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By Filip Kowalski · Updated September 14, 2026

Endel review (2026): the adaptation is real, the price is a moving target

Endel does the thing it claims, and the soundscape genuinely rebuilds itself as the day moves. It is worth paying for if you use the Focus mode during work, weak value if you bought it to sleep, and impossible to price before you open it. Every figure below comes from the live listings and from Endel’s own pages, checked 2026-09-10.

The price archaeology

Start here, because it is the strangest thing about the product and no listicle mentions it.

Endel has no pricing page. endel.io/pricing returned a 404 on 10 September 2026, and the 404 page itself offers a “Get a Secret Discount” link, which tells you roughly how the company thinks about a list price. The homepage carries no price either. The Google Play description names the three plan shapes (one month, twelve months, lifetime) and no amounts.

The only place Endel publishes numbers is the in-app purchase list on its own App Store page. On 10 September 2026 that list held ten entries carrying eight different prices, three twelve-month plans sharing the top figure:

Plan	Prices shown on the US App Store
1 month	$2.99, $7.49, $19.99
12 months	$34.99, $59.99, $79.99, $119.99
lifetime	$124.99

Google Play, the same day, showed “$6.00 - $249.99 per item”, a ceiling twice the App Store’s lifetime figure.

None of that is fraud. A four-to-one spread on the annual plan is what promotional cohorts and regional tiers look like when you stand outside them. But it means any review quoting “Endel costs X per year” is quoting the offer that one writer happened to see, and it means the number on your signup screen is worth a screenshot, because the person next to you sees a different one.

Where these numbers come from

Endel’s US App Store listing: “Endel: Focus & Sleep Sounds”, subtitled “ADHD Productivity Timer”, version 4.8.8 released 3 September 2026, published by Endel Sound GmbH, 4.6 stars from 34,000 ratings, and the in-app purchase list above.
Endel’s Google Play listing: 4.3 stars from 22,300 reviews, 1 million-plus downloads, last updated 3 August 2026, first released 29 May 2019.
endel.io on the same day, for the four mode cards, the “Backed by neuroscience” heading and the focus and stress figures under it, the stated inputs, the claim of “over 4 million downloads”, and the absence of a price.
Android Police, a burnout-app roundup by Irene Okpanachi published 22 November 2025, the one hands-on account we could open that is not selling anything.

Facts about Endel come from those four sources; the judgements are ours. Slo is our own app and it sits in the same category, so read this with that in mind: its figures come from the app source, version 3.132, on 14 September 2026. No app can guarantee better sleep or better focus.

The ratings tell you which platform to buy on

4.6 from 34,000 on iOS against 4.3 from 22,300 on Android is a wide gap for the same content, and the update dates point the same way: on 10 September the iOS build was a week old and the Android one five weeks. Endel began on Apple, won Apple’s Watch App of the Year in 2020, and still ships a standalone watch app. Android gets a real version and a Wear OS face; it does not get the same attention.

A second gap sits underneath. Endel’s own site claims over 4 million downloads across every platform it runs on. Google Play accounts for 1 million-plus of those. Most Endel users are on an iPhone.

Which mode you bought it for

Endel sells one subscription and a stack of soundscapes, but almost everyone buys it for one of three jobs, and the three are not equally good value.

Focus

The strongest of the three. It runs for a defined stretch while you are awake to notice it, and a generated stream that never repeats has a genuine advantage over a loop you learn by heart. This is also where Endel’s own claims are loudest: the homepage says “Neuroscience shows Endel consistently improves focus and lowers stress” and puts numbers on it, including a 7x increase in focus and a 3.6x decrease in stress. We have not reviewed the work behind those figures and take no position on them. Buy the mode because you like listening to it, not because of a graph.

Relax

The middle case, and the useful evidence about it has nothing to do with sound. Okpanachi’s hands-on account praises two craft decisions: sounds fade out gradually when you switch modes so the next one arrives without a break, and the black-and-white interface spares a stressed user one more screen shouting at them. Neither is adaptation. Both are why people keep the app.

Sleep

The weak one, and the mode most people buy on. You are unconscious for the part of the night when the adaptation should earn its keep. A fixed loop and a generated stream are indistinguishable to a sleeping person, which is exactly why this is the mode you should test against something free before paying anything.

One thing would move Sleep out of the weak slot: a figure for it. Endel publishes focus and stress numbers on its homepage and none for sleep, and no source we could open supplies one.

What Endel does that Slo does not

Generation. Endel builds audio in real time from inputs its site names as time of day, weather, heart rate and location. Slo plays 189 recorded files and lets you set a volume on each, and nothing in it reacts to the clock, the weather or your pulse. It has no stories, no guided meditation, no sleep tracking, no alarms and no recorder. If you liked opening one app, pressing one button and getting a soundscape that had already decided what to be, moving to a manual mixer is a step backwards and you should know that before you install anything.

Endel also runs where we do not: a standalone Apple Watch app that works without the phone, an Alexa skill, Wear OS. And it has commissioned work from James Blake, Grimes, Alan Watts and Richie Hawtin, a catalogue nobody replicates by adding rain files.

Where the review turns negative

The pricing opacity is the main charge and it is not cosmetic. A product that will not publish a price is choosing to price you individually, and the 12-month figures on its own listing show how wide that gets.

The subtitle is the second. “ADHD Productivity Timer” on a Health & Fitness listing is a strong implication for an app that is, in the end, sound. Endel’s own copy is more careful than its subtitle.

Third, the free tier hides behind the paywall. Endel’s own App Store text explains how to reach it: “Skip the payment screen by tapping ‘X’ in the top-right corner of the offer. The Free Edition of Endel will start automatically.” A product that documents the escape hatch in its store listing rather than showing it on the screen has made a choice about who finds it.

If the subscription was the actual problem

Then the honest test is whether you need generated audio at all, and that costs nothing to run.

Slo is our ambient sound app for iPhone, Android and Mac. It ships 189 recorded sounds and 89 of them are free for good. The mixer takes any number of layers with a volume on each, so a pad can sit under brown noise at whatever level you want, and it remembers the balance of every mix you save. The timer runs from 15 minutes to 24 hours and fades the sound out over as much as 2 minutes before it stops. Playback runs as a background service on iPhone and Android, and each sound downloads on first play, so a saved mix still works with the phone offline. The full library is a monthly or yearly subscription or a one-time lifetime purchase, which is the part of this page a $119.99 renewal is competing with. The 180 sounds at slonoise.com play free in a browser with no account.

It answers one case: you would rather set the background yourself and stop thinking about it. It does not answer the adaptive one. For the wider field, including the generated options, our Endel alternatives guide lists six.

Questions people ask

How much does Endel cost?

There is no single answer, which is the finding rather than a dodge. On 10 September 2026 the US App Store listing showed three monthly prices ($2.99, $7.49 and $19.99), four yearly ones ($34.99 to $119.99) and a lifetime purchase at $124.99. Google Play showed a band of $6.00 to $249.99 per item. endel.io publishes no price at all. Whatever price your screen shows is your price.

Does Endel really adapt to heart rate?

Endel says so on its own site, listing time of day, weather, heart rate and location as inputs, and its Apple Watch app won Apple’s Watch App of the Year in 2020. We have not measured how a heart-rate change alters the output, and neither has any source we could open.

Is Endel worth it for sleep?

It is the weakest of the three jobs people buy it for. Sleep is the use where a fixed loop works about as well as a generated one, because you are unconscious for most of it, and it is the one you can test for free before paying anything. Run brown noise or rain for a week from the 180 free browser sounds at slonoise.com, with a timer, and see what you miss.

How many modes does Endel have?

The count depends on which page you read. On 10 September 2026 endel.io showed four (Relax, Focus, Sleep, Activity) while the Google Play description listed six (Relax, Focus, Sleep, Recovery, Study, Move). Treat mode counts in any article, this one included, as a snapshot.

Sources

Endel on the US App Store, listing and in-app purchase list, read 10 September 2026, for the version, the subtitle, the ratings, every price above and the Free Edition instructions
Endel on Google Play, read 10 September 2026, for the Android rating, the download band, the six-mode list, the plan shapes and the purchase range
endel.io, read 10 September 2026, for the four mode cards, the stated inputs, the neuroscience claims and their figures, the download total and the missing pricing page
Android Police, Irene Okpanachi’s burnout-app roundup, 22 November 2025, for the hands-on account of mode transitions and interface design
Slo app source, version 3.132 (sound list, timer, fade-out and store products), and the slonoise.com sound catalogue, reviewed 14 September 2026