There’s an almost endless selection of sleep apps and trackers out there, but they’re not all made equally. Telling the duds apart from the ones that will genuinely make a difference in your life isn’t an easy task, though.
To help, look for a sleep app or device that tracks the metrics researchers agree make the most difference to how you feel each day: sleep debt (how much sleep you owe your body) and circadian alignment (how in sync you are with your circadian rhythm, or body clock).
Below, we’ll dive into how to find the best sleep tracker, how RISE alternatives compare, and why you might want to reconsider RISE in your search for the best sleep app for you.
Here’s what to consider when comparing sleep trackers:
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If you want more energy, better productivity, a sunnier mood, clearer skin, and better physical and mental health, you’ll want to lower your sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm.
Low sleep debt and being in sync with your circadian rhythm improve your energy, productivity, and health independently, but you’ll notice even more of a difference if you do both together.
Not all apps and devices track these two key metrics, though, and many of those that do come with problems. Here’s what we mean and how RISE compares.
Many sleep apps and devices that track sleep debt, like Whoop and AutoSleep, use generic sleep guidelines — which can be inaccurate and misleading — or self-set sleep goals — which, as most of us don’t know how much sleep we need, are also often inaccurate.
Sleep debt might also be bundled into a mysterious sleep score based on the company’s own scoring system. This makes it hard to track and improve this important metric.
Most sleep trackers don’t take into account your circadian rhythm. If they do, they focus on how it affects your sleep, and not how you can use it to get more out of your days.
RISE tracks your sleep debt and circadian rhythm and puts these metrics front and center.
The app works out your sleep debt by comparing how much sleep you get to how much sleep you need. This is known as your sleep need.
Instead of using a generic sleep need number, RISE works out your individual sleep need using sleep science algorithms and a year’s worth of phone use data.
This way, you’ll get an accurate sleep need that’s unique to you. For example, among 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and up, sleep needs range from five hours to 11 hours 30 minutes.
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RISE automatically tracks your sleep through your choice of:
Sleep debt is then measured over 14 nights. This takes the pressure off each single night of sleep and gives you a more accurate representation of how sleep debt affects your energy levels today. For example, you could have gotten enough sleep last night, but still be tired from lingering sleep debt from last week.
You’ll have one sleep debt number to focus on, which you can view in the app, on a widget on your iPhone home screen, on your iPad, or on your Apple Watch.
To predict the timing of your circadian rhythm, RISE combines your inferred light exposure, recent sleep times, and algorithms built on the SAFTE model, which was developed by the US Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense.
You’ll get a visualization of your circadian rhythm each day. This will show you when your body wants to wake up and go to sleep and when you’ll have peaks and dips in energy across the day.
We’ve covered the best non-wearable sleep trackers here, including why sleep apps can be great at tracking sleep.
Lowering your sleep debt and getting in sync with your circadian rhythm can lead to a whole host of benefits, from more energy and sharper focus to less anxiety and an easier time losing weight. But it’s not always easy, and many sleep trackers don’t help you make changes to achieve these goals.
You might get a sleep score or confusing graphs and reports, but no advice on what to do with all this data. If you do get advice, it’s probably not tailored to you and your own sleep need, sleep debt, or circadian rhythm, or it’s not even focused on improving the right metrics to begin with.
RISE acts as your own sleep and energy coach, helping you lower your sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm, and then keep things that way.
To do this, you’ll get personalized guidance based on your own biology and actionable steps you can take in your daily life to feel a difference.
Here’s how RISE helps improve your sleep and energy:
Here’s what to consider when figuring out whether other features of sleep trackers are useful or not.
Many sleep apps and devices track how long you spend in sleep stages like deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep. Unfortunately, this is rarely accurate.
Even if it were accurate, many trackers don’t take into account that we all need a different amount of each sleep stage and that this can change nightly. Plus, you can’t really control how much time you spend in each stage of sleep and that time doesn’t make a difference to how you feel while you’re awake. Focus on getting enough sleep nightly with good sleep hygiene and your brain will do the rest.
Sleep quality tracking is another common feature, but there isn’t an agreed-upon definition for sleep quality. Most sleep trackers give you an arbitrary number based on a variety of metrics — different apps may give you different scores.
What’s more, metrics like sleep quality and time spent in sleep stages can’t help diagnose sleep disorders like insomnia or sleep apnea — you’ll need to speak to your doctor for that. Sleep debt can be a helpful metric in this conversation as it shows how much and how often you’re losing sleep.
Every feature in RISE is designed to help you improve those key metrics of sleep debt and circadian alignment.
There’s no sleep stage tracking, but you can self-rate your sleep quality if you like. Research suggests how you feel about your sleep can make a difference to your well-being, so tracking self-rated sleep quality may be much more useful than any score an app can give you.
Beyond this, features include:
Here’s how sleep devices and apps like RISE compare on cost.
Prices vary, but here’s an idea of what RISE alternatives cost:
RISE costs $69.99 a year, which works out at $5.83 a month.
There are no hidden costs or additional wearables you need to buy.
You can also try RISE for free for seven days. Don’t worry about losing track, you’ll get an email reminder before your free trial is up.
During your free trial, you’ll find out your unique sleep need and how much sleep debt you have, and get a prediction of your daily circadian rhythm. This will show you when your energy will fluctuate each day and when your body wants to sleep and wake up.
To make the most of this free trial, follow RISE’s personalized 20+ sleep hygiene reminders, Melatonin Window bedtime, and science-backed relaxing content to see how much more sleep you could get and how much more energy this could give you.
While you should notice some benefits straight away — 80% of RISE users feel more energy within five days! — the real improvements come from consistently keeping sleep debt low and staying in sync with your circadian rhythm.
We can’t speak for other sleep trackers, but app users think that RISE is worth it:
As well as tens of thousands of 5-star reviews, big industry names have noticed RISE. Sleep Foundation and Sleep Doctor named RISE one of the best sleep apps of 2024, and Apple nominated it for a design award and named it an Editor’s Choice app.
If you’re in the market for a sleep app or device, you probably don’t just want to track sleep for the sake of it. You may want to become a better sleeper, feel more energy, boost your productivity, or look after your health — or all of the above.
The RISE app is the best app to make that happen.
RISE accurately tracks your sleep debt, predicts the timing of your circadian rhythm, and gives you personalized guidance to help you improve on them both for a real difference to your days.
You can also pair RISE with certain wearables or other sleep apps if you’d like to track more metrics.
Learn more about Rise for sales teams.
RISE makes it easy to improve your sleep and daily energy to reach your potential
