Snore Timeline vs BetterSleep: Sleep Recorder, Sounds, Privacy

At a glance

Price

Snore Timeline is free. It has no subscription, no in-app purchases and no premium tier, so every feature on this page ships in the same download.

On the App Store, BetterSleep is labeled free with in-app purchases. Its help center puts it more plainly: the app is no longer free. In 2025 the developer switched from a freemium model to a premium subscription, and new users now start with a free trial that opens the whole library. Let a trial or subscription lapse and you keep a very limited selection of content.

The US listing shows ten in-app purchase entries, named BetterSleep Premium and BetterSleep Premium-Tracker and priced from $11.99 to $99.99. The help center lists monthly plans, annual plans and a Lifetime Membership, but the listing doesn’t match prices to terms, so I quote the range. I compared every snore app’s pricing on snoring apps with no subscription.

Privacy

Every App Store listing has a privacy label. The developer fills it in, and Apple sorts the answers into three tiers: data used to track you, data linked to you, and data not linked to you. Apple’s developer guide makes each developer responsible for keeping those answers accurate and up to date. In Apple’s definition, tracking means linking data from an app with third-party data for targeted advertising or advertising measurement, or sharing it with a data broker.

BetterSleep puts four categories under Data Used to Track You, namely Purchases, Identifiers, Usage Data and Other Data, which is the longest tracking list across the 14 sleep and snore apps I compared. Three apps (SnoreLab, Sleep Cycle, ShutEye) declare one tracking category each. The other ten declare none.

Developer’s Advertising or Marketing, Analytics, Product Personalization and App Functionality are the four declared purposes for its linked data. Location is Precise Location, declared for App Functionality and not linked to you. The label lists neither Audio Data nor Health & Fitness. The help center matches that for the recorder: it says recordings stay on your device and that BetterSleep doesn’t collect or sell them.

Snore Timeline declares Data Not Collected. It has no account, no server and no analytics SDK, so recordings and results stay on your phone. Of the 14 apps I checked, four declare Data Not Collected, namely Snore Timeline, AutoSnore, SnoreClock and Somnio+, and Snore Timeline is the one among those four with no purchases of any kind. The full side-by-side is on 14 App Store privacy labels compared.

Accounts

BetterSleep offers an account through email and password, Google, Facebook or Apple, and its help page describes it as the way to restore your subscription, saved mixes, favorites and sleep data, including your summary and sleep phases, on any device. Snore Timeline has no account to create.

Sleep recorder vs snore timeline

BetterSleep’s Sleep Recorder

The App Store listing pitches it as a way to record the sounds you make in your sleep and listen back when you wake, with BetterSleep picking out snoring, movement, sleep talk and other common night sounds. The help page adds the mechanics. The recorder uses the phone microphone, sorts each noise into a category, and shows clips in the Insights/Journal tab the next morning, each one running 5 to 7 seconds. You can recategorize or delete a clip from its menu. The tracker also proposes personalized tips and suggestions to improve your sleep, per its help center.

The same help page lists some limits. You need at least 30 minutes of tracking for an analysis. Recordings last 20 days, then delete themselves, and deleting the app deletes them too. Clips show a lock icon until you subscribe, because playback and the sleep score are Premium. The app’s own sounds can get in the way as well, since the help page says the recorder won’t properly detect sleep sounds until your content has finished playing.

Snore Timeline

Snore Timeline records all night, through the phone mic or through AirPods and other Bluetooth mics, and analyzes every sound as it happens. Snores, gasps, coughs, sleep talking and breathing each get a label and a place on a timeline you can zoom from 1-second bars out to hourly ticks. Tap a point to hear that moment.

Snores that come in a row form an episode, and a 30-second gap closes it. Each episode shows its duration, snore count, peak and average dB, a rhythm class and a plain-English summary. Details are in Timeline & Playback and Episodes & Events, and the sleep talking recorder guide covers setup for catching quiet speech.

Each night gets a sleep score from 0 to 100, and snoring and breathing disruptions count against it. To test a remedy, you tag nights with any of 23 built-in sleep factors, such as Mouth Guard, Nasal Strips or Slept on Side, or with ones you create. Once you have 5 recorded nights, the app compares them and ranks what helped. Each factor gets a result after 3 recorded nights with it and 3 without. The test a remedy guide walks through it.

Sleep stages from the microphone

Both apps estimate sleep stages from what the phone hears, with no wearable needed. BetterSleep’s help center says its tracker classifies the sounds it records, such as snoring patterns, and combines them with sleep science models to estimate light, deep and REM sleep. It notes that no device without body sensors can measure stages with absolute accuracy. If you track sleep with an Apple Watch, BetterSleep can read that sleep data through Apple Health.

Snore Timeline estimates Awake, Light, Deep and REM from the audio alone. On the nightly summary, the snoring chart switches between loudness and snores per minute, and a band of your sleep stages runs underneath it, so you can see whether your snoring clusters in light, deep or REM sleep. Tap a moment on the hypnogram and the snoring chart marks the same time.

If you wear something, stage data from Apple Watch, Oura, Garmin, Whoop and Ultrahuman comes in through Apple Health. When a night has data from more than one source, each source keeps its own stage timeline, so you can compare them side by side. Apple Watch & Health covers what each wearable adds.

Sounds, stories, and alarms

Sound is where BetterSleep puts its effort. Its App Store listing counts more than 300 sleep sounds and music tracks, including nature sounds, white noise, ASMR, binaural beats and Solfeggio frequencies, plus more than 250 meditations and hypnosis sessions and more than 100 SleepTales in genres from fairy tales to sci-fi. The help center adds a mixer with over 500 sounds and melodies, breathing exercises and bedtime reminders, and the listing covers timers, playlists, and Smart Mix for gapless loops. It holds 4.7 stars from 391K ratings on the US App Store and an Editors’ Choice badge.

My app has no sound library, stories or meditations. It records the night and tells you what it heard. BetterSleep is the one to open if you need help falling asleep. The one sound Snore Timeline makes during the night is the Snore Nudge tone, which gets one step louder each time a nudge doesn’t help. You can swap it for a silent iPhone vibration or a wrist tap, or use any mix of the three.

Both have a smart alarm. BetterSleep’s wakes you in the lightest sleep phase within a wake-up window you pick when you start the tracker. Snore Timeline’s Smart Wake Up Alarm wakes you in light sleep within a 15, 30 or 45 minute window you set, with the option of a silent tap on Apple Watch.

Breathing pauses

Frequent loud snoring, breathing that starts and stops, and gasping for air all appear on the NHLBI’s list of sleep apnea symptoms, and its advice is to talk to your healthcare provider, noting that you may need a sleep study.

Snore Timeline flags a breathing disruption only after it hears at least a minute of audible breathing, then 10 or more seconds of silence, then a recovery sound that ends it, like a loud snore, a gasp or a breath. Each flag lands on the timeline, and you can play back the gap and the recovery. The phone goes 1 to 2 feet from your head so the mic can hear breathing. The flag is audio analysis, it hasn’t been clinically validated, and it does not diagnose sleep apnea. What it gives you is something concrete to play for a doctor. Breathing Disruptions explains the rules, and snoring apps that detect breathing pauses compares the options.

BetterSleep’s sleep score gives 30% of its weight to sleep interruptions, meaning noise and disturbances the tracker detects, and 4.5% to heavy snoring, per its help center.

Watch, Android, export

Apple Watch

An Apple Watch app comes bundled with Snore Timeline on iPhone. From your wrist you can stop a recording, get a Snore Nudge tap when you snore or a Smart Wake Up Alarm tap in the morning, and see live heart rate and HRV while you record. Heart rate, HRV, respiratory rate, blood oxygen and wrist temperature appear next to your snoring. Recordings start on the iPhone, though. The wrist taps also work on Garmin, Fitbit, Huawei and other watches that show iPhone notifications. Data from Apple Watch, Oura, Garmin, Whoop and Ultrahuman arrives through Apple Health to feed the sleep score, recovery score and hypnogram. See Apple Watch & Health.

Apple Watch is on BetterSleep’s list of supported devices, along with Mac, Apple TV and Apple Vision. According to its help page, the Watch app mainly works as a mixer, controller and remote for the phone app.

Android

Both apps run on Android. BetterSleep’s recorder works on Android and iOS phones and on iPads, its help page says, though not yet on Android tablets. Snore Timeline’s Android app records from the phone mic, keeps the same timeline, episodes, breathing disruption flags and sleep stages, and writes sleep sessions to Health Connect, where it also reads a watch or ring’s stages and vitals. Its Watch app stays iOS only.

Export

BetterSleep’s help page says sleep recordings can’t be downloaded to share for now. Snore Timeline exports a ZIP of CSV files (nightly summary, sleep stages, detected events, watch biometrics) plus episode clips or the full-night recording, to the Files app on iPhone or to Downloads on Android. You can send any of it to a doctor or partner. Export & Sharing has the steps.

Which one to pick

Pick BetterSleep if

• Falling asleep is the problem, and you want sounds, stories, meditations and hypnosis to help, with a mixer to build your own blend.
• You want to play sleep sounds from an Apple Watch, Mac or Apple TV as well as your phone.
• You put weight on a long track record of user reviews, and BetterSleep has 391,000 ratings at 4.7 and an Editors’ Choice badge.

Pick Snore Timeline if

• You want no subscription, no in-app purchases and an App Store label that reads Data Not Collected. BetterSleep declares four categories of data used to track you.
• You want to replay any moment of the night, and export CSV files and the full-night audio, at no cost. BetterSleep’s clips run 5 to 7 seconds, need Premium to play, and can’t be downloaded [3].
• You want a nightly sleep score without paying. BetterSleep’s sleep score is part of Premium [3].
• You wear an Apple Watch and want live heart rate and HRV, a tap when you snore, a silent alarm tap and a stop button on it. BetterSleep’s help center describes its Watch app as mainly a mixer, controller and remote [7].

BetterSleep’s 391,000 ratings dwarf Snore Timeline’s 281. Snore Timeline reached the App Store in September 2025, BetterSleep in 2009 under its old name, Relax Melodies, and I build Snore Timeline on my own with no outside funding and no marketing budget.

Or run both. Set a timer on BetterSleep’s sounds so they stop once you’re asleep, because its own help page warns that playing audio disrupts sound detection, and let Snore Timeline record the rest of the night.

Frequently asked questions