The Best Meditation Apps to Find Your Inner Peace
You no longer need to travel to find a master on a mountaintop. Today, you can have your guru in your pocket with meditation and mindfulness apps.
It’s ironic. While our smartphones are our main source of distraction, mobile mindfulness and meditation apps can be very effective in helping us achieve the peace we seek. While they’ve been popping up on the market lately, only a few are worth it. We’ve tested some of the best apps and found the best mindfulness and meditation apps.
What is meditation?
Meditation is a practice that has been around for hundreds of years. It was originally a spiritual and religious practice in Buddhism and Hinduism. Meditation also improves health and well-being, trains breathing, concentration, and mindfulness.
You may be feeling anxious and stressed, or you’re constantly trying to calm yourself down with logic. Meditation, with its various techniques and breathing exercises, can help you break free from your habitual thought patterns.
Best Meditation Apps Compared
1. Headspace
Headspace welcomes users to its Take 10 program, a 10-day guided meditation led by Andy Puddicombe, a former Tibetan monk and current mindfulness advocate and meditation teacher. Andy’s meditations offer simple, 10-minute daily sessions that can help anyone develop the habit of slowing down, using thought-provoking metaphors and simple, easy-to-understand instructions.
The first ten days fly by, and then you’re invited to subscribe for $12.99 per month or $94.99 per year. The good news is, you’re not alone. A fun companion feature lets you sync with your friend on the app and encourage each other towards nirvana.
2. Omvana
The biggest difference with Omvana is that the app allows you to completely personalize your meditation experience. The app offers a mixing console that lets you combine your favorite guided meditations, narrated lessons, and inspiring talks with thousands of high-quality audio recordings and ambient background sounds. You can even upload your own voice and mix it with any of their pre-recorded songs to create your own meditations and share them with others. It’s awesome.
The app also includes a few free introductory meditations. It gives you access to the Omvana store, where you can purchase thousands of different meditation songs, ranging from three minutes to an hour long, across hundreds of themes, for less than $1.80.
3. Calm
Like Headspace, Calm offers a free seven-day guided meditation class, followed by a monthly subscription for $12.99 or an annual subscription for $59.99. Once you sign up as a paid user, you’ll unlock a 21-day wellness plan and a week of bedtime stories to help you sleep better every night, plus over 50 guided meditations and bedtime stories that address anxiety and stress, focus, improve breathing, and more.
Individual sessions last from 2 to 20 minutes, and countless “unguided” sessions immerse the listener in the sounds of rain, jungle birdsong, crackling campfires, and other sounds that make this app ideal for Name:
4. Simple Habit
Simple Habit is a mental health and well-being app designed for people with busy lifestyles, especially those who want to incorporate well-being into their daily lives. The app offers over 2,000 short meditations and audio therapy sessions that you can use to strengthen your mind, gain flexibility, or improve focus. There are even more sessions for specific purposes, such as meditation for children or sounds to help you focus during stressful or emergency situations. One of the best features of the app is that the content is created by psychology and health experts.
Simple Habit is purchased like Habit’sium, which means most features are free, but to unlock certain meditations or sounds, you need a premium subscription ($89.99 per year, $11.99 per month, or $299.99 for a lifetime subscription).
5. Buddhify
Buddhify is designed for those who have always wanted to start meditating but didn’t know where to start. Its colorful rotating indicator asks what you’re doing at the moment and suggests a series of meditations tailored to different situations that you can do right away. Are you trying to sleep? Are you wasting time on the internet? Or are you struggling with difficult emotions? There are options for each of these situations, and with over 80 different meditations, each lasting from 5 to 30 minutes, you’re sure to find one that’s perfect for you.
Buddhify also includes a timer, a stats page to track your progress, and the ability to share your meditation practice with the community. However, unlike the other apps on this list, Buddhify has a one-time payment model ($4.99 on iOS and $2.99 on Android) with no trial period or additional in-app purchases.
6. Insight Timer
Insight Timer is a meditation app full of surprises. The app is ideal for both amateur and professional
, as it offers over 100,000 guided meditations suitable for all levels. This free app offers great flexibility and a variety of features, such as a customizable meditation timer and the ability to track your progress with milestones and statistics. Insight Timer’s interface is modern and easy to use.
One of the most interesting features of Insight Timer is the ability to join a community of meditators. With Insight Timer, you can improve your breathing, relaxation, and sleep, join groups, discuss spiritual topics, read poetry, practice transcendental meditation, and much more.
7. Smiling Mindmindling Mind is an AMindalianMind-profit organization working to make mindfulness meditation accessible to everyone. Their free is a little different than the others on this list because psychologists and meditation educators originally designed it for people as young as seven. Content is categorized by age group, with specific meditations for 7-9, 10-12, 13-15, 16-18, and adults. Even for kids who shy away from the idea of meditation, Smiling Mind is a great place to start if they’re struggling with emotions, anxiety, or insecurity. The tour guide’s funny Australian accent doesn’t help the attendance either.
8. The Mindfulness App
The Mindfulness app offers everything from multi-hour meditations led by influential teachers, ranging from 3 to 30 minutes, personalized one-on-one meditations with presentations and guided calls, stats to track your meditation progress, and daily water reminders if you want. Free time for your meditation practice. The app also has a unique timer that displays a 360-degree circle with slowly moving dots instead of numbers, which helps you stay present.
Like the other apps on this list, there’s a one-month introductory period to learn everything the app has to offer, giving you plenty of time to explore it. If you decide to use it to its fullest after that month, a monthly subscription will cost $9.99, and an annual subscription is just $59.99.
9. Healthy Minds Program
One of the things that sets the Healthy Mind Program apart is its scientifically proven process. Developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the app offers meditations, shorter sessions, and a curriculum to track progress and build long-term skills. It also allows you to reflect on your progress and assess your health and learning levels. Ultimately, Mindfulness focuses on four core concepts of well-being: awareness, connection, understanding, and purpose.
The Mindfulness app is completely free, as part of its mission to help people heal and thrive through mindfulness. Mindfulness Innovations is a nonprofit organization funded by donations.
10. Breathe
Breathe focuses on offering meditations that are adaptable to any weather and time of day. The app lets you incorporate habits into your daily routine. You can answer questions through the My Life Kit to help the app better help you, start listening to special sounds and meditations, or participate in master classes led by experts. Breathe’s suggestions are creative and practical.
You can sign up for a 14-day free trial of Breathe, but after that the app costs $12.99 per month. The cheapest plan is a lifetime subscription for a one-time payment of $170.00.
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Benefits of meditation
Meditation is known to reduce stress in those who practice it. It can also significantly increase self-esteem and inner peace, and is an effective tool for addressing neurological and mental health issues. Here is a list of some of the benefits of meditation:
- Anxiety Management
- Pain Management
- Improved Emotional Health
- Helps with Problem Solving
- Helps with Sleep Quality
- Improved Attention Span
- Focus on the Present Moment
- Reduced Resting Heart Rate
- Stabilizes Blood Pressure
- Reduces Side Effects of ADHD, Cancer, Heart Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Headaches, and Migraines
- Improved Thinking and Cognitive Skills
- Reduced Age-Related Memory Loss
- Helps Develop Self-Esteem and Kindness
- Prevents Addictive Behaviors
- Key Features of a Meditation App
Beginner courses
If you’re new to meditation, look for an app that offers beginner’s courses to avoid getting overwhelmed. Even if you’re inexperienced or haven’t enjoyed previous apps, beginner’s courses will allow you to open the app and learn that simple habits are acquired gradually.
Number and range of meditation options
When choosing the best meditation app, consider the different types of meditation you want to practice. Newcomers to meditation may prefer guided sessions. As you progress, you can try transcendental meditation or loving-kindness meditation. Most importantly, you can meditate at your own pace, according to your preferences.
Clear curriculum
Meditation requires discipline. An app with a clear curriculum, reasonable goals, and incentives can help you meditate for longer periods of time. A well-structured plan will allow you to see results.
Well-designed platform
There’s no reason a meditation app today should be clunky or difficult to use. Meditation is about reaching a higher level of mindfulness without stress. A streamlined interface should reduce stress and distractions, allowing you to focus on the task at hand.
Reasonable trial periods
The easiest way to start meditating is to try out a good app of your choice. A free trial, free version, or free meditation can help you get into the swing of things and see which meditation schedule or program works best for you.
Downloadable meditations
It’s great to have everything you need in one app, whether you’re online or offline. If you can download your meditations through an app, you can set up a meditation studio anywhere in the world, even in the most remote places.
