Head to head
Calm vs Sleep Cycle
You're comparing the first half of the night with the second. Calm is for the hour before you drop off. Sleep Cycle has nothing to say until you are already asleep, and then it does everything.
In short
If 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.
This is a lopsided comparison, and that is useful
These two barely overlap. Calm is a relaxation library. Sleep Cycle is a tracker with an alarm attached. Putting them side by side only makes sense because a lot of people who cannot sleep have not yet worked out which part of the night is failing them, and the two apps answer opposite questions.
So before comparing anything, answer this: does it take you an hour to fall asleep, or do you fall asleep fine and wake up feeling like you were dragged out of a hole? The first is a Calm problem. The second is a Sleep Cycle problem.
Calm clocks off the moment you drift
Calm has the deeper library by a distance, with named narrators and licensed music and enough range to cover daytime anxiety as well as bedtime. What it does not do is watch anything. No alarm, no tracking, nothing waiting for you in the morning.
That is not a flaw. It just means Calm can never tell you whether it worked, which is a strange gap if the whole reason you subscribed was that you are not sure what is going wrong.
Sleep Cycle earns its keep after lights out
Sleep Cycle listens with the phone microphone, estimates the shape of the night, and rings inside a window rather than at a hard time so it can catch you in a lighter moment. It has been doing this longer than almost anyone, which means both a long track record and, if you started years ago, a long personal history to compare yourself against.
It carries a large library of sleep aids too, so it is not silent at bedtime. It is simply not the reason anyone buys it.
Stages estimated from a phone microphone are estimates, not measurements. Only a wearable gives you the measured version.
If the honest answer is that you need both halves
Plenty of people want a wind-down and a tracker and an alarm, and would rather not pay two subscriptions for one night. Tock is built as one night rather than two products: a short wind-down, 63 fall-asleep sounds generated on device so they never loop, tracking from the phone on the nightstand, and an alarm on AlarmKit that rings through silent mode and Focus.
It is narrower than Calm on purpose. There are no celebrity narrators and no daytime content, and it only runs on iPhone. There is no free tier either: a 3-day trial, then from $39.99 a year.
| What we compared | Calm | Sleep Cycle |
|---|---|---|
| Getting you to sleep | Its entire job (stronger here) | A library of sleep aids |
| After you have dropped off | Nothing is watched | The microphone listens (stronger here) |
| Getting you out of bed | No alarm at all | A smart alarm window (stronger here) |
| The morning after | Nothing is reported | A picture of the night (stronger here) |
| Narrated stories and music | Its strongest suit (stronger here) | A library, less starry |
| A year of your own nights | Not that kind of app | Builds up night after night (stronger here) |
| Useful in the daytime | Anxiety and focus too (stronger here) | Bedtime and morning only |
| Running on Android | Yes, and iPhone (about the same) | Yes, and iPhone (about the same) |
Which one to actually install
Pick Calm if
Calm is for the hour before sleep. Buy it if your nights go wrong before they start, and treat the daytime content as a bonus that makes the subscription easier to justify.
Pick Sleep Cycle if
Sleep Cycle is for everything after that. Buy it if you want the night estimated, a history to look back on, and an alarm that rings inside a window instead of at an exact minute.
Pick neither if
If you want both halves in one app and you are on an iPhone, Tock covers the wind-down, the sounds, the tracking and the alarm together, and plays back the snoring or sleep talking it heard overnight.
Questions people ask
Can I just use both?
Yes, and plenty of people do. Calm gets you down, Sleep Cycle watches the rest and wakes you. The only real cost is two subscriptions for one night.
Does Calm have an alarm?
No. Calm does not wake you, track you, or tell you anything about the night in the morning. It is a relaxation library and it stops at the point you fall asleep.
Are Sleep Cycle sleep stages accurate?
They are estimates. A phone microphone on a nightstand infers the shape of your night from sound and movement, which is useful for spotting patterns over weeks but is not the same as stage data measured on the wrist.
Where Tock sits against each of them
These pages are written the same way as this one, which means they state what Calm and Sleep Cycle each do better than we do.
Related matchups
Other pairings involving one of these two.
- Alarmy vs Sleep CyclePick Alarmy if you sleep through alarms and need one you can't beat. Pick Sleep Cycle if you wake up on time but feel wrecked when you do, and you want a gentler window plus a record of the night.
- 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 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.
- Calm vs Headspace SleepIf 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sleep as Android vs Sleep CycleOn Android, if you want every dial and every integration you can get, Sleep as Android is unmatched. If you want something simple, or your partner is on an iPhone, Sleep Cycle is the one that works for both of you.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- NapsThe 60 minute napA 60 minute nap includes a substantial amount of slow wave sleep, which is useful for recovery and for some kinds of memory, and it usually ends before the cycle completes. That means the benefit is real and the wake-up is often groggy, so it suits situations where the hour afterwards is flexible.
- Wake tonesLoud alarm soundsTock's alarms ring through silent mode and through a Focus because they are built on Apple's AlarmKit, not on an app keeping audio alive in the background. What no app can do is raise your iPhone's hardware volume for you. Loudness gets your eyes open; the wake-up mission is what stops you dismissing it and going straight back to sleep.
- FeaturesSnore recordingTock keeps short audio clips of the things it hears in the night and pins each one to the minute it happened. Snoring, coughing and sleep talking are labelled by name, and every clip has a play button in the morning.
- Sleep soundsOceanRolling surf is broadband like rain, but it breathes, cresting and receding on a cycle of about ten seconds, and a lot of people find that slow rise easier to let go of than a flat hush. The cost is that the level moves, so it masks less reliably at the quiet end of every cycle than steady noise does.
- Tock for youHeavy sleepersYou have slept through alarms you definitely heard, and turned some of them off without ever waking up. The problem is not your hearing. The part of you that swipes an alarm away is awake several minutes before the part of you that makes decisions.
- AlternativesTock vs SleepScoreSleepScore is the better pick if you want breathing and movement read contactlessly by a method you can have explained to you, and you already have an alarm you trust. Tock is the pick if you want one app that both tracks the night and wakes you, with playable audio of what it heard.
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.