Honest comparison
Looking for a Pillow alternative on iPhone?
If you wear an Apple Watch to bed, this comparison is short. Pillow has a Watch app and Tock has none, and that is the deciding fact for a lot of people reading this.
In short
Stay 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.
- Apple Watch apps
- 0Apple Watch appsTock reads Watch data through Apple Health instead
- insight metrics
- 21insight metricsin 7 groups, from the phone and Health
- fall-asleep sounds
- 63fall-asleep soundsmost generated on device, never looping
What Pillow does better
An iOS sleep tracker that pairs with Apple Watch for automatic tracking and writes results into Apple Health.
- It ships a real Apple Watch app, so tracking can happen on your wrist. Tock has no Watch app at all
- Automatic detection of when you fell asleep, without you starting anything
- Deep Apple Health round-tripping that people with years of Health data appreciate
Runs on iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad. Tock is iPhone only, on iOS 26 and later.
Pillow tracks on the wrist, and Tock cannot
Pillow pairs with an Apple Watch for automatic tracking, and it will detect that you fell asleep without you starting anything. Tock has no Apple Watch app. It reads your Watch's data through Apple Health afterwards, which is a different thing and worth being clear about.
Reading Health means Tock can see sleep, heart rate, resting heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen, respiratory rate and wrist temperature that your Watch recorded. What it cannot do is run on the Watch, sample from it directly, or track a night your phone was in another room.
If wrist tracking is the reason you use Pillow, nothing below changes that. Keep Pillow.
Tock puts the alarm first, on purpose
Tock is built on AlarmKit, so the alarm is a system alarm. It rings on silent, through a Focus, with the app closed, on the native full-screen alert. Then it holds a wake-up mission in front of the off button until you solve one.
The tracking exists to serve that. Tock watches the 30 minutes before your set time and rings a little early if it finds a lighter moment, using movement and sound. In Pillow, the tracking is the product and the alarm sits inside it.
The microphone earns its keep overnight
Tock classifies snores, coughs and sleep talking on device with Apple SoundAnalysis, saves the clips, and lets you play them back in the morning next to the rest of the night. That is a phone-on-the-nightstand advantage, not a wrist one.
It also generates most of its 63 fall-asleep sounds on device, sample by sample, so nothing loops and there is nothing to download.
Apple Health is the only thing that moves with you
Both apps write to Apple Health, and Pillow is known for deep round-tripping there. So if you switch, the nights Pillow put into Health stay in Health and Tock reads them. Pillow's own analysis, its charts and anything it kept internally stay behind.
Tock can write its nights back to Health too, but that is off by default and you turn it on yourself.
| What we compared | Tock | Pillow |
|---|---|---|
| Apple Watch app | None at all | Yes, a real one (stronger here) |
| Starting a night | Set an alarm, put the phone down | Detected automatically (stronger here) |
| Apple Health | Reads it, writes back if you allow | Deep round-tripping (stronger here) |
| The alarm itself | AlarmKit, rings on silent (stronger here) | Lives inside the tracker |
| What the mic does | Classifies snores and sleep talking (stronger here) | Wrist sensors lead |
| Turning it off | Solve a mission first (stronger here) | No task to solve |
| With no wearable | Phone on the nightstand is enough (stronger here) | Better with a Watch |
| Stage detail | Estimates without a wearable (about the same) | Estimates without a wearable (about the same) |
Which one you should actually pick
Pick Tock if
Choose Tock if you do not own a Watch, or you do not want to wear it to bed, and you want a stronger alarm with sound from the room attached to it.
Pick Pillow if
Keep Pillow if you wear an Apple Watch overnight, or you want tracking to start on its own without touching anything. Tock has no Watch app and cannot match either of those, and no amount of Apple Health reading closes that gap.
Run both if
Some people track on the wrist with Pillow and still let Tock own the alarm. It works, but you are paying twice.
Questions people ask
Does Tock have an Apple Watch app?
No. Tock is iPhone only. It reads the data your Watch already wrote to Apple Health, including heart rate, HRV and blood oxygen, but there is nothing to install on the Watch itself.
Will my Pillow nights show up in Tock?
The ones Pillow wrote to Apple Health will, because Tock reads Health. Anything Pillow kept only inside its own app does not transfer.
Can Tock track a night automatically like Pillow does?
Not in the same way. You set an alarm and leave the phone on the nightstand, and Tock tracks from there. Pillow's automatic detection is genuinely more hands-off.
Which one gives more accurate sleep stages?
With an Apple Watch, whichever app is reading the Watch. Without one, both are estimating from movement and sound, and Tock says so rather than calling them measured.
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 AutoSleepIf 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.
- 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 SnoreLabSnoreLab is better if snoring is the only thing you care about and you want a remedy-tracking loop and a score you can show someone. Tock is better if you want the snoring inside a full night, with the alarm, the estimated stages and the score in one app instead of two running overnight.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- FeaturesAlarm on silentTock's alarms are registered with iOS through Apple's AlarmKit framework rather than played by the app in the background. That is why they ring with the ringer off, through a Focus, with Tock closed, on the native full-screen alert.
- Sleep soundsWhite noiseWhite noise holds equal power in every one hertz band, which makes it the brightest of the sleep noises and the best at covering thin, sharp sounds: keys in a lock, a running tap, a voice through a wall. That same brightness is why plenty of people last about an hour before switching to pink or brown.
- Tock for youNight shift workersYou finish at 7am and try to sleep while the sun is up, the neighbours are drilling and your phone is on silent so nothing wakes you. Then you have to get up on time anyway, in the middle of what your body still thinks is the afternoon.
- RoundupsThe best alarm apps for heavy sleepersTock is the best alarm app for heavy sleepers: it rings on AlarmKit, so it gets through silent mode and a Focus, and it keeps ringing until you finish a small task. Alarmy is the real rival and the better pick if you want the widest set of dismissal tasks or a free tier to test the idea on.
- Wake timesWaking up at 7:00amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 7:00am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 12:30amWhere to put the alarm after a 12:30am lights-out.
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.