Feeling stressed or anxious? Consider one of these apps for mindfulness, meditation and calming sounds
Moments of crisis tend to be fraught with anxiety and stress if not panic, and that emotional disturbance can prevent us from staying centered. Whether you’re coping with work stressors, personal hardships or global anxieties, mindfulness apps provide easy-to-follow, useful practices for when you need to simmer down amidst the chaos.
The following mindfulness apps offer meditations, breathing practices, and self-care activities that can help you concentrate and unwind, even on the go. From beginner-friendly choices to advanced meditation courses, there’s something for every experience level and preference here.
The best mindfulness apps for 2025:
The market for mindfulness apps has matured, with additional features such as AI-driven personalization, biometric integration and crisis-specific content. Our 2025 pick is a collection of apps that incorporate tested meditation methods with cutting-edge technology to give you effective stress relief when you need it most.
All apps on this list have been reviewed for usability, quality of content, evidence base, and availability in high-stress situations. Whether you have two minutes or 20, these apps fit your schedule — and your stress level.
How we tested
We tested them over six weeks in order to see how well each app did under different forms of stress with our group of wellness engineers and everyday people. We evaluated criteria such as user interface, type of content, personalization, offline access or guidance during periods of acute stress.
We also factored in pricing, availability of free content, quality of customer support, and user reviews provided by app stores. We tested each app with people at varying levels of meditation experience, from those who had never done a session to those who were advanced practitioners, to make sure our recommendations met a range of user needs.
Special focus was put on crisis-related features such as emergency calm sessions, panic attack support, and accessibility functionality for users who are highly anxious or emotionally distressed.
The best mindfulness apps for 2025:
- Best overall – Calm: From £39.99, Calm.com
- Best for sleep – Soaak: From £23, App.soaak.com
- Best for kids – Buddhify: From £24, Buddhify.com
- Best for daily meditation – Balance: From £67.99, Balanceapp.com
- Best for stress reduction – Headspace: From £9.99, Headspace.com
1 Portal – Escape into Nature
- Best: For connecting with nature
- Why we love it: Beautiful sounds and visuals from nature
- Take note: Higher subscription cost
Its when you always wanted to be in the Hawaii enjoying the waves hitting the beach when you are on a train back home from a day of hard work? Or curled up in front of a log fire in Switzerland? Well, there’s an app to deal with that. Portal is a mindfulness app with a twist.
Rather than guided meditations, the app transports users to far-off locales around the globe, where they relax with some of nature’s most calming sounds. We were down with the intention and ultimately discovered it not only helped us to relax, but lulled us to sleep when the dreaded insomnia struck.
From summer storms to the rustle of palm tree leaves, there’s a sound to cater to everyone – and then when you can also mix Portal’s audio with other apps to add even greater ambience to your audiobooks or podcasts. There’s also a “relax” feature, which you can use for breathing exercises, and a “focus” section, which we found helpful to write down the one thing we wanted to focus on during the day and helped improve productivity.
We were taken to the Scottish highlands and Slovenian alps, among others, since we last tested the app. For anyone looking for something a bit different we’d recommend giving this app a try, as you’re sure to feel like you’re on top of the world in no time.
It is paid for by app, payable about £54 a year or £9.99 a month. Alternatively, you can sign up for life, for £230, which is a fair bit cheaper.
2. Anxiety Solution: Calmer You
If you want to reduce stress or improve your mood, use the Anxiety Solution app. It’s like having a personal cheerleader on your phone, someone who has your back, reminds you to carve out time from the stress of your day and activates your own “aha” moment so you can make the best decisions for you.
The app has more than 70 sessions — covering mindfulness, breathing tools, sleep stories and fitness — and is particularly good for beginners who want a little extra guidance when they first start meditating.
We loved the interactive exercises — the graphics are high quality, telling you, for example, how our heart rate changed as we adjusted our breathing. The 12-minute rebalance with mindfulness was our favorite, offering a full-body scan with an interactive graphic so that we could pinpoint our exact feeling at specific body parts.
But beyond that there’s a 28-session course on the art of practicing exposure therapies, which aims to explain and down-regulate anxiety. This can be used as a course, working through one session at a time, with cognitive behavioural therapy methods to help you address your concerns. A big thumbs up from us.
3. Superhuman
- Best: Best for personal development
- Why we love it: Like a life coach in your pocket Varied motivational sessions
- Take note: Expensive
The Superhuman app is a mindfulness app made for go-getters, which means that it combines motivational mantras with mindfulness exercises. Instead of naming its daily audio guides meditations, it calls them “activations.” The implication is that you’re taking active control of your life, your goals, your emotions, rather than passively absorbing something.
It boasts more than 600 activations to listen to over one’s mid-day walk, winding down for bedtime, and getting ready for work, across 15 categories. The overall sentiment is very much based on personal growth and the law of attraction rather than traditional mental health and we found the app to give us a bit of lift everyday, clarity of mind and the ability to focus more on what we have achieved rather than what we are worried about.
The majority of activations are spoken by the founder of Superhuman, Mimi Bouchard and there is a sense when you use the app that it is as though you have your own life coach whispering in your ear how worthy and wonderful you are, how motivated and ambitious you are and how unique and special your strengths are.
One of the more costly options on this list, the app is available for £25.99 per month or £159.99 per year and is likely to be most useful to those who are already on their way with self development and looking to move onto the proverbial next chapter.
4. Simple Habit
- Best: For habit forming
- Why we love it: Quick sessions for even the busiest of days
- Take note: Expensive premium option
This app is stress relief for the busy individual. Its founder, Yunha Kim, believed that because many of us don’t have the time (or at least don’t think we have the time) to add yet another thing to our to-do list. To help offset this, the app also features audio meditations as short as five minutes that feature high-quality guided meditations that honestly do help lower stress and quiet the mind.
The meditations themselves are paced well and provide good guidance. We discovered that even with a time counting up on the screen, there was a bit more room at the end of each recording for us to get properly comfortable without all the prompting.
The variety of options on the app impressed us, too. When you open it up for the first time, users are asked to select a few initial topics that resonate for them, and there really is something for everyone – from meditations to help you ground yourself after a breakup, to post-argument relaxation, stress-free commutes and pre-date mindfulness so you’re in the zone.
The app’s uncluttered, modern design makes for an easy to use interface and simple feed. Much of the content can be used for free if you choose not to pay for the optional subscription, which is a little steep.
5. Aura: Meditation and Mindfulness
- Best: For variety
- Why we love it: Enormous range of exercises and content options
- Take note: Huge range of content might be overwhelming
Aura considers itself to be the “Spotify of mindfulness” because of just how much content it offers. When you open the app, you’re asked to choose topics that interest you, such as managing anxiety, boosting happiness, sharpening focus and effectively handling anger.
The app has what it describes as the “world’s largest premium library” of meditation sessions, life coaching and even bedtime stories, natural soundscapes and calming music. And though the navigation is relatively simple, there’s so much content available that it can be somewhat overwhelming – we found it difficult at times to figure out where to start our path of mindfulness.
We especially loved the bite-size three-minute guided meditations, which make for a great way to set the right tone first thing each morning. Over time, the app’s AI will fine-tune what it learns about you to deliver the sort of experience that changes according to your individual needs and meditation approach.
The premium membership gives you access to the whole library, mood tracking and offline use so that you can do your practice anywhere at any time.
6. Buddhify
- Best: For kids
- Why we love it: Unique interface & Great option for kids
- Take note: Upfront payment with no trial
Buddhify describes itself as “designed for busy modern living,” and it’s innovative approach really is something quite unique. The app is centred around a novel circular interface—a bright daily wheel, the slices of which mimic your day from wake-up to bedtime.
This colorful wheel design can help users to find the best-suited mindfulness and meditation exercises based on what they are doing or time of day, with a variety of short audio sessions that are ideal for people on the go. We loved the “work break” modules with office-friendly relaxation techniques, and the “commuting” section was a lifesaver during tense travel situations.
Session durations can also vary between only four minutes up to around thirty minutes, there are guided practices specifically catered to sleep problems and high-stress moments. We liked the concept, but in our testing, a number of other apps provided similarly useful flexibility to incorporate mindfulness into busy days.
The app also offers Buddhify Kids – a fun and engaging meditation range for ages 4-10 developed specifically for use by children’s mindfulness specialists. Topics addressed in these sessions include enhancing mood, preparing for sleep, regulating emotions, and cultivating wisdom.
Buddhify is a little different – it’s not a monthly subscription, like most of the others, but a £24 annual subscription. Though this does bring the long-term cost way down, a lack of a free trial means you’ll need to venture into other app’s trial periods before deciding if this purchase is for you.
7. Soaak
- Best: For sleep
- Why we love it: Extensive sound frequency library
- Daily tips and mantras
- Expert-led programmes
- Take note: Soundscapes might not be for everyone
In addition to its sound library, the app offers 21-day wellness programs developed by industry professionals, with programs addressing everything from confidence building to redefining your mindset to kicking bad habits. These friends who shoot their pearls of wisdom thanks to the app across bite size, expert led videos (5 minutes or less) that fit into the busiest of schedules. However, a good number of the frequency-based meditations are up to 20 minutes long, which means a larger chunk of time slots for them to choose from.
If users visit the app, rather than an ocean, they receive a daily mantra, a mindful daily intention and are given access to a gratitude journaling component. The app is also compatible with the Apple Watch, allowing biometric measure syncing so you can keep an eye on your heart rate, sleep, and stress before, during, and after meditations.
Soaak stands out for its mix of traditional mindfulness elements along with health tracking and sound bath therapy (perfect for anyone who’s intrigued by sound bath therapy for stress management).
The app also includes a free trial to test the app and game compatibility. Full access is £23 a month, but a sleep-focused iteration (featuring a sleep frequency and daily mindfulness guidance) is £3.85 a month.
The verdict: Mindfulness apps
They have been thoroughly tested, and you will be hard-pressed to find one that you like the best, as each of the apps on this list are built to serve different needs and purposes. Portal is great for nature enthusiasts who want a deeper relaxation experience, and Anxiety Solution is truly the most robust for anxiety-specific struggles.
Superhuman is best for performance-focused users who want to hone stress responses, and Simple Habit is the most convenient choice for people who are on-the-go or strapped for time and in need if some quick relaxation. Aura has great personalization, and Buddhify is the best for value, with a one-time purchase.
Soaak helps users who enjoy sound therapies and its healing through frequency. The “best” one for you will depend on what you get stressed out about, how much time you may have, and which mindfulness practices resonate most with you.
In times of crisis, we recommend using more than one app, because different strategies are effective depending on the type and severity of stress you are under. Apps work well for many people when combined, with one used for daily practice and another for dealing with sudden stress emergencies.
With any mindfulness app, the secret to success is regular use long before a crisis. With practice, those neural pathways are laid and familiarity is gained so that we can employ these tools when we are most stressed. Begin with free trials to discover what models work for you, and invest in the apps that give you the most bang for your particular buck.
