Head to head
Sleep Cycle vs SleepScore
Same idea, different physics. Both sit on the nightstand and ask nothing of your body, but one listens to the room and the other bounces sound off you and reads what comes back.
In short
If 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.
Two ways to read a body from three feet away
Sleep Cycle is the original phone-microphone tracker. It listens to the room all night, estimates the shape of your sleep from what it hears, and rings inside a window so it can find a lighter moment near your set time.
SleepScore does not listen so much as ping. It emits sound you cannot hear and reads the reflections off your body, which gets it movement and breathing rather than an interpretation of noise. Different signal, same nightstand.
Neither method measures stages the way a wrist sensor does. Both are producing estimates from across the room.
Only one of them is also an alarm clock
This is the difference people skip past and then regret. Sleep Cycle replaces your alarm and uses the tracking to decide when to ring. SleepScore sits alongside whatever already wakes you, so you are running two things.
If the reason you started looking was rough mornings rather than curiosity about your nights, that single fact settles the comparison.
SleepScore is for people who ask how the number was made
There is a real personality difference here. Sleep Cycle presents a picture of the night and expects you to take it. SleepScore leads with the method, which suits anyone who has ever looked at a sleep score and wondered where on earth it came from.
That transparency is not a feature you use nightly, but it is a big part of whether you believe what you are looking at six months in.
If you want the mic to do more than estimate
A microphone by the bed can do something sonar cannot: keep what it heard. Tock classifies snores, coughs and sleep talking on device with Apple SoundAnalysis and saves the clips, so in the morning you can play back the thing that woke you rather than reading a line on a chart.
It is also the alarm, built on AlarmKit so it rings on silent and through a Focus. Stages are estimates on phone-only nights, the same as everything else in this comparison. iPhone only, 3-day trial, then from $39.99 a year.
| What we compared | Sleep Cycle | SleepScore |
|---|---|---|
| How it senses the night | Listens with the microphone (about the same) | Bounces inaudible sound back (about the same) |
| Ringing at the end of it | A smart alarm window (stronger here) | Sits beside your alarm |
| Breathing through the night | Not the focus | Read by sonar (stronger here) |
| Audio to fall asleep to | A large library (stronger here) | Not what it sells |
| Explaining how it works | Asks for your trust | Research-led, shows its working (stronger here) |
| How long it has been around | One of the originals (stronger here) | Better known for the method |
| Wearables or bed sensors | None needed (about the same) | None needed either (about the same) |
Which one to actually install
Pick Sleep Cycle if
Sleep Cycle is the better single purchase for most people, because it wakes you as well as watching you and carries a sizeable library of sleep aids for bedtime.
Pick SleepScore if
SleepScore is the better pick if you already like your alarm and want a measurement of movement and breathing, with the method laid out rather than hidden.
Pick neither if
If you want to hear the snoring rather than read about it, neither of these keeps the audio. Tock classifies snores, coughs and sleep talking on device and saves playable clips, and it is the alarm too.
Questions people ask
Does either one need a wearable?
No. Both work from the nightstand with nothing on your body and nothing on the bed. That is the main thing they have in common.
Is sonar tracking better than microphone tracking?
It is a different measurement rather than a straight upgrade. Sonar reads movement and breathing off reflections, where a microphone interprets sound in the room. Both are estimates made from a distance.
Which one replaces my alarm clock?
Sleep Cycle. It has a smart alarm window built in. SleepScore is designed to sit alongside whatever already wakes you.
Where Tock sits against each of them
These pages are written the same way as this one, which means they state what Sleep Cycle and SleepScore 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Elsewhere on the site
A different corner of the same problem.
- NapsThe coffee napA coffee nap means drinking caffeine and then immediately napping for about 20 minutes. Caffeine takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes to have a noticeable effect, so it does not stop you falling asleep quickly, and you wake as it takes hold. The two effects add rather than cancel.
- Wake tonesKalimbaKalimba is Tock's thumb-piano wake tone: warm plucked notes with a short woody decay that lift you rather than startle you. It still runs on Apple's AlarmKit, so a silent switch, an active Focus and a closed app make no difference to whether it goes off.
- 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 soundsStreamA small stream is mostly mid and high frequency water noise with very little below a couple of hundred hertz, so it sounds alive and close but has almost nothing to fight a passing truck with. It suits a quiet bedroom where you want an alternative to silence, not a room you are trying to defend.
- Tock for youNew parentsYou do not wake up to an alarm any more, you wake up to a small person, three or four times, and then you have to be a functioning adult by seven. The night is not so much short as it is in pieces.
- 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.