Review Insights · App Store
Sleep Cycle - Tracker & Sounds
Sleep Cycle AB · 26,073 ratings · ★ 4.7
4.7
★★★★★
26,073 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 36 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"years"
13 negative reviews mention this · 36% of all complaints
★★★★★ "1+ years on this app. I have been using this app for over a year as a tool for better rest. Only to find out it doesn’t check my health profile to determine if I am male or female! The AI just insisted that I am on my period. When I told the AI I am a male, it p…" - Jerrod541
2
"sleep"
12 negative reviews mention this · 33% of all complaints
★★★★★ "1+ years on this app. I have been using this app for over a year as a tool for better rest. Only to find out it doesn’t check my health profile to determine if I am male or female! The AI just insisted that I am on my period. When I told the AI I am a male, it p…" - Jerrod541
3
"been"
9 negative reviews mention this · 25% of all complaints
★★★★★ "1+ years on this app. I have been using this app for over a year as a tool for better rest. Only to find out it doesn’t check my health profile to determine if I am male or female! The AI just insisted that I am on my period. When I told the AI I am a male, it p…" - Jerrod541
4
"subscription"
7 negative reviews mention this · 19% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Subscription. Was useful. Now it’s just looking for subscription money. It also uses notifications to spam advertisements. Thanks. Please reward good apps with an upfront cost even if it’s modest. Stop enabling this behavior whenever it’s feasible" - recksalot
5
"while"
6 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "1+ years on this app. I have been using this app for over a year as a tool for better rest. Only to find out it doesn’t check my health profile to determine if I am male or female! The AI just insisted that I am on my period. When I told the AI I am a male, it p…" - Jerrod541
6
"money"
6 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "1+ years on this app. I have been using this app for over a year as a tool for better rest. Only to find out it doesn’t check my health profile to determine if I am male or female! The AI just insisted that I am on my period. When I told the AI I am a male, it p…" - Jerrod541
7
"since"
6 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Disrespecting early adopters. I paid for the full app when it was new. One time purchase. Since they moved to a monthly model SC has been slowly moving all their features behind a paywall. Extremely disrespectful to the group of people that paid full price for the produ…" - Nicktav4
8
"alarm"
6 negative reviews mention this · 17% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Alarm Failed and Caused Me to Miss My Flight. I’ve been using Sleep Cycle for more than five years, and until now I never had any major issues with it. That’s why what happened this time was especially frustrating. I set a 4:00 AM alarm because I had a 6:00 AM flight to catch. However…" - OOBSKi
9
"year"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "1+ years on this app. I have been using this app for over a year as a tool for better rest. Only to find out it doesn’t check my health profile to determine if I am male or female! The AI just insisted that I am on my period. When I told the AI I am a male, it p…" - Jerrod541
10
"price"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane 45% percent price Increase !. Been using for years, and this year they increase price from 39.99 a year to 57.99, which is absurdly greedy. Strange for something that has no infrastructure or product to store. The features they added are generally useless for most peop…" - bbarr97
11
"features"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Insane 45% percent price Increase !. Been using for years, and this year they increase price from 39.99 a year to 57.99, which is absurdly greedy. Strange for something that has no infrastructure or product to store. The features they added are generally useless for most peop…" - bbarr97
12
"free"
5 negative reviews mention this · 14% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pay to use SCAM. This is not a free app. You must subscribe in order to use it. There is no option to get around it. There is no free version. Do not let the developers fool you on this. There are two free trial options. One is for a seven day free tria…" - JazmynFL
📋 All 36 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
1+ years on this app
I have been using this app for over a year as a tool for better rest. Only to find out it doesn’t check my health profile to determine if I am male or female! The AI just insisted that I am on my period. When I told the AI I am a male, it produced an excuse, that this app can’t always be expected to be 100 percent accurate. While I get some functions like, breath, and maybe heart rate might have some inaccuracy, there is NO excuse for not checking my health profile before giving a MALE advice about sleep based on menstrual cycle! All the information I have gathered during the over 1 year of paying and using this app is now compromised, because I don’t know at what point this app decided I have a period! Complete waste of time and money!!
Accuracy has declined
The app used to be much more accurate. Now it doesn't record awake times or any deep sleep. Not sure why.
все платно
можно только записать сон и посмотреть стадии сна, остальное за подписку
Horrible
Charges way to much
Insane 45% percent price Increase !
Been using for years, and this year they increase price from 39.99 a year to 57.99, which is absurdly greedy. Strange for something that has no infrastructure or product to store. The features they added are generally useless for most people. Time to find someone who isn’t this greedy and lost their minds.
Subscription
Was useful. Now it’s just looking for subscription money. It also uses notifications to spam advertisements. Thanks. Please reward good apps with an upfront cost even if it’s modest. Stop enabling this behavior whenever it’s feasible
Trapped behind paywalls
Limited metrics with almost everything behind a costly paywall
Pay to use SCAM
This is not a free app. You must subscribe in order to use it. There is no option to get around it. There is no free version. Do not let the developers fool you on this. There are two free trial options. One is for a seven day free trial and the other is for a 60 day free trial. You must give your credit card information to sign up. They will harvest your email first though. This is a scam.
Horrible!
This app does not agree with my Apple Watch sleep stats & doesn’t even work half of the time. A total waste of $$!!
Just fed up
Not everyone can afford annual fees. Many who need health apps are senior citizens or others on meager fixed incomes. We need monthly fees & we need them each year & zero being hit up for increases without notice. Many need this app to help with major health conditions & cannot afford getting hit up with the idiotic business as usual take advantage of anyone & everyone business ethics in the app business. We need businesses who actually care about who might need this product.
I downloaded this because down at the bottom where it talks about fees on this ad, there was mention of monthly fees. I download the app & I cannot see any way in set up that does not commit me to an annual fee that will be automatically taken out in a year. Far too often I have set up an app on monthly fees only to be zapped for the one time fee & a huge raise in prices in a year. Too many cannot live with apps only focuses on those who have money to spare! This is incredibly dishonest business tactics. It's the tactics of outright fraud.
I downloaded this because down at the bottom where it talks about fees on this ad, there was mention of monthly fees. I download the app & I cannot see any way in set up that does not commit me to an annual fee that will be automatically taken out in a year. Far too often I have set up an app on monthly fees only to be zapped for the one time fee & a huge raise in prices in a year. Too many cannot live with apps only focuses on those who have money to spare! This is incredibly dishonest business tactics. It's the tactics of outright fraud.
Swindlers
I was one of the early premium payers of the app and now most of it is locked behind another pay wall. Gone back on their promises. Dirty pool, devs… dirty pool.
SCAM. They add fake sounds to recordings
I was excited to try this app but I’ve seen a few posts on Reddit about how the app is picking up strange voices that aren’t the users while sleeping? Then someone made a post with the same exact voice. I then checked my recordings this am and what do you know? I got the same fake recording of me “talking in my sleep.” I’m so turned off by this and I hope this becomes a bigger story. I’m now thinking that they just add in all kinds of sounds like the snoring etc.
DO NOT TRUST THIS APP OR DEVELOPER
DO NOT TRUST THIS APP OR DEVELOPER
Forced video
You can’t even use the app without watching some dumb video first. Just let users setup the app. Next
Worthless
I have been using (and paying for) this app for several years. At points, it helped me track my snoring and sleep...but lately, it is just trash!!! Giving me zero information about my sleep although I remember waking up during my sleep. Don't pay for this app, it is just a MONEY GRAB!! Invest in a Garmin watch!!
Your recordings and data are only yours with a premium subscription
I had this app many years ago and was able to hear nightly recordings and pretty basic sleep analysis for free. I downloaded this app again last night because I have been curious about my snoring with recent weight loss. A disclaimer upon opening the app assured me that recordings and sleep data belong to me, as a user, and no one else. What the app does not disclose is that my data and recordings only belong to me if I pay $58 for membership.
I want my account and my recording deleted immediately. This seems a little… illegal. I’ll have to do further research on state and federal laws on this.
I want my account and my recording deleted immediately. This seems a little… illegal. I’ll have to do further research on state and federal laws on this.
TRASH
Can’t read the data it’s grayed out. Cant talk to a human only a chat bot. HATE IT. Want my money back. Can’t get a hold of anyone to get my I money back. DETEST IT.
Disappointed & Deleted
I was someone who paid for the “lifetime” upgrade when SleepCycle first came out but now to get their ‘new upgrade’ they want you to pay an annual fee 💸 Even with the “discount” they’re offering it feels like we’re getting scammed. Guess that “lifetime” is pretty short in their world? What’s even worse is the data from ‘new features’ like respirations is already included with other apps I use. So why would I pay an additional annual fee for data I already have elsewhere? 🤨 Deleted ❌
Disrespecting early adopters
I paid for the full app when it was new. One time purchase. Since they moved to a monthly model SC has been slowly moving all their features behind a paywall. Extremely disrespectful to the group of people that paid full price for the product when it was new. Shameful company. Uninstalling after many years of use.
Issues yet to be fixed.
I have been using the sleep cycle app for years. And for the most part I enjoy it. However ever since I have been using it for over about 5 years now. Their heart rate monitor has never properly worked which means I cannot record accurate information.
This has been going on for years and they have yet to fix it. You have to hold your finger over the flashlight and camera however when I do this it works and goes around a quarter of the circle saying calibrating and then completely stops.
Again this bug has been here for years. While the price of you suing the app has went up they have yet to fix the heart rate monitors since it’s never properly worked so I have been recording inaccurate info on my sleep
This app is grate if you want an alarm clock but nothing more. I can’t recommend a sleep monitoring app that still does not properly work and record all the info it asks you for. Very disappointing because I need my heart rate info for my doctor. It feels very lazy and with people wanting to cut subscriptions and delete apps I’m questioning more and more if I should consider another app all together that actually does everything it says it will.
I’m amazed how many years this bug has been there and they have refused to fix it.
*2026 update* heart rate monitor on the camera still does not work and they have yet to do anything about the faulty hold your fingers over the camera glitched that keeps stopping mid reading. Still would not recommend seeing as they keep charging but haven’t fixed it after all these years. Very disappointing and why I quit using this app this year again.
This has been going on for years and they have yet to fix it. You have to hold your finger over the flashlight and camera however when I do this it works and goes around a quarter of the circle saying calibrating and then completely stops.
Again this bug has been here for years. While the price of you suing the app has went up they have yet to fix the heart rate monitors since it’s never properly worked so I have been recording inaccurate info on my sleep
This app is grate if you want an alarm clock but nothing more. I can’t recommend a sleep monitoring app that still does not properly work and record all the info it asks you for. Very disappointing because I need my heart rate info for my doctor. It feels very lazy and with people wanting to cut subscriptions and delete apps I’m questioning more and more if I should consider another app all together that actually does everything it says it will.
I’m amazed how many years this bug has been there and they have refused to fix it.
*2026 update* heart rate monitor on the camera still does not work and they have yet to do anything about the faulty hold your fingers over the camera glitched that keeps stopping mid reading. Still would not recommend seeing as they keep charging but haven’t fixed it after all these years. Very disappointing and why I quit using this app this year again.
Spammy trash. Relentless popups and banners
Looks like they hired some mrrn that turned the app from a decent one to spammy trash with relentless popups and banners.
Watching videos shows as sleep
According to this app, watching YouTube for two hours in the middle of the night counts as “sleep.” I was literally holding my phone and actively using it the entire time. If that qualifies as sleep, then this app has no real tracking capability at all.
No free option?
After setting up the app, I cannot do anything anymore since I am bombarded with a nonclosable screen telling me about the free trial for the premium version of the app. I don’t know if I want to try the premium version yet, first I want to try the normal version of the app but that doesn’t seem possible. If the app requires a subscription, that should be made more clear before downloading and setting up, this feels slimy and greatly annoying to me.
Opening “credits” are WAY too long
When you first open the app you’ll think it’s a glitch because the opening demo is SO freaking long. Super annoying. The rest of the app feels glitchy and clunky.
No more price increases!
You all just raised your annual subscription rate by 31% (from $40 to $58). That is completely absurd. Consumers will not stand for that. I just unsubscribed and urge others to do the same!
By the way, I was a longterm premium user with 2,925 nights logged!
By the way, I was a longterm premium user with 2,925 nights logged!
Every Update is Worse Than the Last
I’ve been using sleep cycle for 10+ years since I paid $1.99 for premium and locked in that annual price. It’s gotten worse and worse over the last several years. The new color scheme is terrible and the sleep graph has gotten far less accurate and much harder to interpret in the last 6 months.
Bad
Ahhh help bum bum
Why can’t I contact you
There’s no help
****i received your email to reach out but that’s the problem…. I can’t and I receive no help.
****i received your email to reach out but that’s the problem…. I can’t and I receive no help.
Hate now
Use to love this app, now they took away the snooze setting, like the way you can snooze and made it too easy to disable the alarm, I’ve used it for years. I’m deleting it.
This app lost a 5+ year customer today.
I wish Apple would allow us to decide which applications receive automatic update updates instead of an or nothing method. I bought this application before it was a subscription. Every update has increased how bloated it is, but last night was the final straw. When you were already sleepy and doing the very last thing most people do every night (setting your alarm) the last thing you need is some variable to change and have some woman start talking as soon as you set the alarm. To make it worse, there was no obvious way to change it, disable it or shut her off. I thought I had figured it out by pausing her, but turns out it disabled the alarm altogether, which made me late for work today.
If you wanna make a more complex app that has more feature features fine do it, but when people rely on a basic simple alarm, and you change that, you lose their trust. I’ll go back to the Apple alarm, which is just as effective as this. If it comes to reliability or features for an alarm clock, I’m gonna go for a reliability every time.
How sad it is to have seen this application deviate so far from its original ethos that attracted so many people. Now it’s “let’s see how many people will subscribe to this new feature that we forced down their throats and hid the ability to disable it somewhere in the settings when they’re at their most mentally exhausted.”
If you wanna make a more complex app that has more feature features fine do it, but when people rely on a basic simple alarm, and you change that, you lose their trust. I’ll go back to the Apple alarm, which is just as effective as this. If it comes to reliability or features for an alarm clock, I’m gonna go for a reliability every time.
How sad it is to have seen this application deviate so far from its original ethos that attracted so many people. Now it’s “let’s see how many people will subscribe to this new feature that we forced down their throats and hid the ability to disable it somewhere in the settings when they’re at their most mentally exhausted.”
not free anymore
i used to use this for years, and i wanted to download it again to use it and to my surprise, you're forced to pay for a subscription now :( i remember it being a great app but i don't want to pay for it
Alarm Failed and Caused Me to Miss My Flight
I’ve been using Sleep Cycle for more than five years, and until now I never had any major issues with it. That’s why what happened this time was especially frustrating.
I set a 4:00 AM alarm because I had a 6:00 AM flight to catch. However, I naturally woke up around 5:30 AM and found the app frozen on some kind of transition screen between the sleep tracking interface and the alarm wake-up screen. The alarm never actually rang.
As a result, I missed my flight. Unfortunately, almost all flights at the airport that day were heavily delayed, so I couldn’t find a reasonable alternative connection afterward. Even though I eventually booked another flight for 11 PM, that one was also delayed while I was already waiting at the gate, and it didn’t depart until around 1 AM the next day.
This incident ended up costing me nearly $500 in rebooking fees, transportation, and other unexpected expenses. I understand this may have just been a rare bug, but it had a very serious impact on me. After relying on this app for so many years, this experience was extremely disappointing.
I set a 4:00 AM alarm because I had a 6:00 AM flight to catch. However, I naturally woke up around 5:30 AM and found the app frozen on some kind of transition screen between the sleep tracking interface and the alarm wake-up screen. The alarm never actually rang.
As a result, I missed my flight. Unfortunately, almost all flights at the airport that day were heavily delayed, so I couldn’t find a reasonable alternative connection afterward. Even though I eventually booked another flight for 11 PM, that one was also delayed while I was already waiting at the gate, and it didn’t depart until around 1 AM the next day.
This incident ended up costing me nearly $500 in rebooking fees, transportation, and other unexpected expenses. I understand this may have just been a rare bug, but it had a very serious impact on me. After relying on this app for so many years, this experience was extremely disappointing.
Having doubts
I’ve used this app for 6 years and have always loved it. Finally found an alarm that is quiet and gentle since I’m a light sleeper.
The sleep tracker always seemed to be great and informative , but lately I’m having doubts about the data.
I’ve recently had real difficulties staying asleep. So I’m very aware of the times I wake up for 1-2 hrs every night. However, I’ve noticed the tracker will report I was asleep during some of those periods.
Before this issue, I trusted the app 100% and would have given 5 stars. Now, not so much.
The sleep tracker always seemed to be great and informative , but lately I’m having doubts about the data.
I’ve recently had real difficulties staying asleep. So I’m very aware of the times I wake up for 1-2 hrs every night. However, I’ve noticed the tracker will report I was asleep during some of those periods.
Before this issue, I trusted the app 100% and would have given 5 stars. Now, not so much.
What Happened?!
I’ve been using this for years. I moved into a home with a window AC unit 5 months ago- hot climate so it’s been running every night since then. A few weeks ago, despite no changes at all (I wear an Apple Watch, pay annually, phone is in the same position, AC unit on the same setting in the same window, etc) the tracking suddenly went downhill. My boyfriend works late and always comes to bed while I’m asleep, and it used to recognize that (I liked knowing what time he got home so I don’t wake him too early). Usually I’ll briefly wake up. I also haven’t gotten any recordings at all, which is strange considering he usually turns the TV on. I’ll sometimes wake up to use the bathroom or check my phone (picking it up), and it claims I slept through the night. How does it not notice me picking up and unlocking my phone?! Please fix this!! I used to love this expensive app, but I will cancel if these issues don’t get fixed.
Question about volume
I love this app. As I age my hearing makes it very hard to hear the alarm in this app. Any suggestions, please.
Good app, but they're taking away free features
For a long time after adding new stats, they let you view your respiratory rate, coughing, and ambient noise while you were asleep... but suddenly one day, they took away all of those free stats and put them behind their subscription.
This app started out great when I first used it many years ago, and now I'm willing to abandon it if I find a better, free sleep tracking app.
This app started out great when I first used it many years ago, and now I'm willing to abandon it if I find a better, free sleep tracking app.
Still took payment
I got the app- cut it off because I didn’t really care for it that well / and it still charged my card after i unsubscribed- really want my money back honestly
Sentiment summary
93%
Positive (4-5★)
3%
Neutral (3★)
4%
Negative (1-2★)