Snore Timeline vs Sleep Cycle: Snoring, Alarms and Privacy

At a glance

Price

Snore Timeline has no subscription. No premium tier either, and nothing to buy inside the app. Every feature in this article works from your first night.

Sleep Cycle is free to download. Its App Store listing shows ten in-app purchase entries for Premium, priced from $2.99 to $57.99 in the US store, and it doesn't say which price goes with which billing period. Its feature pages offer a 60-day trial.

What Sleep Cycle's free plan covers

Sleep Cycle's help center splits the two plans in its Freemium vs. Premium article, last edited in June 2026. The free side lists the smart alarm, sleep analysis, a nightly sleep graph, a selection of alarm sounds, Sleep Goal, Apple Health integration on iOS, Health Connect on Android, database export and limited Sleep Aid. Premium gets snore detection, sound detection, Who's Snoring?, coughing, sleep notes, respiratory rate and heart rate tracking on iOS, online backup, weekly reports and Apple Watch extras.

The App Store listing tells it another way and counts data export and Apple Health sync as Premium tools, so the two Sleep Cycle sources disagree on those two items. Check inside the app before you pay for either.

Privacy

Every App Store listing has a privacy label. The developer fills it in, covering what the app and its partners collect and whether that data is tied to your identity. Apple's App Privacy Details page defines tracking as linking an app's data with third-party data for targeted ads or ad measurement, or sharing it with a data broker. The same page makes developers responsible for keeping their answers accurate. So a label is what a developer says it collects. It doesn't say where the data goes.

On that date, the two labels read like this.

Tap the App Privacy heading on Sleep Cycle's listing and each category breaks down into items and purposes. Under Developer's Advertising or Marketing, Sleep Cycle lists Coarse Location, Email Address, Name, User ID and Device ID, and under Analytics it lists Health, Purchase History, Coarse Location, Email Address, Name, User ID, Product Interaction and Crash Data. Audio Data isn't there, and neither is User Content, so Sleep Cycle doesn't declare that it collects your recordings.

What Sleep Cycle's privacy notice allows with sleep data

Sleep Cycle's privacy notice says health data stays on your device by default, and that the company can't reach it unless you consent. With your consent, the notice lets it do more:

• Backup. Online backup, a Premium feature, stores all the data in the app on Google Cloud servers. It stays there until you withdraw consent or end the subscription, and for up to a year after you unsubscribe.
• Product development. If you choose to help improve the app, your health data goes, pseudonymised under a hashed ID, to Amplitude and its host Amazon Web Services. It's kept until you withdraw consent or up to three years from collection, whichever is longer.
• Aggregated insights. De-identified or aggregated data, health data included, can appear in public reports, go to partners under agreement, and feed the community benchmarks Premium users see. If you withdraw, data already collected can stay in pseudonymised form for statistical and scientific use.
• Research. If you join a research study, Sleep Cycle shares your personal data with the investigator, who then controls it. Withdrawing stops new sharing but doesn't undo past transfers.

Customer support may also ask for health data to solve a problem, with your consent, and deletes or anonymises it once the ticket closes. Snore Timeline has no account or server to back up to, so recordings stay on your phone until you export them. For the wider field, see my 14-app label comparison.

Smart alarm vs smart alarm

Sleep Cycle made its name with the alarm, and its App Store subtitle calls it an alarm clock and tracking app. Its site says the Smart Alarm is on the free plan. The app follows your sleep by sound or with the accelerometer, then rings at a lighter stage inside your wake-up window. The Smart Alarm page puts that window at 10 to 30 minutes. On Google Play it's up to 90 minutes, and that listing also mentions snoozing by shaking or double-tapping the phone. Per the Smart Alarm page, custom alarm sounds need Premium, and so does Apple Watch or Android watch integration.

Snore Timeline's Smart Wake Up Alarm works the same way inside a snore recorder. Pick a 15, 30 or 45 minute window. The app follows its live sleep stage estimate along with your movement and sounds, and it rings when you surface, or at your set time if that light moment never comes. The alarm fades in. One action silences it and ends the night's recording. With an Apple Watch, wrist taps alone can wake you, and your partner sleeps on. On iPhone you can also wake up to your own sound for free: import an audio file or record one, then trim it to a loop. You'll need Sleep Insights turned on for the smart window. Setup is in the Smart Wake Up Alarm guide.

If the alarm is the main reason you want an app, Sleep Cycle gives you a bigger built-in sound library and a longer track record behind it. Snore Timeline's alarm arrives with the night's recording, stages and snoring already charted.

Snore tracking depth

According to its Nighttime Sounds page, Sleep Cycle can capture noises like snoring and sleep talking and track them over time, and it measures how often and how hard you snore. Who's Snoring? works out whether it was you or your partner. You listen back in the morning. Per the help center, snore detection and sound detection are Premium.

Snore Timeline records the whole night, through the phone microphone or through AirPods and other Bluetooth mics. Each sound is analyzed as it happens, with no periodic sampling. It picks up snores, gasps, coughs, sleep talking and breathing. Snores get grouped into episodes (a 30-second gap closes one), and each episode shows duration, snore count, peak and average dB, a rhythm class and a plain-English summary. The timeline zooms from 1-second detail out to a 1-hour overview. Tap any point to play enhanced audio. Episodes and events covers the grouping.

Snore Timeline can also act on snoring while it happens. Snore Nudge plays a sound, vibrates the iPhone or taps your wrist when you snore, in any mix you choose, and the sound gets one step louder each time a nudge doesn't help. Wrist taps work on Apple Watch and on Garmin, Fitbit, Huawei and other watches that show iPhone notifications.

For couples, Who's Snoring? is a real edge. Snore Timeline can't tell two sleepers apart, so you sort that out by ear.

Scores and remedies

Both apps score the night. Sleep Cycle's site says its Sleep Score measures duration, sleep stages and interruptions. Snore Timeline's sleep score runs from 0 to 100, and snoring and breathing disruptions count against it.

Both apps let you log what you did before bed. Sleep Cycle's listing pitches sleep notes for seeing how caffeine, stress or exercise affect your rest, and its help center puts sleep notes in Premium. Snore Timeline has 23 built-in sleep factors, such as CPAP, Mouth Guard, Nasal Strips or Slept on Side, and you can add your own. Once you have 5 recorded nights, the app compares tagged nights against untagged ones and ranks what helped. Each factor gets a result after 3 recorded nights with it and 3 without. The test a remedy guide goes step by step.

Sleep stages

Each app estimates sleep stages from the phone. Sleep Cycle's help center says it estimates Awake, Light, Deep and REM mainly from breathing patterns. Snore Timeline waits for a 15-minute baseline, then estimates the same four stages from how regular your breathing is, with no wearable and no Apple Health needed. On the nightly summary, its snoring chart switches between loudness and snores per minute, with a band of your sleep stages drawn underneath, so you can see whether snoring clusters in light, deep or REM sleep. Tap the hypnogram and the snoring chart marks the same moment. If you wear an Apple Watch, Oura, Garmin, Whoop or Ultrahuman, their stages come in through Apple Health too, and each source's timeline stays separate so you can compare them side by side.

Clinics do it differently. According to the NHLBI, clinical sleep studies classify stages with sensors that record eye movements and brain activity, and a full cycle runs 80 to 100 minutes, four to six times a night. Treat stages from either app as estimates.

Breathing pauses and sleep talking

A breathing disruption flag needs three things in a row. First comes at least a minute of audible breathing. Then 10 or more seconds of silence. Then something ends the silence, such as a loud snore, a gasp or a breath. Each flag sits on the timeline with the audio around it. The mic has to hear you breathe, so keep the phone 1 to 2 feet from your head. The full rule is in the breathing disruptions guide.

Sleep Cycle's site says the app tracks your breathing through the night. Its help center puts respiratory rate on iOS under Premium and also names Premium breathing disruption data, which needs a session started from the iPhone so sound tracking runs. Breathing data from either app is not a diagnosis.

Snoring and pauses can matter, though. The Sleep Foundation calls snoring one of the most common symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea, and adds that not everyone who snores has it. Its advice is to see a doctor when snoring happens three or more times a week alongside signs like daytime drowsiness or gasping. Take whatever the app flagged to that appointment.

Sleep talking

Both catch it. Sleep Cycle has a sleep talking recorder and pitches the clips as something fun to share. Snore Timeline marks sleep talking on the timeline so you can play each clip, and an optional loud sound trigger catches the whispers and mumbling the classifier skips.

Watch, Android, export

Apple Watch

Sleep Cycle has an Apple Watch app that can track a night on its own. Its help center says Watch sessions track movement through the watch's accelerometer, so they can't detect snoring, and for that you start the session on the iPhone. Its site puts watch integration in Premium, and the help center's Premium list adds body temperature on Apple Watch 8 or Ultra, automatic start on the watch, and heart rate tracking.

With Snore Timeline's Apple Watch support, heart rate, HRV, respiratory rate, SpO2 and wrist temperature join the night, and the watch taps your wrist when you snore or when the alarm goes off. The bundled Watch app shows live heart rate and HRV as you record, and it can stop a recording, though starting one happens on the iPhone. Apple Health brings in Apple Watch, Oura, Whoop, Garmin and Ultrahuman data. All of it feeds the sleep score, recovery score and hypnogram, at no cost.

Android

You'll find both on Google Play. Sleep Cycle's listing there shows a 4.3 rating from 219K reviews, with Wear OS support and Google Fit integration. Snore Timeline runs on Android with the same detection, timeline, breathing flag and export, and it writes to Health Connect. Its own watch app is iPhone-only, but on Android it imports your watch or ring's sleep stages and vitals through Health Connect.

Export

Snore Timeline exports a CSV report (a nightly summary plus per-episode detail), episode audio clips and full-night audio in one go. They land in the Files app on iPhone and in Downloads on Android. Sleep Cycle's help center shows how to export its database to a CSV file, and says recordings can't be exported all at once: you open each one and share it to yourself. Its App Store listing names data export as a Premium tool, while the help center lists database export on the free plan.

Which one to pick

Pick Sleep Cycle if

• You want your lights to wake you. Sleep Cycle's alarm can bring up a Philips Hue light or a HomeKit scene, both Premium on iOS [22], and Premium also opens a long list of alarm sounds.
• You'd like help falling asleep. Its listing includes sleep stories, soundscapes, guided meditations, sleep programs and an AI sleep coach called Luma.
• Two of you snore, and you want to know who. Who's Snoring? does that, if you pay for Premium.

Pick Snore Timeline if

• You want to hear every snore and replay any moment, with no subscription and nothing to buy. On Sleep Cycle, snore detection and sound detection are Premium [13].
• You want to test remedies without paying. Snore Timeline ranks what helped across 23 built-in sleep factors and your own, while Sleep Cycle's sleep notes are Premium [13].
• You want flagged breathing pauses to play for a doctor, at no cost. Sleep Cycle's breathing disruption data is Premium [12].
• You fall asleep with AirPods in and want them to record. Sleep Cycle's help center says to disconnect Bluetooth devices [14].
• You wear an Apple Watch and want snore nudges, alarm taps and live heart rate and HRV without paying. Sleep Cycle's watch integration is Premium [3], and its Watch sessions don't detect snoring [15].
• You want CSV files, episode clips and the full-night audio in one export. Sleep Cycle shares recordings one at a time [16].
• You forget to press start. A Shortcuts automation can start Snore Timeline at the same time every night, while Sleep Cycle's phone sessions start by hand [24].
• No account and a Data Not Collected label matter to you.

For what other snore apps put behind a paywall, see what each free snoring app locks behind a paywall. SnoreLab gets its own page in Snore Timeline vs SnoreLab.

Frequently asked questions