Both Sleepiest and SleepWave are sleep tracking and sleep aid apps designed to help evaluate your sleep patterns, and provide content to help you sleep. But which is better? In this article we'll evaluate the features of the two apps and the scientific evidence on the quality of their sleep tracking to help you pick the right app for you.

The Offerings of Sleepiest vs SleepWave

Both Sleepiest and SleepWave offer sleep tracking, but they take very different approaches in terms of how they approach tracking your sleep.

Here at Sleepiest we utilize passive sleep tracking, which allows you to automatically track your sleep (once enabled) without requiring any manual intervention each night (so no need to press an "I'm going to bed" button like other apps!). SleepWave on the other hand uses active sleep tracking using some sonar-like technology they've built internally. This active sleep tracking requires you to start tracking your sleep each night, and to press a button when you wake up, so it's a little more frustrating to use and you have to remember to use it every night.

But which type of tracking is better? Here at Sleepiest we're firmly on the side of passive sleep tracking, and we're not alone... One of the main benefits claimed by apps doing active sleep tracking is that by tracking the finite movement of your phone and using the microphone to record the noise of your environment, they can try an identify the "depth of your sleep". This is usually paired (as is the case with SleepWave) with a smart alarm that attempts to wake you up when you're in a "light sleep state".

Unfortunately this has been broadly rubbished by experts and sleep scientists, with scientists at the mayo clinic stating "Consumer sleep trackers are pretty accurate at tracking total sleep time" but stating "the only way to accurately identify what stage of sleep you are in is to measure brain activity during a clinical sleep study. None of the consumer devices on the market capture this kind of data".

This is the reason, here at Sleepiest we focus on passive sleep tracking whereby we use the broad motion of your phone simply to identify when you went to bed and when you woke up. We don't try guess what sleep state you were in using data we know not to be accurate, and we won't claim to wake you up at the "perfect time" based on flawed data. Instead; we'll just be transparent about when we think you went to bed and woke up, and we'll display this data in a beautiful user interface to make it as accessible as possible for you.

In reality no stand-alone apps have the required data to show you accurate sleep stages without a peripheral capable of measuring your brain activity.

If accurate tracking of your sleep state is very important to you; then the best options currently available for consumers outside of a dedicated sleep lab is offered by our friends over at dreem who have a consumer EEG headset and accompanying app which can accurately measure your sleep state based on your brain activity using sleep-lab like equipment.

Apple also announced sleep state support in their latest lineup of Apple watches. These new watches do not have access to EEG brain activity data, and therefore won't be 100% accurate compared to an EEG headset, however they do have access to ECG and heart rate data which will allow for a far greater degree of accuracy than is even remotely possible via an standalone app.

If you're after more general sleep tracking where you're more interested in the broad headline information on how long you were asleep for; Sleepiest's passive sleep tracking is likely preferable over most active sleep tracking applications such as SleepWave. Passive sleeping only needs enabling once, then you're good to go and it'll work quietly in the background tracking your sleep without any manual intervention required.

Outside of sleep tracking, both Sleepiest and SleepWave also offer audio to help get you to sleep. SleepWave focuses just on sleep sounds; with a small selection of 7 sounds available in total, 3 of which can be accessed for free outside of a free trial or subscription.

In comparison Sleepiest offers over 500 sleep soundscapes, bedtime stories & sleep meditations, with 10 new bits of content released each and every week. Over 100 bits of content are also available from Sleepiest entirely for free without requiring you to start a free trial or subscribe, so it allows you to explore the Sleepiest offering far more extensively before considering subscribing or starting a free trial; in fact the majority of our users just make use of the free content and tools available in the Sleepiest app without ever subscribing or starting a free trial!

The price

SleepWave is comparatively very cheap offering a yearly subscription for only $23.99. Sleepiest on the other hand costs $49.99/yr or $9.99/mo. Both apps offer a 7 day free trial allowing you to explore their premium options before subscribing.

The content offering of Sleepiest is however significantly higher, with an extensive catalogue of over 100+ bits of sleep content available entirely for free (without requiring you to commit to a free trial or subscription at all)!

Ratings

Both Sleepiest and SleepWave have been downloaded by millions of users and have high user ratings, with the vast majority rating their experience as 5 stars. Both also have great user experiences and well designed interfaces making them easy to use.

Detailed comparison

Conclusion

SleepWave's primary feature is sleep tracking. Unfortunately it uses active tracking to try and detect your sleep state, and this has been broadly rubbished as something that's not possible to do in an accurate way by expert sleep scientists over at the mayo clinic. It's therefore hard to recommend the app for this purpose.

If tracking your sleep state is the most important thing for you; the reality is that neither SleepWave or Sleepiest have the data required for this, and you're better off checking out the consumer EEG headset offered by our friends over at dreem.

Alternatively Apple's latest lineup of Apple Watches also introduced sleep state support. These don't collect EEG data, and therefore won't be 100% accurate, however the fact they can measure ECG data and heart rate data will make them significantly more accurate at tracking sleep states than what can be offered by any standalone app.

For basic sleep tracking where you just want to know things like; how long you slept for, how many times you woke up, when you went to bed, and when you got up - Sleepiest passive sleep tracking offers a great solution which once enabled, works quietly in the background and crunches the numbers using it's propriety sleep algorithm, without requiring you to manually log when you went to bed and woke up as is the case with SleepWave and other active sleep tracking apps.

Sleepiest offers the basic version of it's passive sleep tracking for free; with a subscription only required when storing your historical sleep data on a long term basis.

Outside of Sleep Tracking - the content offering of Sleepiest is far superior, with it offering not only significantly more sleep sounds to try when compared to SleepWave, but also offering bedtime stories, sleep meditation, a sleep sound creation tool, sleep courses and more.

We also have a very extensive library of entirely free content here at Sleepiest, letting you use and explore Sleepiest without needing to commit to a free trial or subscription.

So what are you waiting for, why not try Sleepiest for free today?