Compare meditation apps
Free meditation apps with no subscription: what’s really free
Four well-known meditation apps are completely free: Medito, UCLA Mindful, Healthy Minds Program and Smiling Mind. Insight Timer has a huge free library and an optional paid tier. Calm has a smaller free selection, and Headspace only has a trial. Stille, the app I make, isn’t free: it costs $1.99, once.
The eight apps side by side
| App | Free | Costs money |
|---|---|---|
| Medito | Everything | Nothing; donations are voluntary |
| UCLA Mindful | Everything | Nothing |
| Healthy Minds Program | Everything | Nothing; donations are voluntary |
| Smiling Mind | Everything | Nothing |
| Insight Timer | The timer and over 300,000 tracks | MemberPlus: $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year |
| Calm | 230+ meditations and 8 Sleep Stories | Calm Premium: App Store purchases from $14.99 to $95.99, without saying which is monthly or yearly |
| Headspace | A 7- or 14-day trial | $12.99 a month or $69.99 a year |
| Stille | Nothing | $1.99 once |
Completely free
Medito is made by the Medito Foundation, a non-profit in the Netherlands. There’s no premium tier and there are no ads. You don’t need an account, and you can download sessions for offline use. The foundation runs on donations and grants; by its own count, fewer than 1 percent of users donate. The app is in English.
UCLA Mindful comes from UCLA Health and its Mindful Awareness Research Center. It’s entirely free, and sessions can be downloaded for offline use. UCLA says the basic meditations are available in 19 languages, including Spanish.
Healthy Minds Program is from Healthy Minds Innovations, a non-profit now called Humin. It’s paid for by donors, and there’s well over a year of daily content. You do have to register before you start.
Smiling Mind is run by an Australian charity and has about 700 sessions. It costs nothing, but you have to sign up with an email address. You can use a nickname instead of your real name.
Free, with a paid tier
Insight Timer has by far the biggest free library: more than 300,000 guided meditations, talks and music tracks, plus a plain meditation timer. You can start in guest mode without an account or a card. MemberPlus costs $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year in the US. Paying also lets you download guided tracks for offline use; the timer works offline for everyone.
Calm keeps more than 230 meditations and 8 Sleep Stories free, and the rest needs Calm Premium. Is Calm free? has the details, including prices outside the US.
Headspace has no free tier in the app, only a 7- or 14-day trial that turns into a subscription unless you cancel. See Is Headspace free?
What the privacy labels say
Free or not, it’s worth checking what an app collects. Every App Store page has a privacy label. The developer fills it in, and Apple doesn’t check it. On 30 October 2026 the labels said:
- UCLA Mindful collects a device ID, usage data and diagnostics, none of it linked to you.
- Medito links a user ID to you, and lists identifiers under “Data Used to Track You”.
- Insight Timer, Healthy Minds Program and Smiling Mind link data to you, such as your name or email address, and in some cases health data. None of them lists tracking.
- Calm lists purchases, identifiers and usage data under “Data Used to Track You”.
- Headspace links data to you but doesn’t list tracking.
- Stille’s label says “Data Not Collected”.
So why pay $1.99 for Stille?
If a free app does what you want, use it. Medito and UCLA Mindful are good places to start, especially if you’d like a voice to guide you.
I made Stille for something narrower. You press one button and get ten minutes of quiet sound with no voice, and a gong at the end. There’s no account, and the app collects nothing. Stille costs $1.99, once, so there’s no trial to remember to cancel. If you want courses, sleep stories or to pick your own session length, use one of the free apps above.