Calm app reviews: what is Calm and does it work?

Feeling anxious and overwhelmed with life, work, school, and even relationships is normal. However, whatever level your unrest or anxiety is, it’s vital to find new ways to cope with or manage them. 

An easy way to tackle your emotions and keep your mental health in check is to try meditation. 

Calm is a meditation app that teaches users the life-changing skill of meditation. The app aims to improve mental health and happiness through meditation techniques, calming exercises and breathing sessions. 

There are numerous sponsored Calm app reviews online, which makes it difficult to get an honest and trustworthy opinion of the app. Luckily for you, we’ve compiled an unbiased Calm app review below.

What is Calm?

Calm is a mindfulness app available for download for Android and iOS users. According to Calm’s website, it is the #1 app for Sleep, Meditation and Relaxation. It has had over 100 million downloads and over 1.5 million 5-star reviews since it was developed in 2012.

The Calm app has hundreds of meditation sessions and practices, including sleep stories to help you chill out. From breathing exercises that ease your anxiety to soothing bedtime stories that help you sleep, Calm has helpful meditation techniques and tools for improving health and happiness. 

How does Calm work?

Calm works by providing you with a variety of meditation techniques and tools to help you improve your sleep quality, reduce stress and anxiety and improve your focus. 

Once you sign up, you’re asked a series of questions to help tailor your experience to suit your needs. 

There are lots of different sections and features in the Calm app (which can make it difficult to navigate and choose where you want to start). Below we’ve covered some of the main categories of features.

Meditation

The Meditation category is divided into different sections, including focus, anxiety, stress and relationships. This way, you can address your specific concern when meditating. For instance, you can find lessons on calming flight anxiety and panic attacks in the anxiety category. There is also a helpful beginners section for newbies.

The meditation exercises range between 3 and 60 minutes and can either be guided or unguided.

Sleep

The Sleep section aims to help users initiate and maintain sleep, improving overall sleep quality. The category offers a variety of sleep stories, soundscapes, music and audio-guided content that are specially designed to ease you to sleep. 

Music

This category offers exclusive music to help you relax, focus or sleep. It’s divided into various categories, including nature melodies, soundscapes, sleep, relax, lullabies and focus. You can listen to these curated soundtracks while walking, working, meditating or even falling asleep. 

The entire Calm app also has background music that you can customise to your liking when scrolling through different categories.

Movement

The Movement section on Calm teaches you mindful movement and gentle stretching to improve your mental health. These low to medium-impact workouts are 10-minutes long and allow you to relax and ease your stress while moving your body. Some of the exercises in this section include:

  • Afternoon reset
  • Evening wind down
  • Morning wake up
  • Back care

You can browse by type of movement or area of the body you want to target, or work through the app’s Daily Moves.

Masterclass

The Calm Masterclass section comprises short, topic-specific courses taught by top experts and mindfulness professionals — exclusive to Calm. 

These courses address everyday concerns such as parenting, discovering happiness, practising gratitude, combating social media addiction and breaking bad habits. 

This category is highly beneficial to individuals who want to dive deeper into the world of meditation and mindfulness.

Calm app features

The Calm app has various features to help improve your health and happiness. These features include:

  • Guided and unguided meditation sessions addressing a wide range of concerns
  • 7-day and 21-day courses and sessions on focus, sleep and meditation
  • Kid-friendly activities and meditations
  • Courses designed by top experts and professionals
  • A ton of meditation exercises, sleep sessions, focus activities and body movements to explore
  • Specially curated music soundtracks for relaxation, sleep and focus
  • Check-ins, daily sessions and free meditation courses available

How much does the Calm app cost?

There are two versions of the Calm app — free and paid.

Calm app free version

The free version has limited access to meditation exercises, courses and sessions designed to help improve your mental health and happiness. Here’s what you get access to without purchase:

  • Breathing exercises
  • Daily meditations
  • Some guided meditations
  • Select sleep stories
  • Mood tracker
  • Some music soundtracks

Calm app paid version

The paid version is £28.99 per year and comes with a 7-day free trial, allowing you to get a feel for the app before committing.

Calm also offers a lifetime membership of £299.99, ensuring users can have unlimited access to the app forever. There are also family plans available at discounted prices — six Premium accounts for £40.99/year.

Calm pros

The Calm app offers numerous advantages, including:

  • Frequently updated with new meditations, stories and content
  • Sleep stories are narrated by A-list celebrities and are quite expansive
  • By answering questions, your experience on the app is tailored to suit your specific needs
  • Free meditation courses are available
  • A wide variety of meditation courses and sessions

Calm cons

The Calm app does have some drawbacks. Various Calm cons according to Calm app reviews from real users include:

  • Difficulty cancelling a subscription
  • Customer service can be unresponsive
  • Free content is limited, so you have to subscribe and pay to access all content
  • The app’s interface is difficult to navigate at first
  • Sessions may take a few minutes to load

Is the Calm app worth it?

If you’re looking for ways to manage or cope with your anxiety and stress, the Calm app is a great choice. 

Its meditation exercises, mindfulness courses and focus sessions are specially designed to help you find inner peace and live a happier and healthier life. The app’s many features and lessons may positively impact your mental health, making it worth a try.

The free offering is also pretty decent if you don’t have the budget to sign up for a paid subscription. 

How does Calm compare to other mindfulness apps?

The main competitor for Calm is Headspace, another popular mindfulness app. 

While both have many of the same meditation features, they differ in some ways. Calm has a more varied collection of meditation exercises and courses than Headspace. It’s also more suited for experienced and seasoned meditators and is slightly pricier.

To find out more about how the two compare, visit our Headspace vs Calm article.

Key takeaways from Calm app reviews

The Calm app is a great mindfulness app for experienced meditators looking to manage and cope with daily anxiety and stress. The app has hundreds of courses, sessions and exercises on sleep, meditation, breathing and focus and numerous music soundtracks and playlists. 

If you’re an experienced meditator and don’t mind paying to gain full access to the app’s features, this meditation app is for you.