Best Mental Health Apps of 2025: Expert Picks for Stress Awareness Month

If you’ve been interested in meditating but don’t know where to begin, Headspace makes it easy. The app’s simple, welcoming approach takes the pressure off, so even if you’ve never meditated before (or fallen out of the habit, like I did), you can ease back in without feeling overwhelmed.

After months of not meditating, Headspace helped me get back into my daily routine with short, guided sessions. The app offers everything from quick breathing exercises to full meditation courses, plus sleep sounds and even mindfulness-based movement. One of my favorite features is Ebb, a friendly blob-like character that helps you process emotions and navigate tough moments in real time. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, Ebb offers guided exercises and reflections to help you check in with yourself.

Headspace also offers in-app therapy, giving you access to licensed therapists for virtual sessions. This app offers a seamless way to combine meditation, emotional support and therapy in one place.

You can choose the pay up-front for a year at $70 with a 14-day free trial or pay $13 monthly and with a 7-day free trial.

Calm is one of the most well-known mental health apps in the wellness space, with over 100 million downloads. We consider Calm one of the best meditation apps because of its comprehensive offerings, including breathing techniques and calming exercises.

The Calm app is pretty easy to navigate and organized well. When you open the app, you are prompted to take a few deep breaths. Then you select what your main goals are so that your recommendations are tailored to your needs. You also can track statistics within the app, such as how long you have been using the app or how many sessions you’ve completed.

While it’s a free app, it’s the limited version of its service. However, there is a 7-day trial that helps you decide if it’s right for you. After the trial, you have to pay the premium to access the 100 guided meditations, sleep library and masterclasses, which is $14.99/month or $69.99/year. If you are ready to commit to Calm, it’s good to go with the full-year option since it comes out to just under $6/month instead of the full $15. Or you can always stay with the limited free version.

The Moodfit app has a lot to offer, and you can choose how to use this best mental health app. You can track sleep, nutrition, exercise and more during your wellness journey. Moodfit uses tools and sessions that help you assess your feelings, recognize negative thinking and change it.

The Moodfit app has pretty standard navigation. The “notices” tab at the bottom is what I would consider the educational section. There is a lot of good information available, like how your thoughts influence your behavior and feelings, but you will have to take the time to actually read it. Other mental health apps have a more interactive experience with imagery, videos and readouts.

Where I think Moodfit really shines is its analytics. With the easy-to-interpret charts, you can spot patterns in your mood and your activities. You also can track your mood down to the hour — analytic views available are monthly, weekly, daily and hourly. Many apps do have analytics, but Moodfit puts a lot of intention behind helping you find patterns in your behavior and moods.

Talkspace takes our top spot for the best therapy mental health app because it provides 24/7 access to a mental health professional. It’s an affordable online therapy option that gives you more than just helpful guides and videos to watch. You have access to a licensed therapist wherever and whenever you need them. Talkspace is a great option for someone who is not comfortable going into an office or would rather have therapy appointments online.

A 2020 study found that messaging a therapist through Talkspace reduced feelings of anxiety and depression, helping improve mental health. A different study said that using Talkspace’s voice, video and text features also reduced symptoms of PTSD, or post traumatic stress disorder. Note that the researchers of the studies had connections to Talkspace.

Within this mental health app, you have access to video, text and audio chat to communicate with your therapist. However, users note there is a 5-minute cap on audio messages. Talkspace is significantly more expensive than other mental health apps on the list. However, if you’re looking for an app that allows you to talk to a therapist directly, it may be worth the price.

Happify is a free mental health app that focuses entirely on your mood and helps relieve anxiety. Developed by mental health professionals, Happify’s strategies are derived from cognitive behavioral therapy that helps you learn how to recognize and reorient negative thinking.

Happify had the most thorough questionnaire when signing up. I was asked about relationships, employment and medical conditions to help personalize the service. As the name suggests, Happify focuses on positivity and tries to make your journey fun with engaging games. With the relaxation and mindfulness techniques Happify offers, you can boost your mood and relieve anxiety.

The app has a different navigation setup than other apps. Instead of having the navigation bar at the bottom, there’s a three-bar dropdown you have to tap to bring up the menu at the top left, making it just a little more difficult to find things.

MindShift is a free mental health app specifically designed to target anxiety. Categories within the app are broken down into general worry, social anxiety, perfectionism, panic and phobias. This allows the user to personalize which type of anxiety they want to work through.

As the name suggests, MindShift targets your mindset, meaning that it helps you identify what is making you anxious and helps you redirect your thinking to positivity. When you open the app, you’re prompted to rate your daily anxiety score to track over time. The app is pretty easy to use and easier to navigate than other options simply because there is less available. One tool that stood out was the “thought journal” that helps you work through what you’re worried about and how to overcome negative thoughts. “Coping cards” are also available to help you ease anxiety in the moment.

MindShift is much more interactive than other apps, as it relies on you to add anxiety scores and type responses to get the best experience. Other apps are mainly reading-based. If you want the best out of MindShift, you need to interact with the app.

If you’re looking for an app you can use daily to boost your wellness passively, you’ll like Soaak. Soaak is a clinically proven sound therapy app that offers frequency compositions for things like stress relief, mental clarity, better sleep, focus and mood boost. Sound therapy may seem hard to believe, but there is research behind sound stimulation. For example, a 2020 review found that sound therapy can disrupt agitated brain waves and move them into calmer waves.

The Soaak app is easy to use, and I enjoyed how I could turn it on while doing other things. My favorite compositions to use were Energy, Sleep Well and Focus. You can listen to the sound frequencies in three forms: original, nature or music. If you’re new to sound frequency, I recommend first trying the nature or music versions. For example, the energy/high vibration frequency has rain sounds over the sound compositions. 

You can use the Soaak app by playing the sound frequencies or dive deeper into what the app offers with 21-day programs or custom wellness plans. However, the personalized wellness services are significantly more expensive, starting at $750.

Editor’s Note: Shine app was acquired by Headspace in 2022 and the service is no longer available as an application.

The unique experiences of people of color are often excluded from traditional mental health resources. The wellness app industry is traditionally not inclusive and mainly focuses on experiences that white people encounter. Only one in three Black Americans get the mental health care they need. That’s why Shine is the pick for the best mental health app for people of color.

It’s specially designed to target the needs and struggles of people of color, making mental health resources more accessible and inclusive. Shine offers meditations, self-care courses led by experts and monthly virtual workshops. You are also prompted to add a wellness check-in each day and are greeted with motivational messages.

Editor’s Note: Sanvello was acquired by AbleTo and this app has been absorbed into AbleTo’s services.

Sanvello is the best mental health app for stress relief thanks to its full meditation library, guided journeys, health tracking and cognitive behavioral therapy tools. I was pleasantly surprised when using Sanvello. For me, it was a lesser-known option on the list, and it did not disappoint. You can choose what goals you want to target — reduce anxiety, feel happier, build confidence, etc. — and you can select as many goals as you want.

One of my favorite parts of the Sanvello app was how connected it felt when using it. Like other mental health apps, there is an education section. What’s different is how it is presented. Sanvello uses text, videos and audio for a multimedia experience that is much easier to follow and digest. This comes down to preference, as some people prefer to read at their cadence.

The basic version of Sanvello is free. However, there are additional features that the app offers — like coaching and guided journeys — that are not available on the free version. There is a premium option of $8.99/month and a premium plus coaching option for $50/month which offers a coach with live connection capabilities.