Paying for a meditation app

A quick answer

• For sleep, and you like stories: Calm.
• For short, friendly sessions built around everyday situations: Headspace.
• For teachers who talk about practice as well as guide it: Happier Meditation.
• For a plan chosen for you each day: Balance.
• For practice mixed with lessons on the nature of mind, with a free route if you need it: Waking Up.
• To start for free, with nothing to sign up for: a free option.

Before you start a trial

• Have you tried enough guided meditation to know you like it?
• Which paid feature would you actually use: a course, the library, downloads, Sleep Stories?
• What will the subscription renew at, and when?
• Could a free option meet the same need?

The five, side by side

App	Free without paying	Yearly price (US)
Calm	A free tier: 230+ meditations, 8 sleep sessions and Day 1 of each programme	$79.99
Headspace	A 14-day trial (what’s free)	$69.99 (app stores)
Happier Meditation	A free account with about 50 meditations and two courses	$99.99
Balance	A trial	$69.99
Waking Up	A free or reduced membership for anyone who asks, “no questions asked”	$129.99 on its website, $149.99 in the App Store

Free trials run 7 to 14 days.

What the subscription includes

Across the five, a subscription mostly gives you:

• Programmes: courses that take you from a first session to a habit, in order.
• Breadth: hundreds of sessions for sleep, stress, focus and more.
• Features: reminders, streaks, downloads, and a consistent sound and style.

Structure alone isn’t a reason to pay. Medito and Healthy Minds offer free programmes, and Palouse Mindfulness offers a free eight-week course. The reason to pay is that one app’s programme, voice or features suit you.

What some companies sell separately. Headspace also offers online therapy, with its own eligibility check, insurance and per-session costs. It isn’t part of the meditation subscription.

What each one offers

Calm

Calm has Sleep Stories, calm stories read by well-known voices, which give a busy mind something gentle to follow until you drift off. Its free tier includes some meditations and sleep sessions.

Headspace

Headspace builds its courses one small step at a time, and many of its short sessions start from an ordinary situation.

Happier Meditation

Happier Meditation brings podcasts into the app alongside its meditations, so you can hear teachers talk about practice as well as guide it. Its teachers come from the Insight (Vipassana) tradition.

Balance

Balance shapes a plan around your answers, so each day’s session is chosen for you.

Waking Up

Waking Up mixes practice with lessons on the nature of mind, and draws on Vipassana, Zen, Dzogchen and Advaita Vedanta. It’s the only one of the five with a stated free route to its full library. If cost is a barrier, you can ask for a free membership, with no proof of income.

When a free option may be enough

You may not need a subscription if:

• You want a few meditations you return to, more than a programme.
• You’d rather not create an account or share data.
• You’re happy to choose your next practice yourself.

Our guide to free meditation apps and sites covers the free options in detail.

Ours is one of them, though it isn’t a free version of these apps. It has no course, no reminders and no Sleep Stories. It’s 51 meditations with long spaces between short spoken lines, and nothing to sign up for. Most of its Sleep playlist ends in music or rain, with no voice to wake you.

A word on privacy

In their own privacy policies, Calm and the maker of Balance describe sharing or selling identifiers for targeted advertising. Headspace and Waking Up describe more limited advertising data. Waking Up’s Google Play listing says no data is shared with third parties. Paying for an app doesn’t always mean you’re not its advertising audience. Read the policy of the app you choose.

Try before you pay

Before a trial, try a free session or two in the same style. If you like what you hear, you’ll know which app’s version is worth paying for. A free place to start is Coming Back.