Calm is the better app overall, scoring 8.6 to 8.3. Calm wins on 4 of the 5 scores, Opal on 1.
Light sleepers and anxious minds who want help winding down each night
iPhone and Android users who want firm, scheduled limits on distracting apps
Score by score
The details
| Feature | Calm | Opal |
|---|---|---|
| Category | Mind & Focus | Mind & Focus |
| Category rank | #5 of 9 | #8 of 9 |
| Developer | Calm.com, Inc. | Opal |
| Pricing | Subscription | Free + paid plans |
| Usable for free | No | Yes |
| iPhone & iPad | ✓ | ✓ |
| Android | ✓ | ✓ |
| Mac | — | ✓ |
| Web | ✓ | — |
Strengths and weaknesses
Calm
- Best-in-class Sleep Stories and sleep music
- Soothing, beautifully produced design
- Wide range of content for stress and anxiety
- Most content is paywalled
- Less structured for learning to meditate
Calm is the app to get if better sleep is your main goal. Its Sleep Stories are excellent at helping you drift off, and soundscapes, music and breathing exercises round it out. Guided meditations cover anxiety and focus too. Most content needs a subscription, and the meditation teaching is less structured than Headspace's. Still, few apps make winding down this easy.
Full Calm review
Opal
- Polished design that makes blocking feel rewarding
- Strict sessions resist late-night willpower lapses
- Clear reports on where your time goes
- Best features locked behind Pro
- Screen Time-based blocks can occasionally glitch
Opal is the most polished screen time blocker for iPhone, and it now runs on Android and Mac too. On iPhone it uses Apple's Screen Time framework to block apps and websites on a schedule or during focus sessions, with a stricter mode that is hard to cancel. Clear reports show where your hours go. The free plan is basic, the strongest features need Pro, and upgrade prompts are persistent. Blocks can occasionally glitch when iOS misbehaves.
Full Opal review
