The 7 Best Meditation Apps You Can Use For Free

There are many free meditation and mindfulness apps to choose from, though some require a subscription for premium content.

 

There are a handful of free meditation apps from nonprofit and government organizations, like Mindfulness Coach and Healthy Minds Program. Here are seven of the best free mindfulness apps you can use to guide and improve your meditations.

 

Meditation â€" and its close cousin mindfulness â€" have become popular ways to achieve wellness in today's fast-paced world. You might have read a book or taken a course in mindfulness, but how do you make it a systematic part of your daily routine?

The 7 Best Meditation Apps You Can Use For Free

Using an app, of course. There are a lot of wellness apps out there to help you get (and stay) centered in your daily meditation practices; here are seven of the best free meditation apps available for both iPhone and Android.

 

Insight Timer

Many Mindfulness apps work on a freemium model, with a small amount of content available for free but most of the best lessons, meditations, and workshops tucked a subscription paywall. Insight Timer is free, with an enormous amount of content at your fingertips even without setting up an account. There are tens of thousands of courses, workshops, and guided meditations, all easily browsable. And you can jump into a quick meditation with a couple of taps, though the app is missing some features found elsewhere, like the ability to set up regular mindfulness reminders.

 

The Mindfulness App

The Mindfulness App emphasizes routine right from the start, offering to set up a regular reminder at your preferred time and days of the week. The app can also send you encouraging messages, though the real meat of the service is the wealth of meditations and courses in a wide variety of topics. It can sync with your iPhone or Android device's health app, and offers a stress test you can use for a self-assessment. You can use The Mindfulness App for free, though there's a premium tier adds more than 300 meditations and courses for $54.99 per year.

 

Mindfulness Coach

Another completely free app, Mindfulness Coach comes to you from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, developed in part to help service members and veterans deal with trauma through mindfulness. The app is appropriate for anyone, though, and provides a step-by-step, self-guided training program to adopt your own mindfulness practice. The app is well designed and easy to browse, with a variety of lessons and meditations, though its content library is small compared to apps which offer premium subscriptions.

 

Ten Percent Happier

You may be familiar with author Dan Harris and the book that Ten Percent Happier is based on; if you're not, you'll find that the app is part of an entire ecosystem that includes a bestselling book, podcast, newsletter, and more. The app builds a personalized mindfulness plan for you based on a questionnaire and can set up daily meditation reminders. The app can be used for free (though it requires creating an account, and the content is limited), but there's a $99.99 per year subscription option that delivers hundreds of video courses.

 

Smiling Mind

Smiling Mind is a completely free mindfulness app produced by an Australian nonprofit. After creating a mandatory free account and completing a short questionnaire, you have access to lessons and workshops, a 21-day sleep enhancement program, a library of meditations, and more. The app also includes optional reminders to keep you on track with regular mindfulness sessions. And unlike some mindfulness apps, Smiling Mind emphasizes that it uses evidence-based rather than trendy or gimmicky pop-science approaches.

 

Healthy Minds Program

Like Smiling Minds, the Healthy Minds Program emphasizes its scientific credentials. The app is developed by a nonprofit called Healthy Minds Innovation, which is affiliated with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The app relies on real neuroscience combined with skill-based learning to help you master the basics of mindfulness and meditation. It's free, but requires signing up for an account. It's packed with audio guides and lessons as well as a large library of guided meditations. And it's completely free, with no pressure to subscribe to a premium version â€" though the app does accept donations.

 

Dave Mindful

As the name suggests, UCLA Mindful is a product of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center. That means you're getting science-backed, evidence-based mindfulness training. The app is elegantly designed, with a "path" for you to follow as you complete a self-assessment and then experience a series of video and audio lessons to master meditation techniques. You don't have to follow the path; there's also a large library of guided meditations to browse and an unguided meditation mode with a quick timer. The app connects to your phone's health app, though it's missing a customizable daily meditation reminder, something found in many other apps.