AutoSleep and RISE are both popular sleep-tracking apps, so which one should you choose? Both track your sleep, but they focus on different metrics and offer very different features.
RISE gives you personalized advice to help you improve your sleep and energy, but you can pair it with AutoSleep if you’d like insights from both apps.
Below, we’ll compare AutoSleep and RISE to help you find the best sleep tracker for you.
Ask yourself these questions when comparing sleep apps and devices:
We’ve covered the best non-wearable sleep trackers here.
Here’s what sleep metrics AutoSleep and RISE track and how they compare.
Sleep debt is the amount of sleep you owe your body. Lowering your sleep debt can improve everything from your energy and productivity to your mood and overall health.
Sleep debt is worked out by comparing how much sleep you get to how much sleep you need.
AutoSleep tracks your sleep debt, but it uses a sleep goal you set for yourself. Most of us don’t know how much sleep we personally need — it’s not eight hours for everyone! — so this sleep debt tracking is probably inaccurate and not that useful.
The app tracks your sleep through your phone use or via an Apple Watch. But you won’t get many AutoSleep features if you don’t have an Apple Watch.
RISE tracks your sleep debt using your unique sleep need — the amount of sleep you genetically need. RISE works out your sleep need using a year’s worth of your phone use behavior and sleep science algorithms.
Sleep needs can vary quite a bit. Among 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and up, we found sleep needs ranged from five hours to 11 hours 30 minutes. So you can see why it would be tricky to accurately guess your own sleep need.
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RISE then tracks your sleep duration via:
RISE then calculates your sleep debt over the last 14 nights, giving you an accurate representation of how sleep debt from previous nights can affect today’s energy levels. You can also add in any naps you take for an accurate sleep debt number.
We’ve covered more on the best sleep debt tracking apps here, including RISE and AutoSleep.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can view their sleep need here and view their sleep debt here.
Your circadian rhythm is your internal body clock. It interacts with the timing of light and food to optimize your bodily functions, regulating your sleep schedule and affecting when your energy levels naturally fluctuate across the day.
Circadian alignment is when you sync your daily activities (such as when you get and avoid light, sleep, eat, and exercise) with that internal rhythm. One of the best ways to get in sync is by sleeping on a regular schedule at the right times for your body. This can not only help you get a good night’s sleep, it can improve your energy, health, performance, and productivity.
AutoSleep tracks a few metrics related to your circadian rhythm, like sleep consistency, but it doesn't give you any information about your circadian rhythm as a whole to help you plan your day.
It gives you a recommended bedtime based on your self-set sleep goal and usual wake time. You’ll also get a readiness score to gauge your energy levels. This is based on your heart rate variability (HRV) and waking pulse.
This readiness score is static and doesn’t reflect how your energy levels can change across the day. And as it’s based on a combination of HRV and your heart rate, it can be hard — if not impossible — to know what to do in your daily life to improve it. Plus, you have to wear an Apple Watch to get this score.
RISE predicts your circadian rhythm based on your recent sleep times, inferred light exposure, and algorithms built on the SAFTE model developed by the US Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense.
You’ll see:
Sync up with these times for more energy, productivity, and better sleep and overall health. You can also use these insights to shift the timing of your circadian rhythm to fix your sleep schedule, get over jet lag, or become a morning person.
RISE also gives you an Energy Potential score from zero to 100. This is based on your sleep debt, so you know exactly how to improve it — catch up on sleep to get more energy.
Learn more about how RISE predicts your circadian rhythm here.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can see their circadian rhythm on the Energy screen here.
Sleep stages include light sleep, deep sleep, and rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep. Many sleep apps track the amount of time you spend in each stage each night.
At first glance, this sounds like a useful feature. But, unfortunately, it’s a little misunderstood.
The amount of time you spend in different sleep stages doesn’t make that much of a difference to how you feel during the day. There are no set guidelines for how long you should spend in each stage, and — just like sleep need — the ideal amount of time will be different for everyone and it changes from one night to the next for a variety of reasons.
What’s more, research shows sleep trackers — including wearables — aren’t that accurate at determining which sleep stage you’re in. Sleep experts aren’t perfect, either. In polysomnography (sleep studies), experts only agree on results about 80% of the time.
You don’t need to worry, though. Getting enough sleep for you on a regular schedule (low sleep debt and circadian alignment) will ensure you get enough of each sleep stage.
AutoSleep tracks the amount of time you spend in different sleep stages by tracking your movement and heart rate through your Apple Watch. It can also pull sleep stage tracking data directly from Apple Watch.
There are default goals for how much of each sleep stage you should get and you can change these yourself.
RISE doesn’t focus on the amount of time spent in different sleep stages. Instead, RISE helps you get enough sleep on a regular schedule and build healthy sleep habits, so you spend the optimal amount of time in each sleep stage for you.
But if you have an Apple Watch, RISE can pull sleep stage data into the app so you can see when you were in different sleep stages throughout the night, if it’s something you’re interested in.
Learn why you don’t need to track deep sleep and REM sleep here.
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You’ve probably noticed that many sleep apps and devices track sleep quality, but just like with sleep stages, it’s a bit of a misunderstood metric.
There isn’t an agreed-upon definition for sleep quality. The sleep score you get from an app is based on a proprietary scoring system and several different metrics. This score might not impact how you feel each day, and — even if it did — it can be hard to know how to improve it as so many metrics go into the final score.
AutoSleep tells you how much “quality sleep” you got each night. This amount, in hours and minutes, is estimated from your sleep duration, how restless your sleep was, and your sleeping heart rate.
The app also gives you a Sleep Rating score from zero to 100. This is based on your sleep duration, sleep quality, deep sleep, and average heart rate. If the app pulls data from your Apple Watch, time spent in REM will also go into this score. You can set your own goal for what score you’d like to reach.
RISE doesn’t give you a sleep quality score. But you can track sleep quality yourself. Research shows how you feel about your sleep can impact your well-being, so you can self-rate sleep quality in the RISE app.
Learn more about sleep tracking metrics here, including which are worth tracking and which ones are not worth worrying about.
Heads-up: Concerned about sleep disorders? Metrics like the amount of time spent in sleep stages and sleep quality can’t help diagnose sleep disorders like sleep apnea and insomnia. Sleep debt can be a useful metric to show your doctor, though, as it shows sleep loss over time. AutoSleep pulls data about your blood oxygen levels from Apple Watch. This can help a doctor detect signs of sleep apnea.
Sleep data is all well and good, but you’re probably here because you want to see a difference in your sleep and energy levels.
Here’s how AutoSleep and RISE can help.
AutoSleep doesn’t give you much personalized guidance on how to get more sleep or energy.
But it can:
Heads-up: AutoSleep encourages banking” extra sleep, or getting more sleep than you need ahead of a time when you know you’ll miss out on sleep. But most sleep researchers don’t believe this is possible as you’re probably just paying back sleep debt you already have.
RISE has tools to help you lower your sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm and it gives you personalized daily guidance to make it easier.
Here’s how RISE helps:
Learn why the RISE app is worth a try here.
Here’s how AutoSleep and RISE compare on additional features to track and improve your sleep.
Here’s how AutoSleep and RISE compare on cost.
AutoSleep costs a one-off payment of $7.99. Plus, there’s the cost of an Apple Watch to access all the features.
There isn’t a free trial.
RISE costs $69.99 a year, which works out at $5.83 a month.
There’s a seven-day free trial.
During this trial, you can:
Follow RISE’s personalized sleep hygiene reminders, recommended wake and bedtimes, and relaxing content for a week to see how much of a difference it could make to your sleep and energy.
We’ve found 80% of RISE users feel more energy within five days!
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Here’s what RISE users have to say about RISE compared to other sleep tracker apps:
And here’s what RISE users say about using RISE and AutoSleep together:
Beyond reviews, both Sleep Foundation and Sleep Doctor named RISE one of their best sleep apps for 2024. And Apple nominated RISE for a design award and named it an Editor’s Choice app.
RISE is best if you want to know how much sleep you personally need and get daily guidance based on your own biology to help you lower your sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm. Improving these metrics is proven to benefit your energy levels, mood, productivity, and mental and physical health.
You can do all this with the RISE app alone or pair RISE with a wearable if you have one.
AutoSleep works well if you want a basic overview of your sleep duration and to see health metrics pulled from your Apple Watch.
RISE can pull data from AutoSleep if you’d like to pair the two apps together.
RISE makes it easy to improve your sleep and daily energy to reach your potential
RISE makes it easy to improve your sleep and daily energy to reach your potential
