Sleep tracker

Why regular times matter more than a score

Most adults do best on 7 to 9 hours, and older adults on 7 to 8, according to the ranges from the Sleep Health Foundation and the National Sleep Foundation that we cite in our how much sleep do I need guide. Teenagers are higher, at 8 to 10. Needs differ, so how you feel in the day is part of the test.

What a tracker adds is evidence about your own pattern. If you get up at 6:30 on weekdays and 9:30 at weekends, a diary will show a three hour swing that your memory smooths over. Narrowing that swing is one of the simplest changes a person can make, and it costs nothing.

The same guide lists the everyday signs that you may be short: needing an alarm every day, feeling foggy, nodding off easily in the day, or sleeping much longer on days off. A diary turns those impressions into dates you can count. If you also keep a mood tracker or the Overall day box in the app, you can compare a short night with the day that followed, which is the question most people actually want answered.

Three kinds of sleep tracker, side by side

What each kind does, what it costs in the files we hold, and what it cannot tell you. Prices are only given where we read them; wearables were not priced in our read, so they are marked unknown.

Which kind is best depends on the question. If it is "how do I keep a steadier routine", a diary answers it. If it is "how restless am I", only a sensor can try. Many people use both.

Bedtimes for a 6:30 wake up, worked out

A sleep cycle is commonly taken as about 90 minutes, and people take about 15 minutes to fall asleep. Both are rules of thumb, not measurements of you. With those two numbers, bedtime is the wake time minus the cycles minus 15 minutes. For a 6:30 am alarm, five cycles of sleep (7.5 hours) means being in bed at 10:45 pm, and six cycles (9 hours) means 9:15 pm.

Use the table as a starting point and adjust by how you feel. If you wake mid cycle and feel groggy, shift 15 to 30 minutes either way and watch the pattern in your diary. The sleep calculator does the sums for any time, and how many sleep cycles do you need explains the idea and its limits.

The second table works the same sums for four other wake times, so you can find yours without a calculator. An early start does not change the rule, only the clock: for a 4:30 am start, five cycles means being in bed at 8:45 pm, which is the sort of fact that explains why shift workers struggle to protect sleep.

Worked on 23 October 2026 with 90 minute cycles and 15 minutes to fall asleep, the same rule as our sleep calculator.

Other wake times, same rule:

Bedtimes for other wake times

Bed time = wake time minus the cycles minus 15 minutes to fall asleep. Worked on 23 October 2026 with the function behind the sleep calculator.

Going the other way: if you must go to bed at 11:00 pm, five cycles wake you at 6:45 am and six cycles at 8:15 am. The sleep calculator runs this in both directions.

A week of diary, with the arithmetic

Here is what a real looking week of two boxes, Woke up and Bedtime, turns into. The week is made up to show the sums, it is not anyone's data, and the minutes are worked from the times in the table.

Add the seven nights: 7 h 00, 6 h 15, 7 h 30, 6 h 00, 6 h 30, 8 h 45 and 7 h 45 come to 49 h 45, which is 7 h 07 a night on average, inside the 7 to 9 hour range. That looks fine until you ask about the pattern. Against a target of 7.5 hours (five cycles), the five weekday nights are short by 0.5, 1.25, 0, 1.5 and 1.0 hours, a total of 4.25 hours, and the weekend puts back 1.25 and 0.25 hours, which is 1.5. The net shortfall for the week is 2.75 hours, and it hides inside a healthy looking average.

Now the wake times. Five mornings at 6:30, Saturday at 9:30 and Sunday at 7:00 add up to 2,940 minutes past midnight, which averages to exactly 7:00 am, so the average wake up chart on Home would read a steady looking 7:00. Yet the earliest morning was 6:30 and the latest 9:30, a three hour swing that the average hides. That is why the diary rows matter as much as the chart. The fix is rarely a heroic early night; it is usually choosing one wake time you can keep seven days a week.

An invented week to show the arithmetic. Time in bed is not time asleep: the 15 minutes to fall asleep and any wakes in the night come off it. Total 49 h 45, average 7 h 07, net 2.75 h short of 7.5 hours a night.

A two week sleep diary that tells you something

This works in the free account, or on paper with the printable diary.

1. 1
   Days 1 to 3: just record

   Do not change anything. Log Woke up each morning and Bedtime each night, and add one line in Thoughts of the day about how you feel.

2. 2
   Days 4 to 7: look for the swing

   Open Home and read your average wake time. Note the gap between your earliest and latest morning, as in the worked week above.

3. 3
   Days 8 to 10: set one anchor

   Choose a wake time you can keep seven days a week, and a bedtime that gives you a whole number of cycles before it. Use the table of bedtimes on this page, or the sleep calculator.

4. 4
   Days 11 to 14: add one change

   Move dinner earlier, dim screens, or take daylight in the morning. One change at a time, so you can tell which helped. A habit tracker keeps the change honest.

5. 5
   Day 14: read it back

   Open Tracking and look at sleep beside mood and exercise. Keep what helped, and talk to a doctor if sleep is poor for weeks.

What is in the app today, and what is not

The position on 23 October 2026, from the live app.

A not built row is a fact, not a promise. Sign ups carry the tool you came for, so the count of people who sign up from this page is how we decide what to build first.

What paid sleep trackers charge

Read from the Australian App Store listings on 20 October 2026. The App Store shows up to ten purchase lines per app and the sellers label them in their own way, so this is not every plan, and a line that does not say monthly or yearly is marked unlabelled. Rating counts show how widely each app is used.

We have not read the prices of the last four. Prices change: check the app's own page before you pay.

Sleep sound apps, priced separately

Sleep sounds and white noise are a different product from a tracker, although some trackers bundle them. The same read on 20 October 2026 found two sound apps with very different scale. White Noise Deep Sleep Sounds had 9,480 ratings and purchase lines that included a weekly plan at A$2.99, monthly plans at A$8.99 and A$9.49, and longer Premium lines from A$29.99 to A$62.99, plus a family line at A$87.99. Sleep Sounds White Noise, Rain had 294 ratings, with lines from A$6.49 up to A$92.99 and a yearly plan at A$49.99.

A weekly plan is the one to watch. Fifty two weeks at A$2.99 is A$155.48, which is more than the Premium lines of A$29.99 to A$62.99 for the same app and more than the A$99.99 ShutEye 1-year plan we read. We cannot tell from the listing which Premium line is annual, so treat the comparison as a prompt to read the plan, not as a ranking. The Daily Journal has no sound player and does not plan one unless sign ups ask.

Which kind of person needs which tracker

A way to choose without buying anything first.

What to look for before you pay

A paid sleep app can be worth it if it gives you something you will use every week. Before you pay, check these six things, which come straight from the price table above.

• Monthly or yearly. A monthly plan costs twelve times its price over a year, and the yearly line for the same app is often well below that. Do the multiplication before you tap.
• A trial with a date. Put the trial end date in your calendar the day you start, or as a reminder in Plan.
• What the listing does not say. Sleep Cycle's lines carry no period at all, so we could not work out its yearly cost. If you cannot tell, ask or choose another app.
• What it records. An app that listens to your room asks for the microphone. Read what it keeps and for how long.
• Whether you can take your data out. The Daily Journal lets you download everything. Ask the same of any app you pay.
• Whether you will still use it in a month. The best predictor is whether you already keep a diary. Try two weeks of the free one first.

Sensors, honestly

Consumer sleep sensors estimate stages from movement, sound or heart rate. They are good at showing when you were in bed and roughly when you were restless, and much less certain about the stage of sleep. Treat a sleep score as a conversation starter, not a diagnosis.

If you already own a watch, there is no reason to stop using it. Use it for the extra detail and keep the diary for the thing the watch cannot know: how you felt and what you did that day. We have not tested any watch, so we say nothing about how well one works.

• A diary needs no device and works on any phone
• A sensor adds detail about restlessness, not certainty about stages
• Both are most useful when you look at them over weeks, not one night

Mistakes and myths that waste a tracker

Most of the wasted effort in sleep tracking comes from a handful of habits. These are the ones worth avoiding.

• Judging by one night. One poor night is normal. The pattern over two weeks is the finding.
• Believing everyone needs eight hours. The ranges are 7 to 9 for adults and 7 to 8 for older adults, and how you feel in the day is part of the test.
• Sleeping in to fix a short week. Sleeping much longer on days off is itself a sign of building up debt. Steadier times work better than a weekend catch up, as the worked week above shows.
• Treating the 90 minute cycle as exact. It is a rule of thumb. Move a bedtime by 15 to 30 minutes and see what happens in your diary.
• Changing five things at once. Then you cannot tell which one helped. Add one change every few days.
• Chasing a perfect score. If watching the numbers makes you anxious about sleep, stop looking and talk to a doctor if sleep stays poor.

Free sleep tools you can use today

You do not need an account for most of this. The sleep calculator turns a wake time into bedtimes, or a bedtime into wake times, for four, five or six cycles. The sleep diary printable is a one page paper version for the same two weeks. Pair it with the mood tracker printable if you want to see how sleep and mood move together, or the weekly planner to place a fixed wake time in your week.

If you want the reading behind the numbers, how much sleep do I need gives hours by age, and how many sleep cycles explains the 90 minute rule and where it falls short. Habits that support sleep sit in the habit tracker, and the habits hub holds the guides: how long it takes to build a habit and habit stacking both apply to a fixed bedtime. The journal is the place for the one line about how the day went, and the meditation page covers winding down. Food and water matter too: see the food hub, the meal planner, the calorie counter and the water intake calculator. The full set is on the journal tools page, and the calculators page lists every calculator.

When a tracker is not the answer

A tracker will not fix a sleep disorder. If you snore loudly, stop breathing in your sleep, are always tired despite enough time in bed, or sleep badly for weeks, talk to a doctor. A diary is useful to bring to that appointment.

Our health disclaimer says plainly who these tools are for. They are general information for healthy adults and are not medical advice. Read how we calculate for the rules behind the numbers, and the sources page for where figures come from.

Tools and guides to pair with a sleep tracker

Questions people ask

Related guides, prices and tools

Where these figures come from

• App prices, purchase lines and rating counts: Australian App Store listings for Sleep Cycle, ShutEye, Sleep Tracker - Sleep Recorder, White Noise Deep Sleep Sounds and Sleep Sounds White Noise, Rain, read on 20 October 2026 and saved in our files (evidence/habit-niche-apps-2026-10-20.json). The App Store shows up to ten purchase lines per app, labelled by the seller.
• Paper sleep journals: Amazon AU first page of public search results for sleep journal, read on 21 October 2026 and saved in our marketplace file (median A$15.39, lowest A$8.24, highest A$54.96).
• Sleep needs: Sleep Health Foundation (Australia), sleep needs across the lifespan; National Sleep Foundation (US), recommended sleep durations, as cited on our how much sleep do I need guide.
• The 90 minute cycle and 15 minutes to fall asleep are commonly used rules of thumb, not measurements of any person. Bedtimes, the worked diary week, sleep debt and yearly costs were calculated on 23 October 2026 with the function behind our sleep calculator and simple multiplication of the listed prices.
• The Daily Journal feature list: checked against the live app on 23 October 2026. Wearable and watch device prices were not read, so none are given.

Updated 23 October 2026. A figure that was not read from a file is written as unknown. Prices change: check the supplier's own page before you rely on one. We are not affiliated with any app named here.