By AppsHive Team
Awareness regarding meditation has grown in recent years. It certainly feels like a revolution; a large part of society looks forward to mental peace and mindfulness. It’s only good that these many people are eager to be more aware of and about themselves.
Headspace and Calm are leading mindfulness and meditation apps that most people use. However, if you are about to dive into this peaceful journey, this article will help you choose the best for you.
Before jumping into Calm vs Headspace, let’s understand both apps individually and then see how they pit against each other.
Meet Calm
On your quest to find the best meditation apps for beginners, you will find both Calm and Headspace undoubtedly beginner-friendly.
The Calm app has a soothing user interface of landscape visuals filled with birds, oceans and nature sounds. Calm is also one of the best yoga apps in app stores. In addition, the exclusivity provided in the app for various topics makes it easier for the user to think about what they want to focus on.
The free content may be hard for the initial users to find, but there is some. So, try to find it if you want to try the app content first, rather than taking the subscription right away.
Pros:
- Push-Notifications to remind you about your daily practice
- Engaging and easy-to-use kids meditation content for 3-17-year-olds.
- Listen to mindfulness music and sleep. Sleep-timer will automatically turn off the music.
- Everyday check-in helps you keep track of your gratefulness and mood. Swift navigation throughout the app
- The personalization feature for the in-app experience works well.
- Soothing landscape views and sounds
- Accessible guided and un-guided meditations
- App offers six (English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, French, and Korean) languages
- Celebrity narrated stories (several, not all)
- Masterclasses tutored by the field experts
- 3-minute to 25-minute guided meditations for beginners to intermediate-level individuals.
- Regular app updates
- Family plan at $99.99 annually for 6 members
Cons:
- No feature that allows you to sort the meditations according to the theme or length
- Monthly plan is expensive compared to Headspace (costs the same annually)
- Hard-to-find free content. Sometimes users feel like there isn’t any free content
- Good amount of content is based on people who already understand meditation to a certain extent.
- Celebrity inclusion in meditation may feel a bit too promotional for meditation.
- Kids-Meditation, Yoga, and Musical content are bundled only in the premium plan.
- On failing to unsubscribe, you'll be charged since the payment details are added while redeeming the free trial.
- Unresponsive and hard to connect customer service
- Shortest daily meditations in free content are around 10 minutes. Some users may find it too lengthy.
- Sleep stories are too long
Cost of Calm
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Meet Headspace
Started in 2010, the app is now old enough to understand usage patterns. The user interface gives away how the app knows the structure required to help individuals with their meditations.
There is no free plan in Headspace, but you can take a 7-day free trial and see if you like the app. So what else is good about Headspace? Let’s see.
Pros:
- Push-Notifications to remind you about your daily practice
- Easy navigation throughout the app
- Well-tailored Meditations for kids aged between 5-15
- Quick meditations available for short time meditation requirements
- Gathered stats help in following up with your meditation progress
- Sort and search the meditations with themes and length
- Beginner friendly meditation introduction and exercises
- Free trial
- Discount on family and student plans
- Celebrity inclusion is subtle and doesn’t distract the user from the lesson
Cons:
- Most content is for beginners. Experienced meditators may not benefit as much. Asks for credit card details when signing up for a free trial and charges money if you forget to unsubscribe
- Free content excluding the free trial is so limited that it is almost negligible
- Student and Family plans can be bought only through the website.
Cost of Headspace
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Which is the Best Meditation App for Beginners?
Headspace provides better and less intimidating meditation sessions for beginners. But, on the other hand, it doesn’t provide free content. Hence, you would have to either try the Headspace content in a free trial and buy it or try the free content from Calm first.
Calm vs Headspace for Sleep
Headspace and Calm provide dedicated sections for Sleep. The sleeping area in Calm is more like promotional content for meditation, whereas the Headspace sleep department focuses on the user's sleep quality and calming the mind.
Calm App vs Headspace for Anxiety
In the Calm app, if you go to Calm Daily, you will find 10-minute meditations to help you work on your anxiety, stress, and other mental clutter. Quick and Easy meditations are also present in the Calm app.
On the other hand, Headspace provides 7 meditations for anxiety and explains how the meditations can help individuals cultivate new perspectives on fear and bring awareness back to the self.
Headspace vs Calm App: Table of Comparison
We have discussed what the users get from the apps and how the apps help the users in their meditation and mindfulness journey. Let’s note everything in a table so we leave no pages unturned.
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Headspace vs. Calm: Which is Better?
While Headspace is better for beginners, which can connect to a larger audience, the Calm app helps intermediate and expert meditators to build their skills further. Apart from that, there are little things like the Calm app having a bit of gimmicky celeb content, which can be either good or bad depending on the user liking it or otherwise.
Both apps eventually help to build mindfulness. Hence it is advisable to try out both and decide for yourself.