purchase is pricier than most monthly subscriptions, purchasing the app once and using it forever can be more budget-friendly than something you have to pay over and over.

BetterSleep also has a free option, though it is very limited, with only a few sleep sounds available from the app’s vast library of options. Users can create their own sound mixes to help them fall asleep and stay asleep, and the developers regularly add new content. The app offers a wide variety of ambient noises at different frequencies, as well as sleep tales, or stories, to help lull you to sleep. The content is appropriate for all ages and comes in various lengths depending on your preferences.

When you create your account, BetterSleep prompts you to take a quiz to learn your chronotype, or your specific circadian rhythm. Different people have different sleep needs and are at their best at different times of day, and understanding your body’s natural rhythm can help you make choices that will help you get your best rest. BetterSleep presents chronotypes in the form of cute animals with different sleep habits.

In addition to educational materials and soundscapes, BetterSleep has a four-week program to help you improve the quality of your sleep. The sleep tracker gives you insights into your sleep quality, so that you can make changes and feel more rested. It also recommends sleep routines to help improve your sleep hygiene.

While some users report losing access to purchases following updates, customer support is there to help get them reinstated and honors past purchases.

Overall, the app provides a good lifetime option for sleep tracking, sleep meditation, and recommendations to approve your sleep.