15+ Best Meditation Apps for Anxiety + 6 You Can Try for Free

Our top 5 recommendations for best meditation apps for anxiety 

There are plenty of good meditation apps for anxiety, but there are some that stand above the rest. Here are our recommendations for the best anxiety meditation apps:

1. Best breathing app for anxiety: Othership
2. Best meditation app for anxiety: Headspace
3. Best meditation app for sleep and anxiety: Calm
4. Best mindfulness app for anxiety: Happy Not Perfect
5. Best free anxiety meditation app: Smiling Mind

Best guided meditation apps for anxiety (6)

With the number of apps out there, it can be hard to know which guided meditation apps for anxiety are the most helpful. These are our picks for the best guided meditation apps for anxiety.

1. Othership

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: $17.99/month or $129.99/year with 7-day and 14-day free trials, respectively.

Features: 500+ classes, inspiring soundscapes, streak & progress tracking, and a global community.

Best for: Breathwork meditations.

Othership is a breathwork meditation app designed to help users relax and relieve anxiety while connecting with their bodies and mind. One of the best deep breathing apps for anxiety, it contains over 500 guided classes featuring the world's top facilitators. It also features the abilities to track progress and even connect with a global community of like-minded people.

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2. Headspace: Mindful Meditation

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $12.99/month or $69.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Guided meditations, daily meditations, breathwork courses, and Apple Health integration.

Best for: Variety of guided meditations.

As one of the top meditation apps, Headspace offers a wide range of relaxing meditations. Its catalog is full of various meditations and breathwork courses to help relieve your anxiety, as well as tackle other issues and goals. You can choose to practice short sessions if you're busy, or opt for longer sessions when you have time to relax.

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3. Insight Timer

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $9.99/month or $59.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Live sessions, selection by time, discussion groups, and community features.

Best for: Meditation timer.

Insight Timer is another popular meditation app with a large library of content. The app includes meditations for beginners and experts, covering a wide variety of topics from anxiety to focus. Its features also include a meditation timer and various ways to connect with the community.

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4. Stop Breathe Think: Meditation

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $9.99/month, $58.99/year, or $249.99 to unlock all features.

Features: Breathing exercises, personalized meditation recommendations, mood tracker, and sleeping exercises.

Best for: Personalized recommendations.

Previously known as MyLife Meditation, Stop Breathe Think: Meditation is a meditation app dedicated to helping users along their mindfulness journey. It has guided meditations and breathing exercises designed to help users relieve anxiety, sleep better, and check in with their emotions. The meditations are great for users of any age, and have helped many people better manage their mental health.

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5. Breathwrk: Breathing Exercises

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to use; $66.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Breathing exercises; audio, haptic, and visual guides; vast library; and custom reminders.

Best for: Options for guidance.

Breathwrk is another app for breathwork meditations that helps improve physical and mental health. The app has a large library of exercises that can help with anxiety, sleep, physical performance, and more. Another great thing about this breathing exercises for anxiety app is you can customize the sounds, visuals, and haptics to create a guided experience that works best for you.

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6. 3 Minute Mindfulness

Download it Now: iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $6.99/month, $24.99/6 months, or $39.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: 7 Days of Mindfulness course, guided meditations, breathing exercises, and customizable reminders.

Best for: Introduction to mindfulness.

3 Minute Mindfulness is a mindfulness app that teaches you skills for overcoming stress, anxiety, and feelings of being overwhelmed. In just 3 minutes, you can follow along with meditations and breathing exercises that will help you feel calmer and happier. The app also offers a 7 Days of Mindfulness course, which teaches everything you need to know to live mindfully.

Best meditation apps for sleep & anxiety (6)

There are a lot of apps for meditation for anxiety, but which ones will help those who have trouble sleeping? Here are some recommendations on meditation apps for stress and anxiety that can also help prioritize sleep.

7. Calm

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $14.99/month, $69.99/year, or $399.99 to unlock all features.

Features: Daily 10-minute meditations, 7-day and 21-day mindfulness programs, mindful stretching & movement, and breathing exercises.

Best for: Sleep meditations.

Calm is another top meditation app that is great for relaxation and sleep. Its library has a plethora of meditations of various lengths and levels of difficulty, covering a wide range of topics. It also includes courses, music, stretches, and stories that can help you relax and rest in no time.

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8. Pzizz

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to use; $9.99/month or $69.99/year to unlock all features

Features: Guided sleep & nap modules, focus sounds, variety of narrations & dreamscapes, and customizations.

Best for: Sleep and nap meditations.

Pzizz is a sleep meditation app designed to help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up feeling refreshed. The app has three modes – Sleep, Nap, and Focus – which use music, soundscapes, and narration to relieve your body and mind and help you rest and refresh. Its simplistic design makes it easy to use and customize for a personalized listening experience.

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9. Breethe: Meditation & Sleep

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $12.99/month, $89.99/year, or $179.99 to unlock all features.

Features: Ever-growing library, guided meditations, breathing exercises, hypnotherapy, and a personalized toolkit.

Best for: Meditations for different times of the day.

Another great meditation app for sleep is Breethe. It's full of mindfulness aids to help you sleep and relax better, including meditations, hypnotherapy, music, and masterclasses. Its ever-growing library has over 1700 tracks designed to bring you comfort and relaxation.

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10. Aura: Meditation & Sleep

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $11.99/month or $59.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Personalized recommendations, thousands of tracks to choose from, CBT & hypnosis, and new content daily.

Best for: Variety of mindfulness exercises.

Aura gives users access to a wide variety of meditative practices for personal transformation and sleep. Its extensive catalog includes meditations, breathing exercises, stories, life coaching, CBT, hypnosis, music & sounds, and more. The app offers personalized recommendations based on your unique self and your in-app activity, so you'll be able to find mindful meditations perfect for your needs.

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11. Simple Habit

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $11.99/month or $95.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Guided meditation and mindfulness sessions, daily motivation, guided sleep sessions, and Apple Health integration.

Best for: Sleep programs.

Featured on Shark Tank in 2017, Simple Habit has helped millions of people improve their wellness and sleep. This app offers guided mindfulness and meditation sessions, daily motivations, guided sleep sessions, and coaching to help users improve their mental health. You can use the app to track your progress and even listen offline.

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12. Ten Percent Happier

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $9.99/month or $99.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: 500+ meditations on a variety of topics; video meditations for learning to meditate; relaxing meditations for sleep; and bite-sized stories, wisdom, and inspiring audios.‍

Best for: Learning to meditate.

Ten Percent Happier is a meditation app for those looking to improve their lives. The app is full of mindfulness tools, from guided meditations to inspiring stories covering a wide range of life topics. These tools can be used to help learn new skills, or simply relax, in only a few minutes.

Best mindfulness apps for anxiety (6)

If you want to expand your routine beyond meditation, there are also some great mindfulness apps for anxiety. Below are some of the best mindfulness apps for anxiety.

13. Happy Not Perfect

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $9.99/month or $59.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Daily Happiness Workouts & positive affirmations, over 500 mindfulness sessions, goal setting & progress tracking, and the Sleep Wind-Down feature.

Best for: Prioritizing happiness.

Happy Not Perfect is a mindfulness app dedicated to helping you prioritize your mental health. There are several tools that can help, from guided mindfulness sessions to their daily happiness workouts. The app even let's you select your mood to help you find the exercises that will benefit you most in the moment, which is also why it’s seen as a great mindfulness for teenage anxiety app.

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14. The Anxiety Solution

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to start using; $9.99/month or $59.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Over 70 mindfulness, meditation, and breathing tools; sleep stories; fitness routines; and mood tracking.

Best for: A large selection of mindfulness tools.

Inspired by the book of the same name, The Anxiety Solution is an anxiety mindfulness app filled with tools to help users manage their anxiety. It's full of mindfulness sessions, meditations, breathing exercises, sleep stories, and fitness routines that are guaranteed to help with anxiety. It can also be used to track one’s mood and read inspiring articles every day.

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15. Colorfy

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to use; weekly, monthly, yearly subscriptions available.

Features: 1000+ pictures, multiple color palettes, different brush types for advanced effects, and community features.

Best for: Coloring for mindfulness.

Colorfy is a relaxing coloring app if you’re looking for a creative method of mindfulness. The app has a catalog of over 1000 pictures to color, including mandalas, patterns, florals, and more. You can use the brush type tool to choose from various colorful effects, and the app even lets you color offline.

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16. Reflectly

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free to use; $9.99/month or $39.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Daily journaling, motivational quotes & challenges, mood tracker, and personalized questions.

Best for: Journaling for mindfulness.

If you like to journal, you can use Reflectly for daily reflection. Using personalized questions and mood tracking, the app learns who you are and what motivates you to live mindfully as you complete your daily journal entries. It also uses quotes and challenges to inspire you to practice self-care, making it one of the best mindful apps for anxiety.

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17. Breath of Light

Download it Now: iOS

Cost: $1.99

Features: Beautiful art, hypnotic soundscape, easy-to-follow instructions, and meditative gameplay.

Best for: Meditative puzzles.

Breath of Light is a meditative puzzle game that is great for relieving anxiety. The game works by having users guide energy by moving rocks in a garden. It uses beautiful imagery and a hypnotic soundscape to help users relax as they work to solve the puzzles.

18. Aspire: Goals Visualization

Download it Now: iOS

Cost: 7-day free trial; $11.99/month or $59.99/year to unlock all features.

Features: Basics of Visualization course, daily Morning Perspective sessions, a library of courses covering wellness & more, and progress tracking.

Best for: Goal visualization for mindfulness.

Visualizing your goals is another great way to relieve anxiety, and Aspire is an app that can help you do just that. You can use this app to learn all about visualization, and follow one of the over 150 guided visualization sessions to start picturing your future. The onboarding process allows you to realize your main aspirations, while the daily sessions help reprogram your brain to work towards improved wellness and achieving your goals.

6 free meditation apps for anxiety that you should try today

Those who are on a budget will be glad to know that there are also plenty of free meditation apps for anxiety. These are some of the best free meditation apps for anxiety.

1. Smiling Mind

Best for: Variety of meditations.

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free

Features: Daily exercises, variety of programs, age categories, and progress tracking.

Smiling Mind is a free meditation app that is great for mental wellness. It has over 300 meditations for users of all ages, as well as students and workers, which is what makes it one of the best free anxiety meditation apps. It also has sleep programs that can instill calm at the end of a busy day.

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2. UCLA Mindful

Best for: Meditations for wellness.

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free

Features: Basic meditations, wellness meditations, informative videos, and weekly podcasts.

Created by the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center, UCLA Mindful is a free meditation app that can be used anytime and anywhere. The app offers two main forms of meditation: basic meditations, and wellness meditations for those managing various health conditions. It also features weekly podcasts that offer meditations on different themes, which takes the app beyond other free guided meditation apps for anxiety.

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3. Healthy Minds Program

Best for: Mindfulness training.

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free

Features: Guided meditations, podcast-style lessons, progress tracking, and Apple Health integration.

The official app for the University of Wisconsin's Healthy Minds Program uses meditations that help train users to be more mindful. The app's meditations and podcast-style lessons can help develop the skills needed to reduce anxiety and improve various areas of  life. There are even active meditations that can be listened to as users carry on with their daily tasks.

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4. Mindfulness Coach

Best for: Building a mindfulness practice.‍

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free

Features: Self-guided training program, a library of information, audio-guided mindfulness exercises, and goal setting & tracking.

Mindfulness Coach is one of several free mindfulness apps for anxiety that was designed to help Veterans, Service members, and others develop mindfulness skills. The app contains a self-taught program that teaches users how to maintain a mindfulness practice. It also contains a catalog of exercises that can help you relax and relieve anxiety throughout the day.

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5. MindShift CBT - Anxiety Relief

Best for: Anxiety management.

Download it Now: Android | iOS

Cost: Free

Features: CBT-based tools, thought journal, coping cards, and a mood tracker.

Developed by Anxiety Canada, MindShift CBT is full of evidence-based tools to help you relieve your anxiety. The daily check-in feature allows you to track your mood and anxiety, while the guided mindfulness and meditation exercises can help you feel calm. The app also has plenty of resources to help you learn to self-manage your anxiety and build healthy habits.

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6. Oak - Meditation & Breathing

Best for: Guided meditations and breathing exercises.

Download it Now: iOS

Cost: Free to use; in-app purchases available.

Features: Guided meditations, meditation courses, breathing exercises, and soothing background sounds.

Oak is a free breathing app for anxiety that can help guide you to relaxation. The app is designed to help you turn meditation into a habit with a large variety of guided meditations. You can choose from sessions of various lengths and styles, or even opt to practice breathwork meditations while on the go.

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So, if you’re ready to try a breathing app for anxiety, see what others are saying about the Othership app.