Alternatives to Calm
By App Store Tracker Editorial · Updated — live App Store data verified
The short version
Calm offers guided meditation, Sleep Stories, breathing exercises, and soundscapes, though reviewers wish for more sleep-story variety and fewer paywalled features. Calm's own standalone Calm Sleep adds sleep tracking and routines. Among independents, Calmwoods has the highest rating with nature-themed sessions, and Bluezen brings 8D audio and 200+ hours of bedtime stories. Most others are smaller meditation apps. Pick by whether you want sleep focus, nature themes, or anxiety tools.
People look for Calm alternatives when they exhaust its sleep stories, dislike content moving behind premium, or want a different meditation style. Calm's strengths are polished guided meditations, narrated Sleep Stories, and breathing exercises. The picks here share that mindfulness-and-sleep purpose: guided sessions, calming sounds, breathing tools, and bedtime audio to reduce stress and improve rest. We ranked them by embedding similarity to Calm, then weighed live App Store ratings and review volume so the most popular, best-rated options lead. Several are brand-new with few or no ratings, which we flag against Calm's mature, deep library.
Why it's similar
This Meditation App blends guided meditations, soothing music, and wellness tools across Move, Breath, and other categories, sharing Calm's all-in-one relax-and-sleep approach with yoga and breathing add-ons.
How it differs
With no App Store ratings yet, it is brand-new and unproven against Calm's huge base. Its library and production polish are far below Calm's, and its sleep-story depth cannot match the seed's expert-narrated catalog.
Why it's similar
Calm Sleep is Calm's own standalone sleep app, with 300+ hours of sleep content, Sleep Stories, soundscapes, and now sleep tracking and personalized routines, directly addressing Calm users who want deeper sleep support. Its 4.72 rating across 3,376 reviews shows strong reception.
How it differs
Calm Sleep focuses solely on sleep rather than Calm's full meditation and daytime mindfulness range, so it is narrower. It is a separate subscription from the main Calm app, so it complements rather than fully replaces the seed.
Why it's similar
Calm & Sleep Sounds offers calming music and white noise for meditation and sleep with daily new content and battery-saving playback, sharing Calm's soundscape-and-relaxation core. Its 4.65 rating across 2,145 reviews is solid.
How it differs
It centers on ambient sounds rather than Calm's guided meditations and narrated Sleep Stories, so it is more of a sound machine. Its content depth and production quality fall well short of the seed's expert-led library.
Why it's similar
CalmMind offers guided meditations and breathing sessions for all experience levels, framed around inner peace and accessibility, sharing Calm's mindfulness-for-everyone approach.
How it differs
With just 64 ratings, CalmMind is small and unproven against Calm. Its session library and Sleep Story equivalent are far thinner, and it lacks the seed's celebrity narrators and polished, frequently updated content.
Why it's similar
Relax offers stress-relief meditations updated daily plus Sleep Stories for sweet dreams, sharing Calm's daytime-calm and bedtime-wind-down structure.
How it differs
With just 7 ratings, Relax is brand-new and unproven, and it appears geared toward non-US markets. Its catalog and Sleep Story variety are minimal compared with Calm's deep, expert-produced library.
Why it's similar
Calmer is an anxiety-relief toolkit built with clinical psychologists, offering SOS calming techniques, an AI therapy chatbot, and resilience tools, sharing Calm's stress-and-anxiety focus with a more clinical, in-the-moment approach.
How it differs
Calmer centers on anxiety and panic management rather than Calm's broad meditation and Sleep Stories, so it is narrower. Its 4.44 rating across just 48 reviews reflects a small, early app without the seed's extensive relaxation library.
Why it's similar
Meditaura bundles meditation, nature sounds, breathing exercises, and sleep sounds for stress relief and better sleep, sharing Calm's all-in-one mindfulness-and-relaxation toolkit.
How it differs
Meditaura has no ratings yet, so it is unproven against Calm's established base. Its content library and Sleep Story depth are minimal compared with the seed, and its production polish is unestablished.
Why it's similar
Mindfulness offers guided meditations for all levels, soothing Sleep Stories, nature sounds, and breathing exercises, closely matching Calm's mindfulness-and-sleep feature set.
How it differs
With no App Store ratings yet, it is brand-new and unproven against Calm. Its catalog and narration quality are far behind the seed's deep, expert-led library and signature Sleep Stories.
Why it's similar
Bluezen is an award-winning meditation app with a distinctive 8D spatial-audio technique, beginner-friendly sessions, and 200+ hours of bedtime stories, sharing Calm's relax-and-sleep mission with a novel audio twist. Its 4.5 rating across 250 reviews is decent.
How it differs
Bluezen is smaller and less proven than Calm, with a narrower meditation library. Its 8D approach differs from Calm's guided style, and its content variety and polish do not reach the seed's level.
OAK & LEAF Damian Szafraniec
Why it's similar
Calmwoods is the best-rated independent here, with a 4.87 rating across 92 reviews, offering 100+ nature-set guided meditations, calming soundscapes, and mindfulness practices for nature lovers, sharing Calm's serene, guided relaxation.
How it differs
Calmwoods focuses on nature-themed meditation rather than Calm's broad mix of Sleep Stories, masterclasses, and daytime sessions. With just 92 reviews, its catalog and reach are far smaller than the seed's.
Every app in our database carries a dense vector embedding derived from its title, subtitle, full description, and category metadata. To find apps similar to Calm, we compute cosine distance against every other app and surface the closest 60 candidates. The similarity score shown on each pick is 1 - distance/2 clamped to [0,1] — 100% means the embedding spaces are identical, 0% means orthogonal.
We then re-rank the candidate set using current App Store rating and review-count signals so a 4.8-star app with 100,000 reviews ranks above a 4.5-star app with 200 reviews even when their embedding distance is similar. Apps that haven't shipped an update in 12 months are filtered out before re-ranking.
The similarity cache is recomputed weekly. Live App Store data (rating, review count) is verified every 6 hours.
No paid placements. No affiliate links. No sponsored picks. Read our full methodology.
More popular iPhone apps with curated alternative lists, each ranked by embedding similarity, rating, and category fit.
