Head to head
Calm vs Headspace Sleep
Two big libraries, two different bets on why you cannot sleep. Calm bets you need something beautiful to listen to. Headspace bets you need to be taught what to do with the last hour of your day.
In short
If you want to be told a story by a voice you recognise, Calm has the deeper and better-produced library. If you want to be taught a wind-down and nudged to keep at it, Headspace's course structure does more for you.
Calm wins on production, and it is not close
The size and quality of the narrated library is the thing Calm is actually selling. Named narrators, licensed music, and enough of it that you can go months without hearing the same piece twice. If the reason you lie awake is that your head needs somewhere else to be, that catalogue is worth the money on its own.
Calm also carries the daytime. Anxiety and focus sit in the same app as the sleep content, so it earns its keep at 3pm as well as 11pm.
Headspace treats the wind-down as something you learn
The sleep half of Headspace sits inside a course rather than a playlist. Sleepcasts, wind-down exercises and sleep music arrive in an order, with teaching around them, and the teaching is genuinely good. That structure is the difference between listening to something and building a habit.
There is also a voice walking you through the exercises, which some people need and others find intrusive. It is worth knowing which of those two you are before you pick.
Both stop working the moment you fall asleep
Neither app has an alarm, and neither one knows whether the last hour helped. You can spend a year on either and still have no idea what time you actually dropped off, how often you woke, or whether the wind-down is doing anything.
For a lot of people that is fine, because the problem really is the hour before bed. If your problem is the morning, or you want evidence that the routine is working, you are choosing between the wrong two apps.
This is not a knock on either. Both are relaxation products and neither pretends otherwise.
| What we compared | Calm | Headspace Sleep |
|---|---|---|
| Breadth of the sleep catalogue | Larger and more varied (stronger here) | Smaller, more curated |
| Names on the recordings | Known narrators, licensed music (stronger here) | Fewer marquee voices |
| How the content is arranged | A library you browse | A course you work through (stronger here) |
| Being talked through it | Narration to drift on | Exercises with instruction (stronger here) |
| Beyond bedtime | Anxiety and focus too (about the same) | A full meditation app (about the same) |
| Waking you up | Does not ring (about the same) | Does not ring either (about the same) |
| A mind that will not stop | Something to listen to | Something to practise (stronger here) |
Which one to actually install
Pick Calm if
Pick Calm if you want the biggest and best-produced library of things to fall asleep to, and you want an app that is useful in the daytime as well.
Pick Headspace Sleep if
Pick Headspace Sleep if you want to be taught a wind-down rather than handed a playlist, and you know you do better with structure and a voice guiding you.
Pick neither if
If you want the routine and evidence that it worked, neither of these can tell you. Tock has a short silent wind-down and 63 fall-asleep sounds generated on device so they never loop, and it is also the alarm, so in the morning you get an estimate of how the night actually went. iPhone only, 3-day trial, from $39.99 a year.
Questions people ask
Does either app track my sleep?
No. Calm and Headspace are both relaxation products. They play you something at bedtime and that is where their involvement ends. Nothing is recorded and nothing is reported back.
Which one is better if I keep falling asleep before the story ends?
That is a good sign for either. If it happens every night, the library size stops mattering and you may as well take the cheaper option or the one whose voices you prefer.
Can I use them as an alarm?
No. Neither has an alarm, so you will still be relying on your phone clock or a separate app to get up in the morning.
Do both run on Android?
Yes, both Calm and Headspace are on iPhone and Android.
Where Tock sits against each of them
These pages are written the same way as this one, which means they state what Calm and Headspace Sleep each do better than we do.
Related matchups
Other pairings involving one of these two.
- Calm vs PzizzIf you nap, or if hearing the same recording twice ruins it for you, Pzizz is the better buy. If you want big-name narrators and a library that carries you through the daytime too, Calm is the deeper product.
- Calm vs Sleep CycleIf the problem is lying awake with a busy head, Calm. If the problem is groggy mornings and having no idea what your nights look like, Sleep Cycle. Most people searching this have already decided which; they just have not said it out loud.
- Headspace Sleep vs PzizzIf you nap in the afternoon, or you get bored hearing the same track night after night, Pzizz. If you want to be taught how to wind down and to still be doing it in three months, Headspace Sleep.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- RoundupsThe best free alarm apps for iPhoneThe best free alarm app for iPhone is the Clock app that came with it. It is free forever, it rings through silent mode and a Focus, and it has never failed. Alarmy is the best free option if you need an alarm that is hard to turn off. Tock is not free and is listed last for that reason.
- Wake timesWaking up at 7:30amBedtimes by sleep cycle for a 7:30am alarm.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 9:00pmWhere to put the alarm after a 9:00pm lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep babies needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that infants aged 4 to 12 months sleep 12 to 16 hours per 24 hours, including naps, on a regular basis. Sleep at this age is spread across the day rather than consolidated into one block, and the total is what the recommendation is about.
- NapsThe 20 minute napA 20 minute nap is the standard recommendation because it produces a solid alertness benefit while ending before most people reach slow wave sleep, so you wake up clear rather than groggy. It is long enough to be worth the time and short enough to stay safe.
- Wake tonesMusic boxMusic box is Tock's slowest and most nostalgic wake tone, a thin bell-like melody that unwinds instead of alerting. It rings reliably through silent mode because Tock's alarms run on Apple's AlarmKit, but as a tone it is the weakest choice in the set for anyone who genuinely sleeps hard.
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.