SchlummerSchlummer comparison
A Pillow Alternative Without an Apple Watch
Pillow is at its best when you wear an Apple Watch to bed. If you do, it is hard to beat. This page is for the people who do not, and do not intend to start.
The difference is the sensor, not the software
Pillow's own material centres on automatic sleep tracking with the Apple Watch: you wear the watch and the app detects and analyses the night without you starting anything. That means a motion signal from your wrist and a heart rate, measured on your body.
Schlummer has neither. It has a microphone on your nightstand, and it hears the room. Everything downstream follows from that: the sleep curve, the score and the alarm decision are built from how loud the room was, sampled every five seconds. It is a weaker signal about your body and a much better signal about the noises you make.
| Schlummer | Pillow | |
|---|---|---|
| What it reads | Room loudness from the iPhone microphone | Apple Watch motion and heart rate, per its material |
| Do you wear anything | No | An Apple Watch, for the full experience |
| Starting the night | You tap start | Automatic detection with a watch |
| Heart rate | No | Yes, with a watch |
| Audio of your snoring | Yes, clips you can play and export, free | Audio recording is offered in the app |
| Apple Health | Writes the night, does not read back | Integrated |
| Devices | iPhone only | iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch |
| One time purchase | Yes, Lifetime at 69.99 EUR | Premium subscription |
What you give up by not wearing anything
This is the honest part, and it should be said plainly.
- No heart rate. Nothing about your cardiac night, and no metric derived from it.
- No automatic detection. If you forget to press start, the night is not recorded. A watch does not forget.
- A weaker stage estimate. Movement and pulse are a closer proxy for sleep depth than the loudness of the room. Both are proxies, but they are not equally good ones.
- Nothing when you are away from the phone. A watch tracks a nap on the sofa. A nightstand app does not.
What you get instead
- Nothing on your wrist. No strap, no charging routine split between day and night, and no device to buy.
- Audio evidence, free. The loud moments of the night, recorded as short clips, in the free version.
- An app that stops asking for money. A one time Lifetime purchase exists next to the monthly and yearly plans.
- Nothing on a server. No account, no sync, no backup. Your nights are on your phone and stay there.
Which one to pick
If you already wear an Apple Watch overnight, buy the app that uses it. Pillow will give you more about your body than a microphone ever can, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.
If wearing something to bed is the reason you have not started tracking at all, then the comparison that matters is not Pillow against Schlummer. It is Schlummer against nothing, and a nightstand phone that records your snoring and wakes you a little more gently is a real step up from nothing.
Track the night with the phone you already charge next to the bed.
Free to download. iPhone, iOS 17 or later. No wearable involved.
Details about Pillow were taken from its public App Store listing and product pages on 2 September 2026. Features and prices change, so check before you buy. Pillow is not affiliated with Schlummer. Schlummer is a wellness app and not a medical device.
Where to go next
- Phone, watch and sleep lab side by side, and what each one is blind to.
- How the wake window decides without a heart rate to look at.
- Sleep Cycle compared, the other phone first tracker.