Meditation offers a natural way to melt away sleep-disrupting stress. “By meditating before you go to sleep, you're quieting the thinking activity of your brain and shifting to a state of awareness, which entrains your brain into theta waves, a deep state of relaxation that helps you drift off to sleep,” explains Margaret Baim, a mind-body medicine expert, meditation teacher, and director of the Benson-Henry Institute’s Stress Management and Resiliency Training (SMART) program at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Meditation apps are a wonderful tool to help start your meditation practice or build upon your existing one. To find the best meditation apps for sleep — and make them useful — we turned to six sleep and meditation experts for their top recommendations, as well as advice on how to make the most of your meditation practice.
What is a meditation app, and how does it work?
Though you don’t need a tool or app to meditate, many people appreciate guidance when first starting a meditation practice. Meditation apps, which you can download on your phone, eliminate the guesswork of how to meditate, and they’re great for novices and pros alike. “It's hard to just sit down without any help and meditate,” points out Amoha Bajaj, PhD, a clinical and health psychologist with expertise in insomnia at Princeton Psychotherapy in New Jersey. “Apps give you structure, and they have guided scripts, so all you have to do is follow the instructions and be present in the moment.”
The best apps offer science-backed meditation techniques through narrator-led instruction that may involve sound, breathing, visualization, and relaxation exercises to help calm your mind and prepare you for rest. Meditation apps can also help you develop gratitude, improve focus, increase happiness, build self-esteem, and reduce stress and anxiety. You must pay for some apps, whereas others are free.
How do guided meditation apps enhance sleep?
Meditation apps lead you through exercises that reduce anxiety and pain, the most common factors that interfere with a good night’s sleep, as well as improve coping skills and focus, according to Alaina G. Tiani, Ph.D., a clinical health psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Center. But here’s the thing when it comes to meditation for sleep: “You can't just meditate at night,” she says. “It's something that you want to also practice during the day because meditating is like exercise. You’re training your brain each time you do it.”
Start slowly — 10 minutes once or twice a day will work, and you can switch techniques after 5 minutes if you wish (say, starting with a sitting medication and then moving to an active one) — and then build up to meditating once or twice a day for 20-minute periods, recommends Baim. Over time, she says, you’ll develop new pathways and connections in the brain that can enhance your ability to fall asleep faster and sleep more deeply. In fact, a study published in Neural Plasticity found that mindfully meditating is related to lasting improvements in the function of the hippocampus (the part of the brain that plays a key role in memory, learning, and emotion). Additionally, a study in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging found that meditating for 20 minutes, once or twice a day, results in “significant, measurable changes in the brain,” Baim adds.
How we picked the best meditation apps to help you sleep
To develop this list of best meditation apps for sleep, we turned to leading professionals and asked them what apps they recommend to their patients. We then tested the apps ourselves by downloading each one and trying out the various guided and unguided meditations for sleep, as well as sleep stories, sleepcasts, and soundscapes to get a sense of the quality of the content offered by the app overall and how beneficial the apps were in helping to induce sleep. With all the apps, we noticed faster, better sleep that continued to improve over the weeks of using them, including falling asleep more quickly and sleeping more deeply. To Tiani’s point, you can’t just meditate at night and expect results, so we also began a daily mindfulness practice during activities such as eating and walking to help make our nighttime meditations more effective. In addition to our own experience with these apps, we took user ratings and reviews into account since experiences can vary dramatically.
The following apps each have one or more unique features, so it’s worth trying a couple to find your best match. All of them use science-backed techniques proven to promote sleep. Once you’ve started your free trial, choose the meditation you’ll listen to at night earlier in the day to avoid getting “overstimulated by having to make a choice right before sleep,” recommends Melissa Greenberg, a clinical psychologist and founder of Princeton Psychotherapy.
The four best meditation apps to help you sleep in 2024
Best free app: Insight Timer
Every expert we talked to recommended Insight Timer, launched in 2009 by brothers Christopher and Nicho Plowman — it also has one of the highest user ratings of the apps on this list. The brothers have partnered with neuroscientists to develop guided meditations with a simple, straightforward interface that makes them easy to use.
Pros: You can stream over 200,000+ guided meditations and music tracks from thousands of teachers, so you have plenty of options to choose from to find a sleep-inducing fit. While there is paid content that you can subscribe to, promotions for it aren’t disruptive, and you can still access thousands of free meditations. If you can swing the fee for MemberPlus, you’ll gain access to a range of courses in spirituality, manifesting, promoting self-esteem, managing stress and anxiety, and more by expert teachers, as well as soundscapes and offline listening capabilities.
Cons: The trial to see whether MemberPlus is worth purchasing is only one week long; with all the content available, busy people might not feel like that’s enough time to see whether the subscription fee is really worth it.
User rating: 4.9 / 5
Cost: Free or $60 / year for MemberPlus
Best app for a rich variety of sleep meditations: Calm
Calm was founded by entrepreneurs Michael Acton Smith and Alex Tew in 2012, and it’s become one of the most popular mental health apps out there. The app offers a deep well of guided and unguided meditations for sleep, including meditations to help you fall back to sleep if you wake up in the middle of the night, and meditation courses for sleep, as well as plenty of meditations that help lull you to sleep using mindfulness techniques such as guided body scans and progressive muscle relaxation. You’ll also find soothing soundscapes (such as the sound of the ocean or the forest) to help further relax you and screen out sleep-disrupting noise in your environment. Additionally, it has a unique library of hundreds of bedtime stories by celebs such as Matthew McConaughey, Idris Elba, Jennifer Garner, Kelly Rowland, and Henry Styles, which has helped Calm grow to 4+ million paid subscribers.
Pros: Calm is accessible to all sorts of people. It has a 30-day program for beginners daily 10-minute meditations for busy people, and it’s available in six different languages. This app also offers mood tracking, guided and unguided meditations, and customizable audio and video content. The app expands beyond meditation with masterclasses on a range of topics, from breaking bad habits to mindful eating, led by renowned experts in the field, such as Justin Brewer, a neuroscientist and mindfulness expert, and Tara Brach, a leading meditation teacher on the app.
Cons: Some reviewers report feeling overwhelmed by the breadth and depth of Calm’s offerings. Additionally, payment information is taken upfront instead of once the free trial is over.
User rating: 4.8 / 5
Cost: $69.99 / year or $399.99 (lifetime subscription)
Best app for sleepcasts: Headspace
Headspace evolved from a company that hosted mindful talks in 2010 to Calm’s closest competitor when the app launched two years later. It was founded by Andy Puddicombe, a former Buddhist monk and entrepreneur, Richard Pierson. Our experts cited its sleepcasts — pleasant stories that have no set beginning, middle, or end and not much of a plot to keep listeners from becoming too engaged in a story, which could promote wakefulness — as a clear strength.
Pro: Headspace remixes its sleepcasts every night, so the experience is different even if you listen to the same sleepcast multiple times. That way, you can’t memorize the narrative and track time with it — which can cause sleep-blocking anxiety. Each nighttime journey blends sound and visualizations (such as a California desert at night or a tranquil lakeside lodge) to help lull listeners to sleep. Additionally, there is a team of experts on staff to offer coaching and clinical care, as well as guided meditations. Content is curated for both beginners and expert meditators. For students, there is a significant student discount.
Cons: Payment information is taken upfront. Users complain in reviews that customer service is difficult to reach.
User rating: 4.8 / 5
Cost: $12.99 / month with a 7-day free trial or $69.99 / year with a 14-day free trial. Student discount of $9.99 / year.
Best app for mindfulness: Healthy Minds
This free app is backed by four decades of research from world-renowned neuroscientist Richard Davidson, Ph.D., and his team at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. We especially like its simple, uncomplicated focus on mindfulness. Meditation requires mindfulness, which is the practice of focusing on the present moment. You can practice mindfulness while doing just about anything, including walking, cooking, and gardening.
Pros: In addition to guided meditations for sleep, there are active meditations from 5 to 30 minutes in length that can be done while you’re on the move. There are also podcast-style classes from leading scientists and meditation experts. “The quality of the teaching is really high level,” confirms Zindel V. Segal, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and meditation expert, and professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. You can also access a report that measures your current level of well-being and watch how it changes over time.
Cons: This app doesn’t have any of the bells and whistles of Calm and Headspace — which, depending on your point of view, might be more of a pro.
User rating: 4.9 / 5
Cost: Free
How to choose the right meditation app for you
Take advantage of free trials and try several different apps to decide which best caters to your needs, suggests Greenberg. For sleep, you’ll want to find a meditation app with content you find soothing. If you are more of a visual person, you may gravitate toward visualization exercises. Others may find that listening to guided meditations, sleepcasts, sleep stories, or calming music is more effective in helping them drift off to sleep. If you have a very busy schedule, look for an app that offers active meditation that you can incorporate into your day.
Tips for getting the most out of meditation apps
1. Meditate consistently
Our experts all agree that daily practice is ideal, if possible. Even if you’re tight on time, a quick, single-pointed focus meditation is a good way to “practice regulating attention, controlling the mind, and building neural and synaptic plasticity, which will then enable you to get even richer, deeper benefit out of the guided meditations,” says Baim. Here’s how to DIY: Choose an emotion — say, joy. Close your eyes and repeat the word joy over and over. Eventually, an image will appear in your mind that signifies joy to you. For a minute, focus on that image. As you breathe in, say to yourself, “I am filled with joy.” Breathe out and say, “I am joy.” If you prefer to follow a guided meditation on an app, try a 5- to 20-minute active meditation that you can do on your commute, morning walk, or while cooking from the free Healthy Minds app, and see how it works for you.
2. Start small
If you’re really time-pressed and just can’t swing 10 minutes to start a meditation practice, it’s OK to do less. “I tell people to start low and go slow — maybe a minute or two at a time,” says John Cline, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist and diplomate of the American Board of Sleep Medicine, in Cheshire, Connecticut. “From there, gradually begin to expand the time you're spending in meditation.”
3. Exercise regularly
Moving your body for 30 minutes a day can help you sleep better at night, according to a 2023 study. Being active also contributes to our “homeostatic sleep drive,” which is the process that increases our need to sleep throughout the day, says Bajaj.
4. Practice good sleep hygiene
To do this, develop a routine that signals to your body that it's time to end your day, instructs Bajaj. In addition to meditating as you fall asleep, your routine could include dimming the lights at night, enjoying a cup of herbal tea before bed, taking a shower — whatever it is that relaxes you and helps you wind down, she says.
5. Stretch throughout the day
“Research shows that when we hold a gentle stretch for about 10 seconds, it activates your connective tissue that reduces inflammation,” says Baim. Throughout the day, the inflammation our body accumulates from stress travels to the brain and can disrupt our sleep at night.
6. Indulge in diaphragmatic breathing
This breathing technique helps reduce stress by stretching your diaphragm into your belly and activating the vagus nerve, the main nerve of your parasympathetic nervous system. It counters the stress-activating sympathetic nervous system and calms the body in support of rest and digestion.
The bottom line
Meditation can help you calm your mind, relax, fall asleep faster, and sleep more deeply. The more you practice meditation, the more it will benefit you. Meditation apps are a simple way to learn how to meditate for sleep and build upon your meditation practice over time. Start slowly and practice meditation as often as you can — daily, if possible. Experiment with a few meditation apps for sleep to choose the one that serves you best.
