Best perimenopause apps, compared on what they actually read
Almost every perimenopause app knows exactly one thing about you: what you typed in this morning. A much smaller group reads the data your watch or ring already recorded overnight. That single difference decides which one is right for you.
The question that decides it
Do you want to log your symptoms, or have them read for you?
Logging apps are diaries. You type in how you slept, how you felt, when you bled, and the app charts it back to you and builds a report for your doctor. They capture things no sensor can: how the day actually felt, what you took, what helped. They also ask something of you every single day, including the days you have least to give, and they know nothing about the nights you forgot.
Reading apps start from the other end. Your watch has been recording all night: your sleep, your resting heart rate, your heart rate variability, and on many devices your overnight temperature too. Perimenopause moves all of them. A reading app looks at what's already there and tells you what changed. If you want the honest limits of that, we wrote about what a wearable can and cannot track.
Both are legitimate. But it's worth knowing what the two apps every roundup puts at the top can actually see. Balance reads nothing at all. Health & Her reads your cycle dates from Apple Health and nothing else, so not your sleep, your heart or your temperature. And of the handful that do read the rest, only one is built around perimenopause specifically and gives you something every morning. That's anna app, which is ours, and the rest of this page is written so you can check that claim rather than take it.
A second question, if you're on the fence: are your cycles still regular? Several of the biggest names here are cycle trackers with a perimenopause mode added on, and their insights are organised around your cycle. That works right up until your cycle stops being predictable, which is roughly the point you started looking for an app.
What each one actually reads
Yes. Anything that writes to Apple Health, or iPhone alone
One evidence-backed thing to focus on each morning, with its research source
7 days free, then £13.99/mo or £99.99/yr in the UK, €14.99/mo or €99.99/yr in the EU
Yes, around 10 device brands
Cycle tracker with a perimenopause mode. Wearable charts organised around your cycle
Clue Plus £7.99/mo
Yes, its own ring
Monthly 22-symptom questionnaire read against your ring's data
Ring, several hundred pounds, plus £5.99/mo or £69.99/yr
Oura only, per its App Store listing
UK online menopause clinic. Can prescribe HRT
£85 first consultation, £45 repeat, £10 prescription fee
No
Manual logging plus a large content library and a doctor report
Free; Balance+ £4.99/mo or £49.99/yr
Apple Health cycle data only
Manual logging, expert content, CBT exercises, pelvic floor
Free
No. Its Apple Watch app was removed
Manual logging plus CBT programmes for hot flushes and sleep
Free; £5.99/mo or £46.99/yr
No
HRT tracking and reminders, Menopause Rating Scale, local-only data
Free; £5.99/mo or £44.99/yr
Watch app, but not for its perimenopause tools
Cycle tracker with a perimenopause score and symptom checker
Premium. Flo publishes no price
No
Community and courses rather than tracking
Free; £7.99/mo or £79/yr
anna app
This is ours, so read it as a claim to check rather than a verdict.
anna app connects to Apple Health rather than to any one brand of device, so whatever you already wear works, as long as it writes its data there. Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit, Oura and Whoop all do, and so do many others, and an iPhone on its own is enough if you don't wear anything at all. From Apple Health it reads more than 30 different signals, sleep and resting heart rate and heart rate variability among them, and overnight temperature if your device records it, and looks at how they move together rather than one at a time. There's nothing to log. Each morning you get one thing to focus on, with the reasoning and the published research it came from. Here is how that differs from the rest of the category.
What sits behind it is a library of more than 1,000 rules drawn from over 300 research papers, each one reviewed by a clinician before it can reach anyone. Every tip links out to its source, so you can read the study rather than trust the app. That is deliberately the opposite of how most of this category works, where you're asked to take the advice on faith. The science behind anna sets out how the rules are built.
Seeing the change you can't feel yet.
Resting heart rate drifting up, variability drifting down, sleep breaking into pieces. These move slowly, which makes them almost impossible to notice from the inside and easy to see in a trend.
Being believed.
You can show your doctor which nights, how often, and what moved alongside them, rather than trying to describe six months from memory.
The days you have nothing spare.
It asks nothing of you. It works whether or not you were up to opening an app.
And plainly, what it isn't. It's iOS only, with no Android date. It doesn't diagnose anything and it isn't a replacement for your doctor. It won't capture what a diary captures, so if you want to record how a day actually felt in your own words, one of the logging apps below is the better tool. And after the free week it's £13.99 a month or £99.99 a year in the UK, and €14.99 a month or €99.99 a year in EU markets, which makes it the most expensive app on this page.
The others that touch your data, and their catches
Clue connects to more devices than anything else here: Apple Watch, Oura, Whoop, Withings, Fitbit, Garmin, Polar and more, pulling temperature trends, sleep duration and, depending on the device, heart rate and variability. It also has a purpose-built perimenopause mode. Both the mode and the wearable connection sit behind Clue Plus at £7.99 a month, which makes it the cheapest way to get wearable data read at all.
The catch is structural, and Clue's own support documentation states it: the wearable charts are organised around your cycle. In perimenopause, your cycle is the thing going unreliable.
Oura is the other serious option and a different shape entirely. Its Menopause Insights feature, which replaced the earlier Perimenopause Check-In in May 2026, pairs a 22-symptom questionnaire you retake monthly with your ring's temperature, heart rate variability and sleep. It's available worldwide on Ring 3 and later, for ages 35 to 60. Your body data is passive but your symptom data is still a questionnaire, so it's a monthly check-in rather than something that meets you each morning. The cost is the ring itself, several hundred pounds, plus membership at £5.99 a month or £69.99 a year. If you already wear an Oura, that's a good reason to use it.
Flo has a watch app and, since May 2026, a real perimenopause feature set including a symptom checker and a menopause timeline. But those tools are self-reported, not read from your wearable, and they're Premium. We can't tell you what Premium costs, because Flo publishes no price anywhere we could find, including in its own help centre.
The best of the diaries
Balance, created by Dr Louise Newson, is where most UK women land first, and around 27,000 UK App Store ratings explain why. The core app is free and Balance+ is £4.99 a month or £49.99 a year. Manual symptom and period logging, a deep medically-reviewed content library that reaches well beyond menopause, and a downloadable health report for your appointment. ORCHA score 83 per cent. If you want a diary and a library, it's the best of them.
Health & Her is free with no paid tier at all, which is rare here. Manual logging, content from named UK clinicians, pelvic floor training and interactive CBT exercises. It holds an ORCHA score of 86 per cent, the highest of any UK menopause app assessed, and it connects to Apple Health for cycle data, though not for sleep, heart rate or temperature. Worth knowing how a free app pays for itself: Health & Her sells perimenopause supplements. Not a criticism, only context worth having when you read what it publishes.
A word on ORCHA, since both lead with it. ORCHA is a private British company that assesses apps for NHS organisations, so it is a UK signal and will mean nothing to you outside Britain. It's a fair quality signal, but it isn't the NHS and it isn't a regulator. The NHS Apps Library closed in 2021 and hasn't been replaced, so no app is currently "NHS approved", whatever you read.
Caria sits in similar territory at £5.99 a month or £46.99 a year, and its structured CBT programmes for hot flushes and sleep are a format few others offer. It used to have an Apple Watch app. It was removed.
Prescriptions, and staying on top of one
Stella, from Vira Health, is the only option here that can actually prescribe, and it is a UK service, so this one is only relevant if you are in Britain. It's a CQC-registered online menopause clinic, which is real healthcare regulation rather than an app score, with GMC-registered clinicians. An initial online appointment is £85, a repeat £45, and a prescription fee £10 on top of medication. If what you need is HRT rather than an app, start here rather than with any of the above.
Crest solves a smaller, sharper problem: remembering and tracking HRT. Free for HRT tracking, reminders and basic logging, with Crest Plus at £5.99 a month or £44.99 a year. It uses the Menopause Rating Scale and stores everything locally on your phone with no account required, which is a real privacy advantage. It's made by an Australian company, so its medication database isn't UK-first, and it's new enough that its rating comes from a handful of people.
Community, and two to skip
perry is community and courses rather than tracking, free with a paid tier at £7.99 a month or £79 a year. If what you're short of is other people in the same year of life, no tracker is going to fix that.
Play Health is still listed on the App Store as we publish, but the company announced in August 2026 that the platform goes inactive on 9 September 2026.
mySysters is free apart from a 79p purchase and has long-standing forums, but its iOS version hasn't been updated since August 2024.
The short answer
- You wear a watch or a ring and want it read for you, daily, with the evidence attached:
- anna app
- You want that as cheaply as possible and your cycles are still fairly regular:
- Clue Plus
- You already own an Oura ring:
- Oura Menopause Insights
- You want a diary and the deepest content library:
- Balance
- You want a diary and you want it free:
- Health & Her
- You need a prescription and you're in the UK:
- Stella
- You're on HRT and want to stay on top of it:
- Crest
- You want people, not charts:
- perry
Two patterns to take away. The apps everyone ranks first read none of your data, or only your cycle dates. And of the ones that do read the rest, only one is built for perimenopause specifically rather than adding it to something else.
Built for one specific situation
If you're wearing something that records your sleep and your heart every night and nobody has told you what any of it means at this stage of life, that's the gap anna app was built for. It reads what's already there through Apple Health, matches the pattern against more than 1,000 clinician-reviewed rules drawn from over 300 research papers, and gives you one clear thing each morning with the source it came from. No diary, no logging. It doesn't diagnose anything and it isn't a replacement for your doctor, and if a diary is what you actually want, one of the others on this page will serve you better.
Frequently asked questions
See what your body is telling you
anna is on iOS across the UK and Europe. Seven days free, then choose monthly or annual.
