Aura vs. Calm: Which Meditation App is Best for You?

When choosing a meditation app, it’s important to find the best fit for you. Both Calm and Aura are leading in the meditation app space, so let’s see how each one measures up in helping you to find peace of mind. 

Aura vs. Calm at a Glance:

Aura Meditation App

Aura, “Spotify for mental wellness,” is the all-in-one app for mental wellness and sleep that provides the world’s most extensive mental wellness content library and community. Over 8 million people choose Aura to find peace, and Aura has won the “Best of Apple” award.

By partnering with hundreds of top coaches & therapists worldwide as creators, Aura offers the world’s largest premium collection of meditations, stories, sleep tracks, life coaching, cognitive behavioural therapy, breath work, hypnosis, prayer and much more.

Unlike traditional meditation apps that provide one-size-fits-all content libraries created by a few coaches, Aura leverages AI to provide anyone with personalised access to its all-in-one mental wellness library that continuously learns what works for you. Moreover, you can connect with the community on Aura Live hosted by our coaches and receive 1-1 coaching directly on Aura. Aura is the one app you need to transform your well being and life.

Calm Meditation App

Calm is a meditation for all meditation practitioners with a focus on sleep. With a simple design, Calm makes it easy to build your daily practice with their Daily Calm meditations. 

Calm’s interface is simple and beautiful in design with a customisation dashboard, the user can choose from a collection of stunning backgrounds to enhance their meditation experience. 

Calm, on the other hand, offers tranquillity and simplicity. Simple and user-friendly, Calm offers a diverse range of meditation tracks and sleep stories, each crafted to guide you gently into the realm of relaxation. From calming sounds of nature to celebrity-narrated tales, Calm provides a versatile toolkit for your bedtime routine.

With features like the Daily Calm and Sleep Timer, it caters to both meditation novices and seasoned practitioners, aiming to make the journey to a peaceful night's sleep accessible for everyone.

Aura Meditation App overview

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Aura’s Features

• Sleep content variety: Aura offers a vast amount of high-quality, innovative sleep content, including meditations to prepare for sleep, bedtime stories, sleep hypnosis, energy healing, sleep meditations and soundscapes.
• Mindfulness coaching: Aura provides content to cultivate mindfulness beyond sleep, branching deeper into different areas of your life. Additional content categories include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Breath work, Prayer, Health Coaching and more.
• Live sessions: Life coaches offer interactive live sessions with coaching and meditation, giving you the interactive opportunity to improve mindfulness and sleep better.

Aura’s benefits

• Get more sleep: Aura’s professional coaches offer remarkable, relaxing sleep meditations designed to make your nights truly restful and enjoyable.
• Achieve your goals: Stay connected to your meditation goals with personalised push reminders, enhancing consistency.
• Customisation: Explore a thoughtfully curated selection of meditations tailored to your different moods as they change daily.
• Life coaching: Enjoy coaching tracks, optional coaching sessions and free live sessions with coaches, all aimed to help you overcome mindfulness challenges and improve lifestyle habits impacting your sleep.
• Download to listen later: Listeners can download tracks to listen when you’re offline at any time.

Aura - What Could Be Better

• Content for adults: Limited information on kid-specific content.
• Limited free features: While pricing is competitive, there is no free access to longer sleep meditations. However, 3-minute meditations and Aura Live sessions are free to all users.

Pros and Cons for Aura:

Pro #1: A personalised approach to meditation. You are a unique individual and your meditation practice should reflect that. With over 15,000 recordings on Aura, you are sure to find the right fit for you and Aura simplifies this process by making personalised recommendations for you based on your mood and individual needs. 

Pro #2: Great for all levels. Aura offers meditations for all levels of experience and makes it easy for beginners to develop their meditation practice. 

Con #1: Limited access with the free membership. With the basic membership, your access to the recorded tracks is limited but you have full access to attend the live meditations.

‍Con #2: Overwhelming options. With so much content available on Aura, it can be overwhelming at first for new users. Aura’s personalised approach does help to offset this.

Aura pricing

Aura’s limited version: Free

A Premium subscription gets you unlimited access to all meditations, life coaching, stories, music, hypnosis, offline capabilities, and much more.

‍Annual Plan: US$ 69.99 with 7-day free trial

Monthly Plan: US$ 11.99

Lifetime Plan: US$ 399.99

Family Plan: (upgrade to add more members in one subscription) US$ 119.99

Calm Meditation App Overview

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Calm’s Core Features

• Meditation and sleep focused: Calm offers guided sessions and flexible meditation timers, with more open-style meditation offerings for experienced mediators.
• Variety: Its curated selection, ranging from nature sounds to narratives voiced by well-known celebrity personalities, presents a diverse toolkit for bedtime tranquillity.
• Relaxing music: A dedicated music section that can set the mood for sleep.

Calm’s Benefits

• Suitable for all levels. Calm's wide variety of meditations caters to both meditation novices and seasoned practitioners
• Enjoy more sleep. Calm’s meditations, tranquil music and sleep timers can help you get a great night’s sleep.
• Family-specific content: Calm includes mindfulness content for kids and a family plan at a lower price point.

Calm - What Could Be Better

• Difficult to navigate: Calm’s user interface makes it challenging to search, sort and find content.
• Limited content: Calm’s tracks are more meditation focused, offering less support on making lifestyle changes to improve sleep habits and mindfulness.
• Higher monthly cost: Calm’s monthly pricing is higher than Aura’s.

Pros and Cons for Calm:

Pro #1: Optional reminders: Reminder to help keep you on track with your meditation goals and make it a habit. 

Pro #2: Sleep Stories. Calm is known for its sleep story collection and they have stories for both kids and adults. 

Con #1: Limited content. The content on Calm is limited to sleep stories and meditations. While Calm does a good job in these areas, they are lacking in providing a complete approach to mental wellness. 

Con #2: Limited access. The free version of Calm has restricted access to the content that is available and some users have found it too restrictive. 

Con #3: Not personalised. The content is not personalised to the user, which can make it difficult to find what you’re looking for, especially for new mediators who might not know what they need yet. 

Calm’s pricing:

Calm’s limited version: Free

For access to all features:

‍Annual Plan: US$ 69.99 with 7-day free trial

Monthly Plan: US$ 14.99

Family Plan: $99/year

Calm vs Aura: Variety of Content

Aura goes beyond meditation offering you the world’s largest premium collection of meditations, stories, sleep tracks, life coaching, cognitive behavioural therapy, breath work, hypnosis, prayer, and much more. 

Calm has a limited library offering only meditation and sleep stories. 

Calm vs Aura: Content Library

Calm has 100’s of quality meditation and sleep stories.

Aura offers over 30,000 pieces of content for you to choose from making it the “Spotify for Mental Wellness”. 

Calm or Aura: Which should you choose?

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Conclusion: Choose Aura for Your Meditation App

While both Aura and Calm offer excellent meditations and high-quality content, Aura takes the lead with their personalised approach to meet your individual needs and their all-in-one approach to mental wellness solutions. Aura offers more value for the user. Aura’s Live meditations add an elevated user experience by bringing together meditation and community. Combine that with the extensive library of over 30,000 pieces of content provided on Aura; Life Coaching, Stories, Hypnotherapy, Breath work, and more. Aura is the all-in-one solution for your meditation practice and mental well-being.