If you're having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, a sleep app can be a useful tool to help you relax and drift off into a peaceful slumber.

Two of the most popular sleep aid apps for the iPhone are Shut Eye and Sleepiest, but which one is the best choice for you? In this article, we'll compare the features and effectiveness of these two apps to help you decide.

The Offerings of Sleepiest vs ShutEye

Both Sleepiest and ShutEye offer similar functionality. Both include bedtime stories, sleep sounds and meditations. Both also offer sleep courses, and both offer tools to create your own sleep sounds.

Both also offer sleep tracking functionality, however take different approaches to how they track sleep.

ShutEye uses "active sleep tracking", which requires users to press a button in the app before going to bed to begin tracking their sleep. While this allows the app to access more sensors, such as the microphone or small movements of the device, it can be frustrating for some people as forgetting to press the button can result in incorrect sleep tracking data.

In contrast, Sleepiest uses passive sleep tracking. This involves measuring the more general movement of the phone (even when the app isn't open, once enabled in the app). The movement data is then passed through an algorithm to determine when users were likely to be awake or asleep during a given time frame. Once enabled, this allows Sleepiest to immediately and accurately show users the times they went to bed and woke up on a daily basis without any manual intervention. This makes it easier to keep track of sleep health compared to ShutEye's approach. You can read more on the differences on active versus passive sleep tracking here.

The fact both Sleepiest and ShutEye support tracking means both apps can optimize their content offerings towards actually improving your sleep outcomes, though the ease of use of passive sleep tracking in Sleepiest means it's likely that there is more actionable data available within Sleepiest.

In terms of content; Sleepiest releases 10 original pieces of content every single week, while ShutEye release 6 new pieces of content a week. Both put out more content that most other sleep apps available, though Sleepiest still puts out near double the amount each week when compared to ShutEye.

The price

ShutEye costs $59.99/yr and $9.99/mo, while Sleepiest costs $49.99/yr or $9.99/mo. So Sleepiest is slightly more affordable on a yearly basis, while they're the same price if you go monthly.

Ratings

Sleepiest and ShutEye both have millions of downloads. Both have high ratings with the vast majority of ratings 5*. Both also have great user interfaces which are easy to navigate.

Detailed comparison

Conclusion

Overall Sleepiest and ShutEye are both great sleep apps.

Sleepiest puts out nearly double the amount of content each week compared to ShutEye, however this is still more than most other sleep apps available. Both also offer considerable free content outside of requiring to start a trial or subscription.

In terms of tracking sleep; Sleepiest uses passive sleep tracking, which offers more immediate actionable sleep data, and makes it far more easy to keep track of your sleep health when compared to the manual tracking requirements of ShutEye.

If sleep tracking is important, Sleepiest is therefore likely to be the better option for you. If you're more about the sleep aid content then Sleepiest has more content on offer and a larger library of sleep aid content; however given both apps offer ample free content outside of requiring you to start a free trials / subscribe, the simple option it to just try both.

Why not try Sleepiest for free tonight by clicking here?