Honest comparison
AutoSleep without an Apple Watch, and what that costs you
AutoSleep assumes a Watch on your wrist. Tock assumes a phone on the nightstand. Almost every difference between them falls out of that one assumption.
In short
If you wear an Apple Watch to bed and you already have an alarm you like, AutoSleep is hard to beat and you pay for it once. Tock makes sense if you do not want to sleep in a watch, or you want the alarm and the tracking to be the same app.
- minute smart-wake window
- 30minute smart-wake windowwatched with movement and sound
- insight metrics
- 21insight metricsregularity, chronotype, sleep debt and more
- wake-up missions
- 9wake-up missionsit keeps ringing until one is solved
What AutoSleep does better
Automatic sleep tracking from an Apple Watch, with no button to press and a famously dense set of readouts.
- Genuinely hands-off: wear the Watch, get the night, do nothing else
- Watch-derived heart rate and readiness detail that a phone on a nightstand cannot produce
- A one-time purchase rather than a subscription, which suits people who hate recurring bills
Runs on iPhone, Apple Watch. Tock is iPhone only, on iOS 26 and later.
Hands-off is AutoSleep's whole argument
Wear the Watch, wake up, the night is there. No button, no ritual, nothing to remember. That is a real advantage and Tock does not have an equivalent, because Tock needs a phone near you and an alarm set.
AutoSleep also reads heart rate straight from the wrist, which produces detail a phone on a nightstand cannot produce. If readiness and heart rate trends are why you open it, that is the reason to stay.
AutoSleep is not an alarm clock, and Tock is
That is the cleanest line between them. Tock is built on AlarmKit, so the alarm rings on silent, through a Focus, with the app closed. It watches the 30 minutes before your set time and rings early if it finds a lighter moment, and it holds one of nine wake-up missions in front of the off button.
AutoSleep records the night you had. It does not decide when it ends.
One payment against a subscription
AutoSleep is a one-time purchase. Tock is a subscription, from $39.99 a year, with a 3-day trial and no free tier underneath it.
For people who dislike recurring bills, that is not a small thing, and it should be part of the decision rather than a footnote at the bottom of a comparison page.
Tock will read the same Watch data through Apple Health if you own one, so buying Tock does not waste a Watch you already wear.
| What we compared | Tock | AutoSleep |
|---|---|---|
| What you need to own | Just your iPhone (stronger here) | An Apple Watch |
| Effort at bedtime | Set an alarm, put it down | Wear the Watch, nothing else (stronger here) |
| Heart rate detail | Read via Apple Health | Straight from the wrist (stronger here) |
| How you pay | From $39.99 a year, 3-day trial | One-time purchase (stronger here) |
| Is it your alarm | Alarm first, on AlarmKit (stronger here) | Not an alarm clock |
| Depth of readouts | 21 metrics in 7 groups (about the same) | Famously dense (about the same) |
| Sound in the room | Snores and sleep talking, clips kept (stronger here) | Wrist sensors, no room audio |
| A night the Watch is charging | The phone still tracks (stronger here) | No wrist, no night |
Which one you should actually pick
Pick Tock if
Choose Tock if you would rather not sleep in a watch, or you want the thing that tracks the night to also be the thing that ends it.
Pick AutoSleep if
Keep AutoSleep if you already wear an Apple Watch overnight and you are happy with the alarm you have. It gives you wrist-level detail Tock cannot produce, it asks nothing of you at bedtime, and you pay for it once instead of every year.
Run both if
If you wear the Watch and want a better alarm, AutoSleep for the data and Tock for the wake-up is a coherent pair, since Tock reads the Watch data out of Apple Health anyway.
Questions people ask
Does Tock work with my Apple Watch?
It reads what your Watch writes to Apple Health, so heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen and measured sleep all show up in a night. There is no Tock app on the Watch itself.
Can I keep AutoSleep and use Tock as the alarm?
Yes, and it is a reasonable setup. Both read and write through Apple Health, so the Watch data AutoSleep is built on is the same data Tock will show you.
Is Tock a one-time purchase like AutoSleep?
No. Tock is a subscription from $39.99 a year with a 3-day free trial. If a single payment is what you want, AutoSleep wins that outright.
Will Tock estimate stages as well as a Watch measures them?
No. On phone-only nights Tock estimates stages from movement and sound, and it labels them as estimates. A Watch on your wrist gives measured stage data, and Tock will happily read those instead.
If Tock is not in the running
Plenty of people land here already choosing between two other apps. These go through those pairings without us in them.
Other comparisons
The same treatment, applied to the rest of the category.
- Tock vs PillowStay with Pillow if you track on your wrist, because it runs on the Watch and Tock does not. Choose Tock if your phone is the only thing on the nightstand and you want the alarm to be the centre of the product rather than a feature of the tracker.
- Tock vs Apple Health SleepIf you wear an Apple Watch and you only want to see how long you slept, Apple Health already does it for free and does it better than any phone estimate. Tock adds the room: sound, snoring, a score, an alarm that can move earlier, and a coach that can explain what it found.
- Tock vs Sleep CycleSwitch to Tock if you want the alarm itself to be different: a system alarm that rings on silent and through a Focus, moved up to 30 minutes earlier into a lighter moment, with a task before it stops. Stay with Sleep Cycle if you have years of history in it, or if someone in the house is on Android.
- Tock vs RiseChoose Rise if planning your day around energy peaks and a running sleep debt is what actually changes your behaviour. Choose Tock if you want the alarm itself to be smarter, the night recorded from the phone, and a coach that can talk about what it heard.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- NapsThe coffee napA coffee nap means drinking caffeine and then immediately napping for about 20 minutes. Caffeine takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes to have a noticeable effect, so it does not stop you falling asleep quickly, and you wake as it takes hold. The two effects add rather than cancel.
- Wake tonesAnnoying alarm soundsAn unbearable alarm tone works for roughly a week. After that you learn to silence it before you are properly conscious, and you are back where you started with a worse mood attached. The durable fix is not a harsher sound, it is making the alarm end somewhere your half-asleep self cannot reach.
- Head to headApple Health Sleep vs AutoSleepIf you wear your Apple Watch to bed and want to know how long you slept, Apple's own tracking is free and already doing it. AutoSleep is for the person who wants that night pulled apart into far more detail than Apple would ever ship.
- FeaturesSmart wakeSmart wake is a 30 minute window before your alarm in which Tock watches for a lighter moment in your sleep and rings as soon as it finds one. If it never finds one, your alarm goes off at the exact time you set.
- Sleep soundsCricketsA field of crickets is not one insect but dozens slightly out of phase with each other, and that stagger is what turns a repeating chirp into a steady high shimmer you can drift on. It lives almost entirely above 2 kHz, so it covers thin, sharp sounds well and does nothing whatsoever about traffic.
- Tock for youRotating shift nursesYour rota moves you from days to nights and back again, sometimes inside the same week, and there is no schedule to settle into because the schedule keeps changing. Every adjustment gets interrupted by the next one.
The alarm is the part we actually rebuilt
Tock rings on silent and through a Focus because it is a system alarm, moves earlier when it finds a lighter moment, and asks for one small task before it stops.