The 7 best sleep apps that come expert-approved to give you a better night's sleep

Without the best sleep apps on your phone, are you having another hellish night followed by another hellish day? Don't worry, because this list will hopefully help you break the cycle of sleeplessness by finding a sleep app that gives you power over your bedtime experience. 

The world’s best sleep assistance platforms have become ever more layered and diverse, with content including soundscapes, stories, white noise, meditations, workshops and advice that reflects the very latest scientific research. Among these sleep apps, there’s sure to be one that allows you to sleep better, giving you the deep restorative sleep you’ve been craving. 

The 7 best sleep apps

This is one of the biggest hitting apps in the sleep and mental wellness world, with a valuation of over $1billion. You can see why: if you want flexibility and ease of use, it’s worth a look – or listen, really. With hundreds of hours of original audio content available in seven languages, Calm boasts users in over 190 countries and consistently ranks in the top ten of sleep apps globally. 

As you open the app you’ll be greeted by the calming sound of waves on the shore. Sleepy already? There are meditations, sounds, music and playlists aimed at helping you sleep. Most popular of all are their ‘Sleep Stories’. Think bedtime stories for grown-ups but low excitement so nothing really ever happens. Some are read by celebrity contributors including Harry Styles, Lebron James and Matthew McConaughey.

Long-time fan Victoria Cooper recommends the stories as good place to start. ‘The sleep stories on the Calm App are excellent for getting you off to sleep, especially if you have a busy mind that won't switch off,' she says. 'I have a sleep mask with built in Bluetooth speakers so I can drift off while listening to the dulcet tones of Erik Braa as he narrates a soporific travel journey. The best are the long train journeys, especially the overnight trains. I rarely make it as far as the buffet car before falling asleep.’ 

Oura is at the cutting edge of smart tech, working in conjunction with a tracker ring. It hit the headlines when Prince Harry was spotted wearing one, but it’s also been seen on Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston. 

The ring, which comes in gold, silver, black (glossy) and ‘stealth’ (matte black), monitors your activity, heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate, and sleep stages. `it looks at total sleep, as well as REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and deep sleep, and the timing of your sleep, too. And it gives you an analysis of optimal sleep schedules, sleep trends over time, and whether you recovered well over the course of your night, and whether you should push it or hold back the next day. Oura says: ‘Armed with these personal data points, users can work toward decreasing stress and increasing heart health with personalized, easy to understand reports.' 

One thing that makes Oura stand out is its joined-up approach. The app can monitor you all day, helping you to zero in on which habits are increasing your heart rate in a way that could be unhelpful for sleep. 

Oura also tells you when your body and mind are relaxed by monitoring your skin temperature — highlighting if you take enough restorative breaks throughout the day too. We now know that this helps sleep too: it even tells you if your meditation has really relaxed you. 

The Oura app is free to download, $299 for the ring. 

Somryst is a real heavyweight among the best sleep apps. So much so, it’s prescription only. This is essentially CBT-I (cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia) on your phone, training your brain to calm your mind until more normal sleeping patterns are restored. 

The company realised that despite CBT-I being the gold standard of effective sleep therapy, it can be very difficult to access in person, at the time you need it. Somryst gives you 24/7 access to FDA-authorised therapy for wherever you are and whenever you need it during your prescription. 

You work through the 9-week programme at your own pace, finding out all the factors that are affecting your sleep, the practical ones but also the thoughts, beliefs, unconscious behaviours, patterns and habits that aren’t helping you. 

As you go through the weeks, the idea is that you’re learning the skills you need to fall asleep faster and stay asleep for longer. It provides feedback and tracking as well as all the information you need. 

Free to download, Somryst is prescription only in the US. It may be covered by your health insurance provider. 

Headspace, a hugely popular meditation app, has gone into sleep in a big way. It has launched a whole new tranche of sleep content, Sleep by Headspace, with the unlikely help of musician John Legend. 

An audio story designed specifically to create the best conditions for healthy sleep and narrated by Legend himself, is available now. And this is a man with seriously dulcet tones. He has also curated an eight-hour sleep playlist.

There are a range of other Sleepcasts available. Each one is a slow story that starts with a wind-down meditation or breathing technique, followed by a sleep story about a landscape, paired with white noise and a soundtrack. The stories don’t have traditional structure, but are more meandering, so it doesn’t matter where you start or stop. 

Each sleepcast runs for 45 to 55 minutes. What’s unique about sleepcasts, compared to other brands’ sleeps stories, is that each recording is slightly altered each night they're played. That’s because some people, listening to the same story over and over again, start to memorise it. After a few plays, they’re either worrying about how much time there is left in the story, or they are listening out for the next part, neither of which helps sleep. If you don’t want a story tonight, try Headspace’s sleep music or a sleep meditation. 

Headspace offers a free trial, after which subscription costs $69.99 a year. 

If you can’t turn down noise that stops you sleeping, try masking it. External noise pollution such as sirens or rowing neighbors can have a massive impact on your ability to drop off. And once they start to annoy you, these sounds can quickly become triggering and stressful. 

Or your problem might be too much quiet. For some of us, silence can be deafening and an obstruction to sleep. It’s because our brain naturally associates both silence and loud noises with danger – the exact opposite of getting to sleep. 

Background noise such as white noise, on the other hand, is consistent with limited volume spikes – and proven in research studies to help us drift off. 

Noisli provides the perfect background soundtrack, designed to help mask noise pollution. If it’s noise that’s bothering you in bed, this is the app to add to your night-time routine.

The app enables you to mix and match different sounds, to create your perfect sound environment. Choose from 28 high quality background sounds that you can play individually or combine with each other. They include rain, wind, thunder, rustling trees, waves and fans. You can adjust the volume for each sound as well – and if you don’t fancy fashioning your own, Noisli also offer their own curated playlists. Oh and the app also includes sounds for daytime productivity, too.

Noisli offer a free basic plan, which includes 16 sound choices to help you curate your ideal soundtrack to sleep, 3 curated playlists and up to 1.5 hours daily streaming. They also have a Pro option, for $10 monthly, which increases your sounds to 28 as well as unlimited streaming and 10 curated playlists. 

6. Sleepiest

One for kids who struggle to sleep, Sleepiest is a lovely combination of bedtime stories, soothing sounds like the sea, rain or birds singing, white noise and meditations to encourage a cocooning and effective nightly ritual. 

When you first open the app after download, you can personalize your experience to help with falling asleep, reducing anxiety, improving performance or helping your kids. You can set nightly timers and choose from over 150 bedtime stories, 60 soundscapes and 50 meditations. This award-winning app has over 4 million users and, from the reviews, it seems to be loved by adults as much as children.

Sleep sounds range from nature themes such as Large Waterfall or Heavy Rain, to originally crafted soundscapes like ‘Deep Sleep Keys'. One of its most popular options is ‘Deepest Healing Sleep’, which harnesses the power of binaural beats to have you snoozing soundly in no time. 

During the day, you can browse their ‘Habits’ section. Designed with the help of sleep scientist Dr Sophie Bostock, ‘Habits’ includes a brand-new passive Sleep Tracking support to build an accurate ‘Sleep Score’. Users can then use this data to better understand their sleep patterns and to set realistic goals for improvement.

Currently hosted on iOS (iPhone and iPad) and with Android coming soon. As they believe everyone should sleep well, Sleepiest offers access to a small library of content and features for free.

To access the full library requires a monthly or yearly membership ($49.99 yearly or $9.99 monthly). As with many apps, you can enjoy a 7-day free trial. 

If you find guided meditation is your fast track to slumber, Insight Timer is a treasure trove. There is a bountiful offering of more than 100,000 meditations; you can listen to Russell Brand speaking on finding calm and serenity, or Gisele Bundchen on hope in times of uncertainty. There are also experts from top universities, including Stanford and Harvard, and the University of Oxford. 

The free version will give you access to this vast library, while subscription enables you to rewind and fast forward meditations, unlock thousands of meditation courses – including online group courses - and download meditations enjoy offline.

Users highly recommend Andrew Johnson’s Deep Sleep Meditation. His dulcet Scottish tones lull you into a soporific state and are quite hypnotic, even without the content itself being soporific! The app recommends you repeat the recording every night for a few weeks to help build deeper, more natural sleep patterns. 

Insight Timer fan Dasha Stava explains why this is the sleep app for her: ‘Very easy to use, intuitive app, self-explaining. I have been using it for about a year for my sleep issues, it helps me fall asleep and stops my monkey mind!’

The app also covers meditation for anxiety and stress, as well as mindful eating and self-compassion,  And as stress probably feeds into your sleeplessness, it allows you to improve your nights from all angles. And you can track your progress, to see how far you’ve come. 

The basic app is free. Premium version Member Plus costs $60 per year or $9.99 a month, with a 30-day free trial available. 

Do sleep apps really work?

The millions of subscribers and positive reviews that the best sleep apps have between them prove that they actually work.  Even Sleepiest, aimed at children, has over 4 million users which shows it must be doing something right.

The trick is to find the sleep app that is right for you, and how your brain works. Think about what is causing you to have a bad night. If it's noise from the neighbors or traffic then Noisli is the one for you. If it's anxiety or stress then a meditation-focused app such as Insight Timer could be better. With most apps offering free trials it's easy to give a go with no strings attached.

How can I improve my deep sleep?

Most of the best sleep apps focus on getting you to sleep in the first place, rather ensuring the quality of the sleep you have. Deep sleep is seen as better than REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep as it's when the brain truly switches off, and is seen as more restorative.

In order to improve your deep sleep you can try some of the following to see what works for you: get more exercise, avoid stress during the day, avoid caffeine and alcohol, eat more foods with fiber in them. And, our favorite, from sleep expert Dr Christine Hansen, is to drink banana tea! She recommends boiling banana skins with a few cumin seeds, straining and drinking. Yes, really.