Mental Health Apps, Compared

By Blubee Editorial, Editorial team · Updated September 2, 2026

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Mental health apps are consumer tools for mood tracking, guided exercises, meditation, journaling, and self-tests. Ten of them are compared on cost, free tier, and fit, Headspace and Calm included. Every price was read from the US App Store in August and September 2026, where listed purchases ran from $4.99 to $99.99 and vendors sold several products from one screen.

This page covers the criteria used, a single table with prices and free tiers, one section per app with its clearest drawback, and the situations where no app is the right answer. Blubee, the app behind this site, appears in the table on the same terms as everything else.

How we compared#

The criteria that matter are the ones a reader can verify without trusting this page, so five things were recorded for each app and nothing was scored out of ten.

Cost is every in-app purchase price the US App Store listing showed, read on August 10, 2026 for six apps and on September 2, 2026 for Blubee, Headspace and Calm, rather than the headline number a vendor prefers. That is nine of the ten apps; Youper is listed without a price because it is shutting down. Free tier covers two separate questions: whether the app is free to download, and whether its core loop runs before the paywall. Self-tests means the listing describes structured questionnaires, not only journaling or guided audio. Platform is iOS, because Android and web prices often differ, and the store you buy from is the one to confirm in. Billing period is recorded on its own, because a weekly plan costs several times a yearly one across twelve months.

Two things were deliberately not measured. Clinical effectiveness is the first: none of these products has been tested against the others in a trial worth citing, and ranking consumer apps on outcomes would be invention. Privacy practice is the second, because policies change faster than a page like this is updated. Nothing here is affiliate-linked and no vendor was contacted.

The ten apps side by side#

Prices below are the full range of in-app purchases each US App Store listing showed, on August 10, 2026 for six apps and on September 2, 2026 for Blubee, Headspace and Calm, not a single headline number, because these apps sell several separate products from the same paywall, ten of them on one screen at Headspace and at Calm. The tenth row, Youper, carries no price because it is shutting down. Ratings are the store’s own, and every rating on this page was read from the same listings on September 2, 2026. Blubee’s rating sample is six ratings against tens of thousands to nearly two million for every other app here, which is stated in the table rather than buried.

A weekly subscription at $7.99 is $415.48 across a year. That arithmetic applies to Blubee’s own weekly plan exactly as it applies to Liven’s, and it is the entire reason the yearly price exists.

Finch: self-care built around a pet#

Finch is a free-to-download self-care app whose daily check-ins feed a virtual bird. The App Store listed Finch Plus purchases from $5.99 to $69.99 on August 10, 2026, and on September 2 it showed 747,000 ratings at 4.9, the highest score in this comparison alongside How We Feel and a sample that only Calm and Headspace exceed. The daily loop, simple goals and the pet run without paying.

The drawback is the mechanism itself. Accountability is delegated to a character you can let down, which is exactly why it works for people who bounce off plain habit trackers and exactly why it misfires for people already carrying more obligation than they can meet. Finch also produces a streak rather than an assessment: it will tell you how many days in a row you checked in, not what the check-ins have in common.

Breeze: quizzes and mood tracking in one app#

Breeze is the closest thing here to a general-purpose starting point, combining quizzes, a mood tracker with weekly and monthly summaries, journaling and short calming exercises. It is free to download, with in-app purchases listed between $4.99 and $59.99 on August 10, 2026, and 72,000 ratings at 4.6 on September 2. The cheapest of those is a one-time well-being guide rather than a subscription.

The drawback is the shape of the pricing rather than the product. The same listing carries a weekly subscription at $9.99 and a twelve-month subscription at $29.99. Two people can therefore pay $519.48 and $29.99 for a year of identical software, depending only on which offer their onboarding served. The billing period on the confirmation sheet is the number that matters.

Daylio: logging a mood in two taps#

Daylio is a mood and activity tracker built to be finished in seconds: pick a face, tap the activities that applied, done. It is free to download, with Premium purchases listed from $4.99 to $59.99 on August 10, 2026, and a store rating in the table above that only Finch and How We Feel beat. Nothing has to be written, which is the whole design and the reason its entries survive bad weeks.

The drawback is that it records without interpreting. Daylio will show that Tuesdays are worse and that mood rises after seeing people; it will not say what to do about either. It is a data source, not a program. If what you want is an explanation rather than a chart, it needs pairing with something else.

Liven: short courses with a chat companion#

Liven is free to download and sells access through trials. The App Store listed purchases from a $7.99 weekly subscription to a $99.99 lifetime plan on August 10, 2026, with yearly plans at $49.99, $59.99 and $89.99, against 52,000 ratings at 4.5 on September 2. The product is bite-sized courses in a cognitive-behavioral register, habit tracking, and a chat companion.

The drawback is the price ladder. A $7.99 week is $415.48 across twelve months, four to eight times what the yearly plans on the same listing cost. Which offer appears depends on the onboarding path taken, so the only price that counts is the one on the purchase sheet, and it is worth reading before confirming. The full Liven app review sets out the same pricing ladder next to what users complain about.

How We Feel: naming the feeling precisely#

How We Feel is free, and its US App Store listing carried no in-app purchases section at all on August 10 and again on September 2, 2026, making it the only app here with nothing to buy. Built with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, it moves a check-in from a rough color toward a specific word, and held 4.9 from 29,000 ratings on September 2.

The drawback is scope, and it is deliberate. The app does one thing: check in, name the emotion, optionally use a short strategy. There is no assessment, no long-run program, and no structured explanation once a pattern becomes visible. It is the best free starting point here and the least likely to be the only app you keep.

Blubee: self-tests whose results are not gated#

Blubee is the app behind this site and the newest product in the table. It is free to download, with subscriptions listed at $7.99 weekly, $19.99 monthly, and $39.99 or $59.99 yearly on September 2, 2026. It runs structured self-tests, and the questions, the scoring and the result are free in both places: the web version of the attachment test shows where your answers land on anxiety and avoidance immediately, with no email step and no share-to-unlock.

Three drawbacks, stated plainly. There is no web app, so everything past the free tests on this site runs on iOS and Android only. Several of the in-app tests are clinical screeners, which is why they stay inside the app and are not published as public quizzes. And the App Store listing carries six ratings, meaning there is no track record to check, which is a legitimate reason to prefer any of the apps above.

Ahead: five-minute drills on one emotion#

Ahead is free to download and sells subscriptions the App Store listed between $9.99 and $79.99 on August 10, 2026, with 22,000 ratings at 4.7 on September 2. The format is a short journey aimed at one named problem, such as anger, procrastination or confidence, delivered in five-minute steps rather than long sessions.

The drawback is spread, in a sharper form than elsewhere. Four different twelve-month prices sat on the same listing on the same day: $29.99, $39.99, $59.99 and $79.99. There is no way to tell from outside which one a given user will be offered. Ahead is also a drill rather than a tracker, so it will not show whether anything changed.

Headspace: guided meditation with a coaching tier#

Headspace is a meditation and sleep app sold through a free trial. Its own listing states the subscription options as $12.99 a month or $69.99 a year, and the ten in-app purchases shown on the US App Store on September 2, 2026 ran from $12.99 to $94.99, with a product named Headspace Plus appearing twice on that one screen, once at $94.99 and once at $12.99. The store rating was 4.8 from 974,000 ratings, the second-largest sample here.

The drawback for a reader of this page is fit rather than quality. Headspace teaches a practice; it does not assess anything, and a month of sessions produces no pattern to read afterward. The listing also describes therapy and psychiatry reached through an employer or insurer, a different product from the consumer subscription and not priced on the same screen. Confirm which one is being bought before the trial converts.

Calm: sleep and meditation audio at the largest scale#

Calm is a sleep and meditation app whose description claims it was downloaded by 180 million people worldwide, a figure from the developer’s own text rather than a store metric, next to a store rating of 4.8 from 1,978,000 ratings, the largest sample in this comparison by a wide margin. The listing names the subscription as $14.99 a month or $69.99 a year, and the ten in-app purchases shown on September 2, 2026 ran from $14.99 to $79.99, with $16.99, $29.99 and $69.99 between the ends.

The drawback is the same shape as Breeze’s. Five different prices for a product called Calm Premium sat on one listing on one day, and the listing never states a trial length: it mentions a trial once, in passing, as “a free trial period, if offered”. So two people can start on different terms without either seeing the other’s. The description does say some programs and features stay free forever, so a subscription unlocks part of the catalog rather than all of it. Calm is also a library, not an instrument: it will help with falling asleep and will not tell you why the week was bad.

Youper: skip this one for now#

Youper is a chat-based app in a cognitive-behavioral register, and its own site carries a notice that the product shuts down on September 30, 2026, telling users to export their data. That date falls roughly seven weeks after this page was published.

The drawback needs no qualification. An app with an announced end date is not the place to start a habit or store a year of entries, and any data kept there has a deadline attached. It is listed here only because it still appears in most roundups of the best mental health apps, many of which predate the notice.

What to pick if you only want one#

The right pick follows from what you want to happen next, not from a score out of ten. Three situations cover most of the reasons people arrive at a page like this.

If the goal is to see a pattern already suspected, start with a structured questionnaire rather than a tracker, because a tracker needs weeks before it says anything. The full test library is free and ungated, and reading the four attachment patterns afterwards tends to do more than another two weeks of mood logging.

If the pattern is already clear and the goal is changing daily behavior, a tracker or a drill is the better instrument. Daylio and Finch both work here, and the honest difference between them is whether accountability to a chart or to a character suits you. Neither replaces picking the target: how to work on yourself sets out naming one behavior in one moment, which is what a tracker then measures.

If the goal is sleep or a meditation habit rather than an explanation, Headspace and Calm are the mature picks, and the difference between them on price is small: both listings carry a $69.99 year, and Calm’s monthly plan is $2.00 more than Headspace’s.

If the thing being fixed keeps happening inside one relationship, an app is a supporting tool at best. Pages on avoidance under stress and on getting attached quickly explain more of that dynamic than any check-in streak will, and the pursuing side of the loop is worth reading alongside them.

When a mental health app is not the explanation#

A mental health app is a habit and information tool, and there are situations where reaching for one is the wrong move. The clearest is direction of travel: when something is getting worse week over week rather than fluctuating, the useful next step is an assessment by a person, not a better tracker.

An app is also the wrong instrument when the cause is environmental. Sleep debt, a hostile workplace, money pressure, chronic pain and a relationship that is not safe all produce entries that look like a mood problem inside a mood tracker. Logging them daily yields an accurate chart of a situation that has not changed.

Cost is a real limit too. At $415.48 a year, a weekly subscription is a significant recurring expense for a tool that nobody has shown to outperform a free one, and the annual equivalent is worth calculating before any renewal.

Two widely recommended apps are no longer viable picks, which is its own warning about roundups. Youper has published a September 30, 2026 shutdown notice. Sanvello, still named in many lists, no longer returned an App Store listing in the US or Singapore stores when checked from this site on August 10, 2026, and sanvello.com did not resolve; its features moved into a members-only benefit product some years ago.

Finally, no app on this page is built for an emergency, and none should be used as one. If you are thinking about harming yourself, or you are not safe where you live, the route is not a subscription screen. Crisis lines and directories lists the US numbers that answer immediately, free, at any hour.