Head to head
Apple Health Sleep vs Pillow
Apple already tracks your sleep, which makes the case for a second app harder than it was a few years ago. Pillow still has one.
In short
Apple's built-in tracking is enough if you want hours and stages and nothing more. Pillow is for the Watch wearer who finds Apple's presentation too thin and wants the night detected and shaped for them without pressing anything.
Apple's version is the floor, not the ceiling
With a Watch on your wrist, Apple gives you measured stage data for free, in the app that every other sleep app on your phone reads from. That's a strong floor, and it's why the bar for a second app is higher than it used to be.
What it doesn't do is interpret. You get the night, plainly, and you're left to decide what it means.
Automatic detection matters more than it sounds
Pillow works out when you fell asleep without you starting anything. That sounds like a small convenience until you count the nights you'd have forgotten, and a tracker you forget to start is a tracker with holes in its history.
It also ships a real Apple Watch app, so the tracking happens on your wrist rather than being inferred from somewhere else.
Round-tripping Health data is the quiet reason people switch
Pillow reads from Apple Health and writes back into it properly, in both directions. If you've got years of Health data you care about, that matters more than any chart on the screen.
It also runs on iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad, which is one more place to look at the night than Apple's own setup gives you.
Apple Health can hold data from more than one source, but two apps writing the same night can look messy. Pick one writer.
Neither of these is the thing that wakes you
Both describe the night. Neither is built to ring at the end of it. Tock is an iPhone alarm first, built on AlarmKit so it fires on silent and through a Focus with the app closed, and its tracking exists to move that ring into a lighter moment.
Tock has no Apple Watch app of its own. It reads your Watch data through Apple Health.
| What we compared | Apple Health Sleep | Pillow |
|---|---|---|
| What other apps read from | The system of record (stronger here) | Reads and writes into it |
| Where tracking runs | The Watch, through Health | Its own Watch app (stronger here) |
| Starting a night | Your schedule decides | Detected automatically (stronger here) |
| Sleep stages | Measured on a Watch (about the same) | Measured on a Watch (about the same) |
| Cost to find out | Free, already installed (stronger here) | A separate download |
| Devices | iPhone and Apple Watch | iPhone, Watch and iPad (stronger here) |
| How the night is presented | Plain and factual (about the same) | Shaped into a reading (about the same) |
| If the Watch is charging | Mostly just a schedule (about the same) | Loses its best trick (about the same) |
Which one to actually install
Pick Apple Health Sleep if
Stay with Apple if hours and a stage chart answer your question. It's free, it's already running, and anything else you install is going to read from it anyway.
Pick Pillow if
Pillow is the upgrade if you want the night caught without starting it, a Watch app of its own doing the work, and results written back into Apple Health thoroughly rather than dumped there.
Pick neither if
If what you actually want is the alarm to know what the night was doing, neither of these is that. Tock rings on AlarmKit so the alarm survives silent mode and a Focus, tracks from the phone on your nightstand, and can move the ring a few minutes earlier into a lighter moment. A 3-day trial, then from $39.99 a year.
Questions people ask
Do I still need Apple Health if I use Pillow?
You do, and Pillow wants you to. It writes into Health, which is where the rest of your data lives and where anything else you install will look for it.
Does Pillow work without an Apple Watch?
Some of it, but you lose the part people recommend it for. The Watch app and the automatic detection are the reasons to pick Pillow over what Apple already gives you.
Are phone-only sleep stages as good as Watch stages?
No, and no honest app claims otherwise. A phone on the nightstand estimates the shape of your night. A Watch on your wrist measures signals from your body.
Will running both double-count my sleep?
Health can hold several sources, but two apps writing the same night makes for a confusing chart. Let one write and the other read.
Where Tock sits against each of them
These pages are written the same way as this one, which means they state what Apple Health Sleep and Pillow each do better than we do.
Related matchups
Other pairings involving one of these two.
- Alarmy vs PillowThese two aren't really competing. Choose Alarmy if the problem is that you stay in bed. Choose Pillow if you own an Apple Watch and the problem is that you have no idea what your nights look like.
- the iPhone Clock app vs Apple Health SleepThis isn't a choice. The Clock app is the alarm and Apple's Sleep schedule is the plan around it, and if you wear an Apple Watch to bed the Sleep side is the only one of the two that records anything at all.
- Apple 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.
- Apple Health Sleep vs RiseApple is the better record and Rise is the better plan. If you keep opening your stage chart and still don't know what to change, Rise is the one built to answer that.
- Apple Health Sleep vs Sleep CycleIf you wear an Apple Watch to bed, Apple's built-in tracking is more accurate and costs nothing, so Sleep Cycle has to win on the alarm and the sound library instead. If you don't own a Watch, Sleep Cycle is the only one of the two that records anything.
- AutoSleep vs PillowAutoSleep suits the person who wants every number and no recurring bill. Pillow suits the person who wants the night caught automatically and presented calmly, then written properly into Apple Health.
- Pillow vs Sleep CycleIf you wear an Apple Watch to bed, Pillow gives you measured stage data and starts itself. If you do not own a Watch, or half the house is on Android, Sleep Cycle is the sensible pick.
- Pillow vs SleepScoreIf an Apple Watch is already part of your night, Pillow gets far more out of it than SleepScore can from across the room. If buying a wearable is off the table for you, SleepScore was made for exactly that person.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- Wake timesWaking up at 4:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 4:30am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 10:30pmWhere to put the alarm after a 10:30pm lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep older adults needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommendation of 7 or more hours per night applies to adults without an upper age cut-off. What changes with age is not how much sleep is needed but how easily it is obtained: the night becomes lighter, more broken, and shifts earlier.
- NapsThe 30 minute napA 30 minute nap frequently ends inside slow wave sleep, which produces the strongest sleep inertia of any nap length. That is the heavy, disoriented feeling that can take twenty minutes or more to clear, and it is why 20 minutes or a full 90 minute cycle are both better choices.
- Wake tonesGentle alarm soundsA gentle alarm works when it catches you at a light moment and fails when it lands in the heaviest part of your night, which is a timing problem rather than a volume one. Tock watches movement and sound across the 30 minutes before your alarm and rings early at a lighter moment if it finds one, with your set time as the fallback.
- 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.
If neither of them is quite the alarm you wanted
Tock is built on Apple AlarmKit, so it rings on silent and through a Focus, moves earlier when it finds a lighter moment, and keeps ringing until you solve something.