Portal and Sleepiest are both excellent apps, having each been awarded Apple's "Editors Choice" award, making them both among the top apps available on iPhone and beyond. But which is better? It's really going to come down to what you're looking for. This article will explore the features and benefits of both apps to help you decide which app is best for your needs.

The Offerings of Sleepiest vs Portal

Portal sells itself as an app to "relax and unwind in the worlds greatest locations". It's not strictly sold as purely a sleep aid app; instead selling itself as for everything from focusing, relaxing, helping you sleep and more. That said; many of the sounds available in Portal do lend themselves to aiding sleep.

If you're not looking for sounds to help you sleep and prefer going to sleep to bedtime stories, or sleep meditations then the choice is simple and you can stop here - only Sleepiest offers bedtime stories and sleep meditations to help you sleep.

Sleepiest also offers sleep tracking (transparently letting you see how the app is tangible helping you improve your sleep) and sleep courses to help you ensure your putting yourself in the best position for getting a good nights sleep. Again; if these bits of functionally are also important to you, Sleepiest is the clear choice.

Where Portal really shines is when it comes to it's soundscapes. Portal is all about soundscapes; each is recorded professionally using binaural / 3D audio, and it accompanies each with stunning visuals in the app that truly are relaxing to watch.

Staring at a phone for ages is about the worst thing you can do right before bed, so the amazing visuals within Portal aren't going to be much use if your aim is to get to sleep, but they could be fantastic if you want something to help you relax for 5 minutes in the middle of a busy day.

In terms of the amount of content - Sleepiest outperforms here, with over 500+ professionally mastered, amazing sounds specifically crafted to help you sleep, many of which also have been recorded using binaural 3D audio. Over 100 of these are also available completely free, without even requiring you to start a free trial or subscription, so it's easy to give Sleepiest a go and see if it's right for you.

By comparison, Portal offers only a small number of soundscapes available to try without subscribing or starting a free trial, so you're going to have to make more of a commitment to try out their wider catalogue.

The price

Sleepiest and Portal are both $49.99/yr or $9.99/mo, and both offer a 7 day free trial to explore their wider premium libraries.

Sleepiest has over 100 bits of content available entirely free, without requiring you to start a free trial, while Portal's free offering is far more limited with only a handful of soundscapes available without committing to a free trial or subscription.

Ratings

Both Portal and Sleepiest have been downloaded by millions of users, are rated 5 starts by the majority of their users, and have both been awarded Apple's "Editors Choice" award; so you can be sure of a high quality experience from both apps.

Detailed comparison

Conclusion

Both Portal and Sleepiest are excellent at what they aim to do; but both aim to do slightly different things.

Portal is more of an all-round sound relaxation tool, with a smaller catalogue of soundscapes of a high quality, of which only a subset will be suitable for sleep. It lacks bedtime stories and meditations, because it's not trying to offer that; they focus on relaxing soundscapes for any time of day, and they do it well.

Sleepiest is focused on sleep; is has a greater quantity of meticulously crafted content made specifically for sleep. It has important sleep specific features like sleep tracking (so you can see how the app is tangibly improving your sleep), sleep courses (to help make sure your environment is setup for optimal sleep) and a sleep sound creation tool (allowing you to craft your own soundscape to exactly match your tastes).

If you're after a general relaxation tool to tackle anxiety or stress regardless of the time of day, and sounds are your preferred way to relax then Portal could well be worth trying.

Alternatively; if you're looking for a tool specifically to help get you sleeping better, Sleepiest offers a wider selection of top quality sleep content made specifically for this purpose, and a wider set of features to help get you sleeping better and is the clear choice for helping you sleep better.

If you're struggling to sleep; try Sleepiest for free tonight and lets see if we can't get you sleeping better?