Whether it’s anxiety about illness, concern for a family member’s wellbeing, workplace stress, the strain of balancing parenting and a job during a pandemic, or a mix of everything, sky-high stress appears to be the new normal.
While complimentary sleep apps won’t fix your broader life problems, they can help you drift off more quickly so you wake up ready to handle life’s demands. Below are the top options we discovered.
1. White Noise
White Noise free sleep apps are indispensable for travel, when you need a consistent background sound to mask noisy hotel guests, city commotion, and similar disturbances. The “lite” edition delivers free sleep and nature sounds that are often enough. For $4.99 you unlock 50 sounds plus the ability to design custom mixes that include binaural beats, differing frequencies intended to coax your brain into relaxation.
Download White Noise from the Apple App Store, Google Play or Amazon.
2. Relax and Sleep Well Hypnosis
Professional hypnosis can be costly, but this hypnotherapy sleep app offers four meditation and hypnosis recordings at no charge. Additional hypnosis tracks can be purchased within the app for $2.99 each. The app appeared on Healthline’s 2019 list of top sleep apps, so if you’re dubious about hypnosis, that endorsement might encourage you to try hypnotherapy sleep apps.
Find Relax and Sleep Well Hypnosis in the Apple App Store or on Google Play.
3. Headspace
Headspace is a guided meditation app ideal for winding down at night: Andy’s calming British tone can ease you into deep relaxation where worries seem to fade. Although the yearly subscription runs about $60, Headspace frequently appears on lists of the best sleep apps. Students can get an annual plan for $9.99, and Netflix subscribers can stream the Headspace series at no additional charge. Each episode highlights a specific meditation approach, so by the season’s end you’ll have a toolkit of relaxation methods to use before bed.
Try a free trial of Headspace or watch the series on Netflix.
4. Deep Sleep With AJ
Deep Sleep With AJ is a budget-friendly alternative to Headspace, costing a one-time fee of $2.99 and featuring a similarly soothing Scottish voice. Created by a mindfulness specialist and therapist, the app includes mindfulness and motivational talks, bedtime relaxation practices to help you wake up refreshed, meditations for anxiety and panic, and more. You can set meditations to repeat a certain number of times so the app ideally plays until you fall asleep.
Get Deep Sleep With AJ on the Apple App Store or Google Play.
5. Relax Melodies
Offering a blend of calming noises, free sleep stories and guided meditations for sleep, lucid dreaming, or symptomatic relief for conditions like tinnitus, the popular free sleep app Relax Melodies has a large following. It comes with 52 sounds including white noise, nature ambiances, ASMR (that pleasant tingling triggered by soft sounds) and binaural beats. Premium sound packs are sold inside the app for $4.99.
Find Relax Melodies in the Apple App Store or Google Play.
6. Nothing Much Happens
Consider the free podcast Nothing Much Happens as bedtime stories for adults crafted to ease you into a calm sleep. True to its name, these tales are low-key and unhurried. Podcast host Kathryn, a meditation and yoga instructor, delivers a vibe akin to a lengthy savasana — and it’s perfectly fine if you’re out cold after a few minutes.
Listen to Nothing Much Happens on Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts.
7. Endel
Great for people juggling many tasks, Endel creates “personalized soundscapes” for relaxation, improved sleep and enhanced focus. The app uses environmental inputs (such as weather, location and time) to tailor sounds to your context: energizing tracks for daytime concentration and mellow atmospheres to help you sleep. Endel includes a 7-day trial; after that you can subscribe ($5.99/month or $49.99/year at the time of writing) or use the free browser-based version.
Find Endel on the Apple App Store, Google Play, or on Twitch.
8. Rise: Sleep & Energy Tracker
If you prefer a data-driven route to better sleep, the Rise sleep and energy tracker is worth exploring. It’s free to install, with membership upgrades available starting at $6.99 per month. Rather than just monitoring sleep stages, Rise examines “sleep debt” — the gap between how much sleep you need and how much you actually get. The app uses sleep metrics and health data to recommend ways to boost both sleep quality and duration. Pro athletes and executives at major companies use Rise and say the cost is worthwhile for improved rest and daytime energy.
Download Rise from the Apple App Store or Google Play.
Because sleep difficulties typically stem from a variety of underlying factors, it can be useful to keep several free sleep apps on hand. With nature sounds, bedtime tales, guided meditation, science-based sleep strategies and hypnotherapy for the worries that keep you up, you can stop counting sheep and cue up the approach most likely to deliver a restful night.
Jordan Marks is a contributor to Savinly.
For more options, consider exploring free meditation apps that pair well with these sleep tools.
