Head to head
AutoSleep vs Rise
These two barely overlap, which is exactly why people keep putting them side by side and getting stuck.
In short
AutoSleep is for the Apple Watch owner who wants the night in detail. Rise is for the person who has seen enough charts and wants to know why the afternoon keeps falling apart.
AutoSleep needs a Watch, Rise needs a history
AutoSleep is automatic sleep tracking from an Apple Watch. No Watch, no product. In exchange you get heart rate and readiness detail a phone on a nightstand can't produce, with nothing to press.
Rise leans on your history and your schedule rather than a wearable, and it runs on Android as well as iPhone. If nothing is going on your wrist, that's most of the decision made.
Rise is not missing the stage chart, it decided against it
It's a sleep-debt and body-clock coach, and it deliberately doesn't chart your stages. The argument is that how much sleep you owe and when your energy peaks are things you can act on, where a bar chart of last night usually isn't.
Criticising it for the absent chart misses the point. The chart is the thing it thinks isn't working.
One reviews the night, the other plans the day
AutoSleep is at its best at eight in the morning, with the night laid out and enough numbers to keep a curious person busy. It's also a one-time purchase, which people who hate subscriptions bring up first.
Rise is at its best at two in the afternoon, when the question stops being what happened and starts being what to do about it. Its coaching content is more structured than a chat window.
Neither of them is the thing that wakes you
AutoSleep isn't an alarm clock, and waking you generally isn't what Rise is for. If you want the alarm and the night in the same app, Tock is an iPhone alarm built on AlarmKit that also tracks from the nightstand and keeps the audio it classified, so you can hear what woke you.
Tock reads Apple Health, including anything your Watch wrote. A 3-day trial, then from $39.99 a year.
| What we compared | AutoSleep | Rise |
|---|---|---|
| What you need to own | An Apple Watch | The phone in your pocket (stronger here) |
| How much detail | Famously dense (stronger here) | One number, on purpose |
| Stage charts | Yes, from the Watch (stronger here) | Left out by design |
| Planning the day | Not its job | Energy peaks across the day (stronger here) |
| Coaching | Numbers, no guidance | Structured coaching content (stronger here) |
| Android in the house | Apple only | iPhone and Android (stronger here) |
| Waking you up | Not an alarm clock (about the same) | Generally not the alarm (about the same) |
| Effort each night | Wear it and sleep (about the same) | Nothing to do (about the same) |
Which one to actually install
Pick AutoSleep if
AutoSleep is the buy if you wear the Watch anyway and you enjoy the readouts. Hands-off, a one-time purchase, and further into Watch-derived heart rate than almost anything else.
Pick Rise if
Rise is the buy if charts have stopped helping. Sleep debt is one number you can act on, and the energy timing aims at the shape of your day, which is where most people actually feel the problem.
Pick neither if
Neither of these rings in the morning. Tock does: an AlarmKit alarm that survives silent mode and a Focus, tracking from the phone on your nightstand, and one small task before it stops. A 3-day trial, then from $39.99 a year.
Questions people ask
Does Rise track my sleep at all?
It works from your history and your schedule rather than charting the shape of a night. Sleep debt is the number it wants you looking at.
Can AutoSleep tell me when to have coffee?
That's not its category. AutoSleep describes the night that happened. Timing the day is what Rise is built around.
Which one works without wearing anything?
Rise. AutoSleep needs an Apple Watch on your wrist, and without it there's nothing to read.
Is one of them cheaper?
AutoSleep is a one-time purchase rather than a subscription, which suits people who hate recurring bills. Weigh that against however long you'd keep paying for the alternative.
Where Tock sits against each of them
These pages are written the same way as this one, which means they state what AutoSleep and Rise each do better than we do.
Related matchups
Other pairings involving one of these two.
- 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.
- 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.
- AutoSleep vs Sleep CycleIf you already wear an Apple Watch to bed, AutoSleep reads a night that Sleep Cycle can only estimate from the room. If you don't own a Watch and don't want one, Sleep Cycle is the only one of the two that works, and it's your alarm as well.
- AutoSleep vs SleepScoreIf an Apple Watch is already on your wrist at night, AutoSleep is the better tracker and it asks nothing of you. If you sleep bare-wristed and want to keep it that way, SleepScore is the only one of the two that can track you at all.
- Rise vs Sleep CycleIf you want to plan a day around your energy and stop spiralling over one bad night, Rise. If you want the night itself drawn out and an alarm that finds a lighter moment, Sleep Cycle.
- Rise vs SleepScoreIf you will genuinely change your bedtime because an app asked you to, Rise is the more useful of the two. If you want the night measured properly without wearing anything, SleepScore.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- 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 90 minute napA 90 minute nap is approximately one full sleep cycle, which means it ends in a lighter stage rather than in slow wave sleep. That produces much less grogginess than a 30 or 60 minute nap, and it includes both the deep sleep and the REM that shorter naps miss.
- Wake tonesMarimbaMarimba is the rounded wooden-bar tone everybody recognises from stock phone alarms, and Tock ships its own version of it. Familiarity cuts both ways: your brain identifies it instantly, and it has also had years of practice sleeping through it. The alarm itself still rings on Apple's AlarmKit, so silent mode and a Focus change nothing.
- 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 soundsNight forestA night forest bed is a soft, broad rustle of leaves with occasional distant events layered into it, and the design rule that makes it work is that none of those events should ever be identifiable. A sound you can name is a sound you then lie there waiting to hear again, which is the exact opposite of falling asleep.
- Tock for youEarly risersYou are up before your alarm most days, lying there working out whether to get up or risk another twenty minutes. On the days you go back to sleep, you feel worse than if you had just got out of bed.
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.