Evaluating sleep apps and trackers is no easy feat. For one to be worth investing in, you want to make sure it works, that it provides enough useful features, and that it’ll make a real difference in how you feel.
RISE ticks all of those boxes. The app focuses on the sleep and energy metrics that sleep research shows matters when it comes to your health and productivity: sleep debt (the amount of sleep you owe your body) and circadian alignment (how in sync you are with your circadian rhythm, or body clock). And it gives you plenty of tools and personalized guidance to improve them to feel and perform better each day.
Below, we’ll dive into what makes a sleep app or tracker worth it and why RISE fits the bill.
Here’s what to consider when weighing up if a sleep app or tracker is worth it:
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As we’ve said, the metrics that make the biggest difference in your days are sleep debt and circadian alignment. That makes these two metrics very worth tracking and improving!
Low sleep debt and circadian alignment benefit every aspect of your health and wellbeing, including:
Improving one or the other can help you feel and function better, but the real magic happens when you lower your sleep debt and get in circadian alignment together.
Heads-up: You might be wondering where sleep quality and time spent in sleep stages like deep sleep and REM sleep come into this. We’ll cover these in more detail later, but, in short, you only really need to focus on sleep debt and circadian alignment.
Here’s how RISE helps.
Your sleep debt is worked out by comparing how much sleep you get to how much sleep you need — known as your sleep need. Many sleep trackers (like Whoop and AutoSleep) use generic guidelines or self-selected goals to determine your sleep need.
RISE, on the other hand, uses a year’s worth of your phone use behavior and sleep science based algorithms to give you an accurate sleep need number.
This number can vary for everyone. For example, among 1.95 million RISE users aged 24 and up, sleep needs ranged from five hours to 11 hours 30 minutes.
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RISE tracks your sleep duration by one of three methods:
If you forget to sleep with your phone on your mattress or with a wearable, RISE automatically uses tappigraphy to track sleep, so you’ll never lose a night of sleep data.
Sleep debt is then worked out over the course of 14 nights. This more accurately represents how sleep debt affects your energy levels — lingering sleep debt from last week can make you feel tired today.
Some sleep-tracking apps give you long reports, complicated graphs, and mysterious sleep scores based on multiple metrics and a company’s own scoring system.
This can be fun to look at, but their utility ends there. They aren’t tracking your sleep in any scientific or medically relevant way and don’t provide any actionable advice to improve your sleep and energy.
RISE sticks to the science and gives sleep tracking purpose.
You’ll have one sleep debt number to focus on — view it in the app, on a widget on your iPhone home screen, on your iPad, or on your Apple Watch.
Learn how to evaluate the best sleep debt tracker here.
RISE users on iOS 1.202 and above can view their sleep need here and view their sleep debt here.
By knowing the timing of your circadian rhythm, you can see the best times to go to sleep and wake up for you. If followed, this helps you fall asleep, wake up easier, and stay in sync with your circadian rhythm. You’ll also see when your energy levels will rise and fall and your most productive times, so you can optimize your day to match.
RISE is the only sleep tracker that works out your circadian rhythm.
Some sleep trackers provide a readiness or recovery score, but this fixed measure of energy doesn’t take into account how your energy levels fluctuate. And these scores are often based on multiple mysterious metrics, so it’s hard to know how to improve them.
RISE predicts how your energy levels will change across the whole day. The app works out the timing of your circadian rhythm using recent sleep times, your inferred light exposure, and algorithms built on the SAFTE model, which was developed by the US Department of Transportation and the Department of Defense.
You’ll see a visualization of your daily circadian rhythm, showing you when you’ll have peaks and dips in energy across the day and your optimal sleep and wake times.
Getting in sync with these times can boost productivity, energy, performance, and health.
RISE also gives you an Energy Potential score on a scale of zero to 100. This is directly tied to your sleep debt, so you’ll not only have an idea of what your energy levels will be like, you’ll know how you can get more energy (by lowering your sleep debt).
Plus, you’ll get reminders of when to do certain behaviors known as sleep hygiene. These reminders are timed to your personal circadian rhythm each day, making them more effective.
For example, you’ll learn when exactly to have your final coffee or last meal of the day, which will help you keep sleep debt low and stay in sync with your circadian rhythm.
We cover 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.
It’s not worth tracking the amount of time spent in each sleep stage — deep sleep, light sleep, and REM sleep — or sleep quality. Here’s why.
Research suggests the amount of time you spend in different sleep stages doesn’t make a difference to how you feel during the day.
There also aren’t set times for how long any one individual should spend in certain sleep stages. And there’s a lot of variability between people and the amount you personally need can change from night to night.
You also can’t control how your brain moves through sleep stages.
You can focus on getting enough sleep overall. Getting enough sleep for you on a regular sleep schedule (i.e. low sleep debt and circadian alignment) will ensure you’re getting enough of each sleep stage.
Beyond this, research shows sleep trackers aren’t that accurate at tracking time spent in different sleep stages. They can track sleep debt and circadian alignment, though.
There isn’t a set definition for sleep quality, so many sleep trackers often use their own scoring systems based on multiple metrics. Third-party sleep quality scores don’t have any proven relationship to how you feel and function either.
Research shows how you feel about your sleep can make a difference, though — so you can self-rate your sleep quality in the RISE app.
Heads-up: Time spent in sleep stages and sleep quality can’t help diagnose a sleep disorder like insomnia or sleep apnea. Sleep debt can be a useful metric to show sleep loss, but it’s best to speak with a doctor or sleep specialist.
Learn more about sleep tracking here, including why it’s not worth tracking sleep stages or sleep quality.
Sleep debt and circadian alignment reflect other sleep metrics.
The lower your sleep debt and the more in sync you are with your circadian rhythm, the more likely it is that common markers of sleep quality assessed in clinical and research settings — such as sleep latency, sleep efficiency, sleep duration, and the frequency and severity of sleep disturbances — are within optimal ranges, indicating better overall sleep quality.
And getting enough sleep for you overall, at a regular time each night, means you’re more likely to get enough of each sleep stage.
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For a sleep tracker to be worth it, it needs to accurately measure what matters and then help you make a difference in your life. RISE gives you guidance, based on your own biology, to help you lower sleep debt and get in sync with your circadian rhythm, so you feel more energy each day.
Here’s how:
RISE has plenty of features making it great value for money, and — most importantly — each feature helps you improve your sleep debt and circadian alignment in some way.
Other features include:
RISE costs $69.99 for a yearly subscription, which works out at $5.83 a month.
For the cost of a cup of coffee a month you’ll have access to all of RISE’s features to unlock the energy, health, and productivity that comes with lowering your sleep debt and syncing up with your circadian rhythm.
That’s much cheaper Netflix — which is probably cutting into your sleep time — and some sleep trackers.
You might even save money (no more Starbucks trips every afternoon) or make more money (hello, extra productivity at work).
You don’t need to buy a wearable to make RISE work and there are no hidden costs.
You can also try RISE for free for seven days.
For free, you can find out:
During your free trial week, follow RISE’s personalized 20+ sleep hygiene reminders, suggested sleep and wake times based on your biology, and science-backed relaxing content to see how much more sleep you could get and less exhaustion you could feel.
Some users even fix their sleep schedules during their RISE free trial, making it very worth your time.
RISE delivers value straightaway — 80% of RISE users feel more energy within five days! — but you’ll get even more value from the app when you consistently use it to keep your sleep debt low and stay in sync with your circadian rhythm.
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RISE users agree the app is worth using:
Beyond users, big names agree RISE is a worthwhile app. Sleep Foundation and Sleep Doctor called RISE one of the best sleep apps of 2024, and Apple nominated it for a design award and named it an Editor’s Choice app.
If you’re looking for a sleep tracker that’s worth your time, money, and effort, you want one that tracks and helps you improve the metrics that matter: sleep debt and circadian alignment.
RISE does just that. The app works out your unique sleep need, tracks your sleep debt each night, and predicts the timing of your circadian rhythm each day.
You’ll then get personalized guidance on improving these metrics and plenty of features to help you get better sleep and more energy — two goals that are always worth pursuing.
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
