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15 Alternatives to Headspace-Get More from Your Meditation and Wellbeing App

Posted on December 12 2022

Summary

  • Headspace is an app that offers users a wide range of guided meditation and mindfulness techniques. It aims to support users with stress, sleep, focus, relationships, and much more.
  • In addition to its mental health benefits, the Headspace app is designed to offer physical benefits too.
  • Headspace has been criticized for the price of subscription plans, its poor customization options for meditation, and what some users consider to be limited customer support.
  • There are many alternatives to Headspace offering similar features at a more affordable cost or even for free. These apps include our own Pzizz app, scientifically backed to provide relaxing Soundscapes, whether you want to focus or get some sleep.

Introduction

If you've ever used Headspace or are a current user, you'll probably agree that the app is pretty good. It is well designed, has an instantly recognizable interface, and decent guided meditations and relaxation features are among the best. However, it's not perfect.

Perhaps you've found that Headspace doesn't offer what you're looking for or that the ongoing cost is too restrictive. No matter what the case, many alternatives to Headspace offer similar features, and even some that Headspace doesn’t!

One such app is Pzizz. Based on scientifically backed psychoacoustic principles, our Pzizz app is designed to help you fall asleep in minutes-and stay asleep. The app contains a library of hundreds of soundscapes that have been created using elements such as binaural beats, dreamy melodies, and calming spoken words. This makes Pzizz the perfect tool for a better night’s rest or power naps during the day. Check out the app on the Apple App Store or Google Play.

This article will look at Headspace and what it offers and doesn't. We'll examine why you may wish to look elsewhere for your Headspace alternative. Then, we'll look at some apps like Headspace to give you the best possible picture before you choose an option.

Let's start by looking at Headspace and what it has to offer.

What is Headspace?

Headspace is an app that offers guided meditation and mindfulness techniques for people of all ages. It's designed to help users reduce stress, stay focused, and improve overall wellbeing. The app has a unique and fun design that's instantly recognizable.

What Does Headspace Offer?

Headspace has hundreds of meditation sessions covering stress, sleep, focus, relationships, and more. Whether you're looking for short daily meditations or long-term support in developing better habits, the Headspace app can provide the necessary tools. There are a variety of activities, including audio lessons, animated videos, and personalized challenges to help you learn new skills, stay motivated, and change your thinking.

The app also includes breathing techniques, visualizations, relaxation exercises, and exclusive content from experts in their respective fields, such as sports psychology, nutritionists, and yoga instructors. As well as these extras, the app offers a range of statistics to track your activity and help you stay motivated. 

After a free trial, Headspace is available through a subscription.

Is Headspace Just An App?

Headspace has grown far beyond its original app, offering users various ways to access meditation content. For example, the Headspace book 'The Headspace Guide to Meditation and Mindfulness' gives readers insight into how mindfulness can help them lead a happier and healthier life. 

Headspace has also recently released a Netflix documentary called 'Headspace Guide to Meditation' that provides helpful guidance on building meaningful habits within your everyday routine.

What Conditions Can Headspace Help With?

Headspace can help with various conditions, including stress, anxiety, depression, and other emotional difficulties. It can also support people struggling with work/life balance, lacking motivation, or having difficulty forming meaningful relationships. Additionally, Headspace may be beneficial for people who want to explore the idea of self-compassion and mindfulness practices that promote overall wellbeing.

Regular use of Headspace can help reduce stress levels and improve coping with life's challenges. Their program is excellent for increasing awareness and insight into feelings and emotions and learning to become more mindful in daily activities. Headspace also provides exercises to develop positive thought patterns and cultivate helpful behaviors that allow users to control their lives better.

In addition to its mental health benefits, Headspace offers many physical benefits. It helps to relax the body and reduce tension, leading to improved blood circulation, muscle relaxation, and more restful sleep. Breathing exercises that feature as part of the app have been found to lower heart rate, improve digestion and reduce inflammation.

Finally, using Headspace can help support existing treatment plans for more severe conditions such as PTSD, depression, bipolar disorder, and other mental illnesses. Providing gentle guidance and mental exercises designed specifically for individuals living with these conditions can help improve mood stability and overall wellbeing.

Why Might You Be Looking For a Headspace Alternative

Headspace has been criticized for its costly subscription plans, lack of customization options for meditation, and poor customer support. Additionally, many users have raised concerns about the app's effectiveness in helping people achieve long-term mental health benefits from using the service. Some users have found that it is too surface-level and can become boring after a while if there is no variety in the guided meditations available.

Other common complaints include difficulty navigating the app and finding relevant content, incorrect audio levels, or poor sound quality in some meditations. Finally, Headspace has faced criticism for not adequately addressing specific mental health issues like anxiety or depression beyond basic relaxation techniques.

Luckily, many Headspace alternatives offer similar features at a much more affordable cost or even for free. These apps, like Headspace, provide users with a wide range of relaxation techniques, mindfulness exercises, and guided meditations.

15 Apps Similar to Headspace

Having read what Headspace offers and what some of the criticisms are-you may be looking for an alternative. Below is a list of 15 meditation, relaxation, and mindfulness apps for you to consider.

Pzizz

Pzizz is the leading alternative to Headspace when it comes to promoting a relaxing sleep routine. Our app provides users with personalized Dreamscapes to help them fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and feel refreshed. Pzizz uses a combination of sound effects, music, and narration to help you relax your body and mind before bedtime.

However, we don't just presume that a relaxing sound is effective. All our sounds are backed by psychoacoustic principles and verified by science. So you can have peace of mind knowing that our Dreamscapes are designed to help you get the restful sleep you need.

We've put Pzizz right at the top of this list because our app offers unique features that make it stand out. These features ensure you'll wake up feeling refreshed and energized every morning.

Pzizz is available now from the Apple App Store and Google Play!

Mesmerize Visual Meditation

Mesmerize Visual Meditation is one of the many Headspace alternatives available to help you relax and de-stress. The app uses uniquely hypnotic visuals to put you in a trance-like state. With a pinch gesture, you can control the speed of the visuals for an even more mesmerizing experience.

Mesmerize Visual Meditation also offers guided meditations to aid you with relaxation, presence, self-esteem, and positivity. It also provides soothing psychoacoustic-backed music, nature sounds, white noise, sleepy stories, focus music, and visual breathing. These features can help you stay in the moment and feel more relaxed. Mesmerize Visual Meditation is one of the best headspace alternatives if you want an immersive, calming experience. Download it now from the Apple App Store and Google Play!

Sound Machine-White Noise

Sound Machine is an audio platform tailored to help users achieve their desired state of mind. Through carefully crafted soundscapes, the app provides users with many sounds, music pieces, and stories specifically designed to aid relaxation, focus, and sleep. The platform also gives users a customizable experience to tailor their audio to their preferences.

Sound Machine-White Noise offers a unique auditory experience that rivals apps similar to Headspace. Download the app on Apple App Store now!

Calm

Calm offers guided meditations for beginners and more experienced practitioners, with options for mindfulness, self-care, relaxation, calming anxious thoughts, and more. It provides an extensive library of guided meditations, sleep stories, breathwork exercises, exclusive music, and stretching exercises. These aim to help you sleep better, relieve stress, lower anxiety, and refocus your attention. With Calm, you can make meditation part of your daily routine and experience the life-changing benefits of practicing mindfulness.

Insight Timer

Insight Timer offers many of the same mindfulness and meditation features as Headspace. With millions of active users, Insight Timer offers a wide range of guided meditations from top teachers around the globe, as well as timers for your practice. The app also includes relaxing music tracks from world-renowned artists, helping you to find the perfect soundtrack for your meditations.

Buddhify

As far as apps like Headspace go, Buddhify is a great alternative for those who may not have the time or resources to head to a meditation class. Buddhify is designed to help you bring mindfulness into all aspects of your life, whether it's while commuting, taking a break at work, or simply winding down before bed. It can help you find calm and manage stress more effectively.

This app offers guided meditations, audio courses, and other tools to help you manage stress and anxiety. It also has personalized options like setting your own goals and reminders so that you can stay on track with your practice. The app also features mindfulness exercises inspired by Buddhist philosophy and sleep soundtracks. Buddhify is one of the best alternatives to Headspace for those seeking an easy way to meditate on the go.

Ten Percent Happier Meditation

Ten Percent Happier Meditation is a headspace alternative that offers a wide range of guided meditations and mindfulness techniques. The app was created by Dan Harris, an ABC News anchor, who has been practicing meditation for more than seven years. Ten Percent Happier features hundreds of guided meditations from world-renowned teachers and courses on self-compassion and dealing with difficult emotions.

Like Headspace, there's much more here than just the app, with a book and podcast series available to help users further explore meditation. With its easy-to-use interface and library of resources, Ten Percent Happier is an excellent headspace alternative for those looking for a more modern approach to meditating.

Aura

Aura is an app for mental health and wellbeing that provides personalized mindfulness and meditation exercises. With Aura, you can share your needs and interests with the app, which then uses billions of data points to understand what would resonate with you. Aura will then provide personalized recommendations from thousands of tracks across meditation, CBT, stories, life coaching, hypnosis, and more. Aura also offers guided meditations, breathing exercises, and sleep stories, to help you stay calm and balanced throughout the day.

Smiling Mind

Smiling Mind is an Australian not-for-profit organization that offers mindfulness and meditation programs for all ages. The company's mission is to provide accessible mental health tools through technology, enabling users to take greater control of their mental wellbeing. Smiling Mind has a comprehensive range of headspace alternatives — from mindful breathing exercises to guided relaxation sessions — that can be accessed via their website or mobile app.

The app and website also provide Indigenous language meditations, including Kriol, Ngaanyatjarra, and Pitjantjatjara. These programs help users relieve stress and anxiety, develop resilience and increase overall wellbeing.

Oak-Meditation & Sleep

Oak offers guided meditations in three categories: mindful, loving-kindness, and sleep meditations. In addition to these guided sessions, unguided meditations are also available, along with breathing exercises to help regulate your breath. The duration of these activities can be personalized depending on your needs. If desired, you can customize each session by adding silence or calming background sounds.

If you are looking for alternatives to Headspace, Oak-Meditation & Sleep would be great. It provides many similar features and some additional ones that may be beneficial.

Breethe

Breethe is a comprehensive wellness platform with over 1,700 tracks, including meditations, hypnotherapy, sleep stories, bedtime visualizations, music, and sounds. It's designed to make achieving peace of mind and self-care easy in your everyday life. And even better – Breethe puts a humorous spin on it! 

Breethe is a good choice for those seeking alternatives to Headspace that want a wide range of content and an approachable tone. This app has also become popular among seasoned meditation practitioners and those just starting.

Happify

Happify has been developed by top scientists and experts who have studied evidence-based interventions in positive psychology, mindfulness, and cognitive behavioral therapy. The activities featured on the app adhere to these insights and are regularly updated so that users can benefit from the latest findings in mental health research.

It's similar to apps like Headspace in that it provides guided experiences and activities tailored toward specific goals, such as reducing stress or improving sleep. What sets Happify apart from other Headspace alternatives is its focus on developing positive emotions, resilience, and self-compassion. These elements of happiness have been proven to positively impact mental health.

Sleepio

Sleepio is a digital sleep improvement program that helps people to improve their sleep naturally. It uses evidence-based cognitive and behavioral strategies to help users develop the skills needed for better rest. Unlike apps like Headspace, which mainly focus on relaxation and meditation, Sleepio focuses on improving sleep quality through personalized guidance.

The program also provides access to experts in the field of sleep and offers tips and advice from research-backed sources. Additionally, it includes daily tracking tools to monitor users' progress as they work towards better sleep habits. Of all the apps similar to Headspace, Sleepio is one of the most professionally produced.

MindBliss

With over 400+meditation and sleep audios from 40+renowned experts, MindBliss provides simple, calming, guided meditation tools to help you relax and find inner peace. Through this app, you can explore sessions for mindfulness, stress relief, self-confidence building, mood improvement, focus and creativity training, and more.

Unlike other Apps similar to Headspace, MindBliss offers 18 different categories so you can choose the best meditation to fit your needs. It uses Apple Healthkit to help you track your mindful minutes and knowledgeable recommendations tailored to each user.

IBreathe

As you might expect, iBreathe focuses on breathing techniques as a part of meditation. The app provides a number of breathing activities that are designed to help users relax and bring a sense of balance back into their lives. The activities range from basic breathing exercises to more advanced guided meditations.

With iBreathe, you can take control of your meditation by defining session length, how much of each technique you want, different intervals, and more. For those who want to jump in quickly, plenty of presets are available, making it ideal for beginners. Best of all, the app is completely free, though many may wish to remove ads with a one-off in-app purchase.

Conclusion

Headspace is one of the leading apps for mindfulness and meditation. However, many other apps offer similar services. Whether you're looking for more personalized guidance or specialized programs, there are plenty of alternatives to Headspace that can help you find peace and relaxation.

Chief amongst these alternatives is Pzizz. While Headspace has an emphasis on meditation and mindfulness, Pzizz uses carefully-crafted audio sessions to guide your mind into a deeply relaxed state, allowing for extended periods of restful sleep. The app is available now on the Apple App Store and through Google Play!

The apps listed here provide significant resources to help users achieve their desired state of mind. With a mix of audio-based tools, personalized experiences, and expert advice, these Apps like Headspace can be great additions to your self-care routine.

FAQ

Are there apps similar to Headspace?

Yes, many apps offer a variety of mindfulness and meditation practices. Apps like Calm, Ten Percent Happier, Buddhify, and Insight Timer offer users guided meditations and other relaxation exercises. These apps can be used on your own time and at your own pace.

What features do these apps typically offer?

The features offered by each app vary depending on the specific platform. However, some standard features include guided meditations, sleep stories, music, courses, challenges, and breathing exercises to help you stay calm.

Do these apps offer free content?

Yes, some of the apps offer free content. Apps like Calm and Ten Percent Happier have free and paid tiers of their services, so you can easily find something that fits your budget. Additionally, many apps will provide free access to a limited selection of features, allowing users to try the platform before committing to upgrade plans.

References

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6312207/