Mindfulness App Review

A keystone teaching of mindfulness is to avoid comparison. For example, to be mindful is to recognize when you’re comparing your progress to your classmate’s progress, and instead of dwelling on feelings of inadequacy, you muster up the courage to remind yourself that you are a unique individual with life experiences that are different but equally valid to those of your classmate’s. But in order for you to flex that mindfulness muscle when you’re in the heat of such negative comparison, you have to incorporate the practice of mindfulness into your daily routine. 

Wondering how you’re going to fit a mindfulness practice into your busy schedule? Don’t worry-- there’s an app for that.

We’ve established that comparison is bad/not mindful when you are comparing yourself to others, but what about when you are comparing one mindfulness app to another? Too meta? Pure inception? We won’t answer those questions for you, but we invite you to ponder them while you meditate with the assistance of your new mindfulness app of choice. 

Calm

Calm has some notable free features like audiovisual naturescapes and the Breathe Bubble. The naturescapes virtually transport you to a  beach, a mountain valley, or a tropical rainforest, which creates a relaxing environment for your meditation. The Breathe Bubble, on the other hand, assists your breathwork practice, helping you keep a steady pace of inhalation and exhalation. There’s empirical support that suggests that this sort of mindful breathing reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.¹

The naturescapes and the Breathe Bubble are permanently free, but both features lack reminders that keep you from trailing off in thought. For this reason, the free features of Calm are good for experienced meditators, but they do not provide enough supportive guidance for mindfulness newbies, nor for those mindfulness buffs who want to go back to the basics to refine their practice. 

Calm has a 7-day free trial that unlocks all of the app’s guided meditation series; however, after your week of free Calm-induced bliss, they ask for the steep price of $69.99 per year for continued access to their premium features. This is where we inhale, exhale, and move onto the next app. 

10% Happier

We included 10% Happier in our review because the app not only comes with the promise of making you 10% happier in the name, but it has also been featured and praised in well-respected publications like The Washington Post and The New York Times . 

When I downloaded the app to try it out for the review, it wouldn’t let me get started with my 7-day free trial until I agreed to pay an even steeper $99.99 per year following the trial. My goal for starting my mindfulness practice was to reduce the anxiety I feel from my heavy course load, not to reduce the anxiety I would feel from making such an expensive, non-tangible purchase-- so I proceeded to mindfully offload the app and continue to the next one.

Headspace

Enter Headspace, the brainchild of a former monk, Andy Puddicombe. The free features of Headspace are admittedly limited. The app has a permanently free meditation called Breathe, which is very similar to Calm’s Breathe Bubble, except Andy Puddicombe’s voice encourages you to return to the present moment when your thoughts start to trail off from your practice. The added guidance helps you get the most out of your practice on those days when you’re having a hard time quieting your mind. 

Headspace also has a handful of free animated explanations of concepts that will improve your meditation practice (see Visualization and Resting Awareness) and others that provide more immediate help in your daily life (see Skillful Compassion and Feeling Overwhelmed). You can find these short clips on the explore page. This is like the Google of Headspace because you can type in keywords that direct you to a quick meditation, guided course series, and/or tidbits of animated advice aimed to serve you best in that moment. To get the most out of this app, though, you have to peep the premium features. 

Unlike the other apps, Headspace has a student discount for $9.99 per year. Rejoice! That is 3 cents a day to dance the meditation mambo and cultivate the magic of mindfulness!

Recap

If you want free mindfulness and you’re already a pro (or if you don’t mind feeling lost in the sauce while you adjust to your new mindfulness practice), we recommend Calm. If you want a little more guidance to make the most out of the minutes you spend getting mindful, choose Headspace. 

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1. Lalande, L. Bambling, M., King, R., & Lowe, R. (2012). Breathwork: An additional treatment option for depression and anxiety? Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 42 (2), 113-119.