No affiliate links. No paid placements. Just an honest breakdown of the major wellbeing apps and what each actually does well — and less well.
Disclosure upfront: we made Positivity Pulse, so we are not a neutral party. We have tried to be as honest as possible about what each app does well. We would rather you use an app that actually helps you than use ours because we oversold it.
Before comparing apps, it is worth being clear about what we are optimising for. A genuinely good wellbeing app should:
With that framework, here are the main players:
Price: Free trial, then ~£42/year (Calm Premium)
Focus: Meditation, sleep stories, breathing exercises
Calm is genuinely good at what it does. The guided meditations are high quality, the sleep stories are effective for many people, and the interface is peaceful. If you have insomnia or struggle with formal meditation, Calm is worth trying.
The gap: Calm is purely about mindfulness practice. It does nothing for your news consumption habits, social wellbeing, or gratitude practice. It is also relatively expensive for what amounts to an audio library. If you are not consistently using it, the annual fee is poor value.
Best for: People with a specific sleep problem or who want structured meditation guidance.
Price: Free trial, then ~£55/year
Focus: Meditation, mindfulness, sleep
Very similar to Calm in scope. Headspace has arguably better guided meditation content for beginners, with a more structured course-based approach. The animation style makes the concepts more accessible.
The gap: Same fundamental limitation as Calm — it addresses one dimension of mental wellbeing (mindfulness practice) while leaving others (news consumption, gratitude, community, emotional awareness) entirely untouched. Even more expensive than Calm for very similar content.
Best for: Mindfulness beginners who want a structured course rather than a library.
Price: Free with premium at ~£28/year
Focus: Mood tracking, activity logging
Daylio is probably the best pure mood tracker on the market. The interface is clean, the activity logging is flexible, and the statistics are genuinely useful after a few months of consistent use. It is also reasonably priced.
The gap: Daylio tells you how you feel across time — it does not help you feel better. There is no content, no community, no news, no gratitude practice. You build a picture of your emotional patterns and then... you are on your own to do something about them.
Best for: People who specifically want detailed mood analytics and already have a separate wellbeing practice.
Price: Freemium
Focus: Gratitude journalling, positivity practice
Happier pioneered the "share small moments" format that inspired community win features in apps like ours. It is somewhat dated in design and the community is smaller than it once was, but the core concept — logging and sharing small positive moments — remains valid.
Best for: People who specifically want a social gratitude practice on an established platform.
Price: Free core, Pulse+ optional
Focus: Positive news + mood tracking + gratitude + community + breathing
We built Positivity Pulse to address a gap none of the above fills: the connection between what you consume and how you feel. The premise is that your news diet matters as much to your mental health as your meditation practice — and that building a daily habit around both is more sustainable than either alone.
What Positivity Pulse does well: integrating multiple wellbeing tools into a single daily routine, supporting 7 languages, building a community of people sharing genuine small wins, and keeping the core completely free.
Where we are still building: meditation guidance (Calm does this better), detailed mood analytics (Daylio is more sophisticated), and breadth of content (we feature 3 stories per day rather than a large archive).
Best for: People who want a broader daily wellbeing practice that includes positive news, community, and mood tracking — especially those in non-English speaking communities.
You do not need to pick one. Most of these apps do different things. But if you can only choose one:
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