Head to head
Rise vs SleepScore
A coach and a measuring instrument are not the same purchase. Rise tells you what to do with tomorrow. SleepScore tells you what happened last night, in more physical detail than most apps can manage.
In short
If 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.
Rise is advice, SleepScore is evidence
These two are pointed at different jobs. Rise builds a picture from your schedule and history, turns it into a sleep-debt figure and a body-clock map, and then tells you when to go to bed and when your energy will be at its best. It is a coach with a structured programme behind it.
SleepScore is closer to an instrument. It bounces inaudible sound off you and reads movement and breathing from what returns, then presents the result with the method explained rather than asserted. It does not tell you how to live.
What Rise leaves out is deliberate
Rise does not chart your stages, and it is worth understanding that as a choice rather than a gap. The argument is that a running total of sleep you owe changes behaviour, while a nightly breakdown mostly changes your mood.
If you find that convincing, Rise is the cleaner product. If you want to see the night in physical terms, that is exactly what SleepScore was built to give you.
Neither app needs a wearable, so this is not a hardware decision. It is a decision about what you want to be told.
Neither of them ends your night
Rise generally is not your alarm, and SleepScore sits alongside whatever wakes you. Whichever you choose, you keep the alarm you already have.
That is fine if the alarm is not the problem. If mornings are the reason you started searching, you are one purchase short either way.
| What we compared | Rise | SleepScore |
|---|---|---|
| Its organising idea | Sleep debt you carry (stronger here) | The night, measured |
| How it knows anything | Your history and schedule | Sonar off your body (stronger here) |
| Breathing and movement | Not measured | Read contactlessly (stronger here) |
| Telling you what to do | Timing and energy peaks (stronger here) | Leaves that to you |
| Where the number comes from | Coaching first | Research-led explanation (stronger here) |
| Gear you need | None at all (about the same) | None either (about the same) |
| Replacing your alarm | Generally not (about the same) | Sits beside one (about the same) |
Which one to actually install
Pick Rise if
Rise suits someone whose sleep is a scheduling problem: late shifts, moving bedtimes, or a day that needs planning around energy rather than a night that needs charting.
Pick SleepScore if
SleepScore suits someone who wants the night measured without wearing a thing, and who cares how the number was produced.
Pick neither if
If neither of those is the missing piece and the alarm is, Tock is an iPhone alarm on AlarmKit that watches the half hour before your set time and rings early in a lighter moment. It estimates stages from the phone, so it is a different claim from a measured one.
Questions people ask
Do I need a wearable for either of these?
No. Rise works from your schedule and history, and SleepScore is contactless by design. Neither asks you to wear or buy anything.
Which one tells me when to go to bed?
Rise. That is its main output, along with when your energy will peak during the day. SleepScore reports on the night rather than prescribing one.
Can either of them wake me up?
Not really. Rise is a coach and SleepScore sits beside your existing alarm, so you will still be setting one somewhere else.
Do both work on Android?
Yes. Rise and SleepScore both run 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 Rise and SleepScore each do better than we do.
Related matchups
Other pairings involving one of these two.
- 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 RiseAutoSleep 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 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.
- 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.
- 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 Cycle vs SleepScoreIf you want one app that watches the night and also rings in the morning, Sleep Cycle. If you only want the measurement, and you want the method explained rather than asserted, SleepScore.
- SleepScore vs SnoreLabIf snoring is the complaint and you want to find out whether the mouthguard made a difference, SnoreLab. If you want the whole night measured without wearing anything, SleepScore.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- BedtimesGoing to bed at 2:00amWhere to put the alarm after a 2:00am lights-out.
- Sleep by ageHow much sleep teenagers needThe American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that teenagers aged 13 to 18 years sleep 8 to 10 hours per 24 hours on a regular basis. The obstacle is a genuine biological shift: the adolescent circadian rhythm runs later, so a teenager cannot reliably fall asleep at the time an early school start requires.
- 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 tonesSunrise alarmA sunrise alarm clock is a bedside lamp that brightens over roughly 20 to 30 minutes before your set time, and the light is the part you are paying for. Tock is an iPhone app with no light hardware at all, so it takes the timing half instead: a soft wake tone rung at a lighter moment inside the last 30 minutes rather than at a fixed time.
- FeaturesApple HealthTock reads Apple Health for sleep, heart rate, resting heart rate, HRV, blood oxygen, respiratory rate and wrist temperature, and shows them on the night they belong to. It can also write its own nights back into Health, but that setting defaults to off.
- 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.
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.