The best sleep apps for a restful night, every night

Getting a good night’s sleep is at the top of the priority list for a lot of us, so it’s important to try to maximize the amount of time you spend asleep and not lying in bed struggling to doze off. There are plenty of things you can try to help you sleep better, whether it’s a new diet, putting your phone down earlier in the evening or laying off the caffeine. But as is the case with a lot of problems, there’s an app for that.

Across iPhone and Android, there are many different apps that can help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep throughout the night. Some have unique soundscapes that can play certain tones to relax the brain, while others can track your sleep and let you know what kind of changes to make. Below, we’re listing eight of the best sleep apps you can download to make catching up on zzz’s even easier.

ShutEye

ShutEye is regularly in the top 5 on the health and fitness charts for a reason. The app comes with a plethora of features to help you fall asleep at night, including a huge selection of sleep sounds to make whatever environment you’re dozing off in even more comfortable. There are also sleep stories to drift off to, relaxing music to de-stress with and a built-in sleep tracker that uses your phone’s microphones to understand your sleep cycles (and even how often you snore). It’s a great all-in-one option if you want to try a little bit of everything to help you sleep at night.

Cost: Free with limited features; $60 per year for all features

Available for: iOS (App Store) and Android (Play Store)

BetterSleep

BetterSleep takes a scientific approach to the sounds and music it offers to help you relax and fall asleep. It uses different tones and keys in various ranges that, when played, relax the mind and can do everything from help you doze off to silence racing thoughts. Each Color Noise (as they’re called) is specifically optimized for different use cases, so you can know for certain that whichever sound you choose, it’ll help relax you in one way or another. It also comes with a sleep tracker, sleep stories and more.

Cost: Free with limited features; $10 per month, $60 per year or $250 one-time for all features after a seven-day trial

Available for: iOS (App Store) and Android (Play Store)

Calm

At this point, it’s fair to say that if you’ve never heard of Calm, you’ve been living under a rock. From cable TV commercials to regularly charting high in Apple’s and Google’s app stores, Calm is known for offering some of the very best ways to de-stress, stay grounded and — most importantly — fall asleep faster, thanks to its wide range of stories, meditations and soundscapes. Given its celebrity cameos from folks like Harry Styles, Matthew McConaughey and Camila Cabello as well as officially licensed titles from popular culture like “Winnie the Pooh,” there’s a reason why Calm has millions of users.

Cost Free with limited features; $15 per month or $70 per year for all features

Available for iOS (App Store) and Android (Play Store)

Noisli

Noisli is a simpler app that comes with a variety of sounds to help you fall asleep, relax or even block out noisy coworkers at the office. You can blend each sound together and save your own tailored preferences, as well as set a timer for when the sounds should begin to fade out and stop playing. Plus, you can download the sounds for offline listening so you don’t have to rely on Wi-Fi or your cellular plan to fall asleep at night.

Cost: $2 to download

Available for: iOS (App Store)

SleepScore

If you want to track your sleep using your phone, there’s no better option than SleepScore. It’s backed by some wildly impressive technology from ResMed that uses your microphones and speakers to analyze things like your movements during the night and breathing patterns to decipher whether you had productive sleep or if you could use improvement. In the morning, you’ll get your sleep score which uses the data from the night before and sends it through the app’s algorithms to determine which sleep zones you entered, how long you were asleep and more. You’ll also be able to compare each night so you’ll know if certain changes to your diet or daily regimen are affecting your sleep.

Cost: Free with limited features; $10 per month or $60 per year for all features after a seven-day trial

Available for: iOS (App Store) and Android (Play Store)

Pillow

Pillow is another great sleep tracker that uses your iPhone and Apple Watch to track your sleep and display your results in easy-to-understand graphs. Every morning, you’ll get data such as your sleep quality score, sleep stage analysis, heart rate and blood oxygen readings and your respiratory rate. Using your phone, you’ll also be able to record your snoring. Plus, the app comes with personalized insights to help you determine the best time to go to sleep, as well as relaxing sleep sounds to make dozing off easier.

Cost: Free with limited features; $7 per month or $40 per year for all features

Available for: iOS (App Store)

Slumber

Slumber puts a spin on the traditional sleep-sounds app with sleep-inducing stories and meditations focused on beating insomnia and helping you fall asleep faster at night. The app is full of exclusive stories that are written, designed and recorded by the folks who run Slumber. You can adjust things like the music and background effects to your liking, use meditation guides to ease your mind throughout the day, download your favorites for offline listening and enjoy new content every single week. You can even sync your meditations with your phone’s fitness app to help centralize your data.

Cost: Free with limited features; $8 per month to $60 per year for all features

Available for: iOS (App Store) and Android (Play Store)

Sleep Cycle

If you’re looking for a more basic solution to tracking your sleep, check out Sleep Cycle. The app comes with a sleep tracker that can detect how well you slept through the night, as well as record any snoring, random coughs or sleep talking. All of your data is analyzed in the morning and broken down piece by piece to help you understand how well you’re sleeping. It also comes with Apple Health and Google Fit integration, a smart alarm clock and weather integration that gives you an idea of whether the conditions outside are affecting your sleep.

Cost: Free with limited features; $40 per year for all features

Available for: iOS (App Store) and Android (Play Store)