Finding the best sleep-tracking app can feel like a daunting task. Even if you’ve excluded watches from your search, you’re still faced with several options to choose from.
To help you decide, look for apps that track and help you improve your sleep debt and circadian alignment (how in sync you are with your circadian rhythm, or body clock). Experts agree these are the two biggest factors affecting your energy levels.
That’s where RISE comes in. RISE tracks these two metrics and gives you personalized guidance on how to improve them, helping you get better sleep, more energy, and more productive days.
Below, we’ll cover what to look for in a sleep-tracking app and how you can use RISE to get more out of each day (and night).
You’ve decided you don’t want a watch, but there’s much more to consider when looking for the best sleep tracker for you.
Here are the key things to ask yourself when choosing a sleep-tracking app:
Sleep data is interesting, but it’s only useful if it’s tracking metrics that make a difference. There's no clear evidence heart rate, sleep recordings, and sleep quality directly explain how you feel each day. Sleep debt and how in sync you are with your circadian rhythm, on the other hand, are the two biggest factors affecting how you feel and function.
Beyond focusing on the right metrics, you’ll want an app that tracks these accurately, working out how much sleep you personally need and not relying on generic sleep guidelines or self-selected sleep goals.
Knowing your sleep debt or the timing of your circadian rhythm is just the first step. You also want a sleep tracker that helps you improve those metrics, so you feel more energy and focus from using the tracker. This is probably why you want to track your sleep to begin with. As part of this, you’ll want clear and easy-to-understand sleep tracking plus helpful advice you can apply to your daily life to see improvements in your sleep and energy levels.
Alongside tracking sleep, you may want an app that has other features to improve your sleep and energy. That might be white noise to help you drift off, a smart alarm clock to gently wake up at the right time, or the ability to sync apps with other people to hold each other accountable.
As well as the price, consider if you’d prefer to pay once yearly and then not worry about it or have a recurring monthly charge. And don’t forget to compare whether there’s any cost for hardware (such as for a ring or a strap) alongside an app subscription.
Check out customer reviews and look for real-life stories of improved sleep, energy, productivity, and other key factors you want to improve. Look out for ratings, awards, and other recognitions to help you determine if a company and its app are reputable.
Check to see if a sleep tracking app can sync with wearable devices you either already own or you may want to use in the future.
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Yes, you can track sleep without a watch by using a sleep-tracking app like RISE.
You don’t need an Apple Watch — or any other fitness watch like Fitbit or Garmin — to track sleep. You can track sleep with non-watch wearables like the Oura Ring or Whoop, bed or room sensors like the EightSleep mattress cover or the Google Nest Hub, or sleep-tracking apps like Sleep Cycle, AutoSleep, and (our favorite) the RISE app. That means you can track sleep with just an iPhone or Android phone.
RISE tracks your sleep by using one of four methods:
You don’t have to manually start RISE’s phone use sleep tracking. If you forget to start microphone or mattress tracking (or forget to wear your Apple Watch, for example), RISE will automatically use phone use tracking, so you never miss a night of RISE’s sleep data and insights.
RISE tracks your sleep debt and circadian rhythm. Experts agree these are the two biggest factors impacting how you feel each day.
Here’s why you should track sleep debt and circadian rhythm, and why you don’t need to worry about other common metrics, like sleep quality and time spent in sleep stages.
Sleep debt is how much sleep you owe your body. The lower your sleep debt, the better your energy, productivity, digestion, mood, skin, and overall health will be. That’s probably why you want to track and improve your sleep to begin with.
RISE compares how much sleep you get to how much sleep you need. But instead of comparing your sleep to generic sleep guidelines (which can be inaccurate and misleading, and is the norm for other sleep tracking apps), RISE works out how much sleep you personally need — this is known as your sleep need.
This number is different for everyone. For example, when we looked at the sleep needs of 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and up, we found it ranged from five hours to 11 hours 30 minutes.
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RISE uses a year’s worth of phone use data and sleep science algorithms to calculate your sleep need. It then tracks your sleep duration over the course of 14 nights to tell you how much sleep debt you have each day.
There’s a lot of science in the background, but you’ll get one easy-to-understand sleep debt number to focus on lowering.
You can see your sleep debt in the RISE app, on a widget on your iPhone home screen, on your iPad, or on your Apple Watch, if you use one.
Your circadian rhythm is your internal body clock. It helps to control your sleep-wake cycle and dictates when you’ll have more or less energy throughout the day (think a productive morning followed by the afternoon slump).
When you’re in sync with your circadian rhythm, you’ll have an easier time falling and staying asleep, higher daytime energy, a better mood, and better mental and physical health. The best way to stay in sync is by keeping a regular sleep schedule.
RISE predicts the timing of your circadian rhythm each day to help you sync up with it.
The app uses your inferred light exposure, recent sleep times, and algorithms built on the SAFTE model, developed by the US Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense, to do this.
Again, a lot of science behind the scenes, but in the app, you’ll get one clear visualization of your circadian rhythm and when your energy levels will rise and fall across the day.
You can boost productivity and maximize performance by scheduling challenging tasks during your energy peaks and easier tasks, or taking a break, during energy dips.
Some other sleep tracking apps suggest their readiness or recovery score can help you adjust your activities to match your energy levels. But these scores give you an opaque and fixed understanding of your daily energy that you can’t use to optimize your day.
Low sleep debt and being in sync with your circadian rhythm boost your daily energy and health independently, but they’re even more impactful together.
We cover more about how RISE predicts your circadian rhythm here.
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RISE doesn’t track your sleep cycles or the amount of time you spend in deep sleep, light sleep, or REM sleep.
You can’t really control how long you spend in each sleep stage, so we argue you shouldn’t worry about them! Worrying won’t do your sleep any favors after all.
Plus, every sleep stage is important and we all need a different amount of each stage, and that can change from night to night. There isn’t enough evidence to support a direct connection between the amount of time you spend in each stage of sleep and how you feel while you’re awake, either. These aren’t things many sleep trackers take into account.
Despite advances in tech over the years, has found sleep trackers — both wearables and non-wearables — still aren’t always accurate at tracking stages of sleep.
And more has found wearables can still misclassify wakefulness during sleep time (among other issues!). Even with polysomnography (a sleep study), experts agree on test results only of the time.
RISE also doesn’t give you a sleep quality score, but you can rate this one yourself in the app.
There’s no set definition for . Sleep tracker apps usually have their own scoring system giving you a confusing and mysterious sleep score that’s not comprised of the metrics you need to improve to improve your sleep and energy. And because of this mystery, it’s unclear what exactly you need to do to improve your score.
A generic sleep quality score won’t make that much of a difference to how you feel each day, but shows your subjective feelings about your sleep can — that’s why you can rate sleep quality yourself in the RISE app.
Sleep stages and sleep quality also can’t really help diagnose sleep disorders like sleep apnea, either. Sleep debt creeping up, on the other hand, can be a sign of a sleep problem.
We’re guessing you’re not just tracking your sleep for fun. You probably want to have more energy, be more productive, or improve your mental and physical health. Lowering your sleep debt and getting in sync with your circadian rhythm are the best ways to do this.
RISE moves beyond tracking to help you improve outcomes you care about. No confusing or dead-end sleep reports, graphs, or generic sleep goals here. RISE gives you easy-to-follow personalized advice to help you improve those two key metrics of sleep debt and circadian alignment.
When you’ve got lower sleep debt and you’re more in sync with your circadian rhythm you’ll have:
RISE helps you lower your sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm with:
Every feature of RISE helps you lower your sleep debt and stay in sync with your circadian rhythm to help you get you better days.
These include:
RISE costs $69.99 a year, which works out at $5.83 a month. You don’t need to buy any additional rings or devices and you’ll have access to all of RISE’s sleep tracking, insights, and personalized guidance with one payment.
You can also try RISE for free for seven days.
During this free trial, you’ll find out your sleep need, how much sleep debt you have, and see a prediction of your circadian rhythm, which will show you your ideal bedtime and energy predictions every day.
You can see how personalized good sleep habits, relaxing sleep content, and suggested sleep and wake times can improve your sleep and energy.
You’ll also get email reminders before your free trial is up (including a reminder your trial is about to end) with sleep tips and useful information on how to maximize your sleep and energy through the app.
Is the RISE sleep app worth it? We make the case here.
RISE has thousands of 5-star reviews, so you don’t have to take our word for how useful the app is:
As well as thousands of 5-star reviews, RISE has industry-wide recognition, too. Sleep Foundation and Sleep Doctor have named RISE one of their best sleep apps of 2024. Plus, Apple has nominated the app for a design award and named it an Editor’s Choice.
The RISE app works out how much sleep you uniquely need and tracks the two metrics researchers agree make the biggest difference to how you feel: sleep debt and circadian alignment.
As well as tracking these key metrics, RISE gives you daily guidance, based on your own biology, to help you lower your sleep debt and sync up with your circadian rhythm, so you can feel and perform your best each day.
If you want to avoid watches and all wearables, RISE can track sleep through your phone alone. But you can also pair it directly with Apple Watch, Fitbit, Oura Ring, or Garmin to track more health metrics, like workouts, and indirectly with devices like an Eight Sleep mattress.
The most important thing? You’ll feel the difference fast — 80% of RISE users feel more energy within five days.
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RISE makes it easy to improve your sleep and daily energy to reach your potential
