What is Endel?
Endel is a sound app made by Endel Sound GmbH in Berlin. It runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Vision Pro, Android, Windows, Alexa speakers and the web. Instead of playing recorded tracks, it generates sound as you listen. Endel calls the engine Endel Pacific.
Its technology page lists the inputs. Depending on the device and what you allow, it can use your bedtime, light levels, the weather and the time of day to estimate your daily rhythm. It can also react to heart rate on Apple Watch, head position for spatial audio, and motion in its Activity soundscapes. Endel's sound team designs the sounds, and the engine rearranges them as the inputs change.
The App Store listing names four classic soundscapes: Focus, Sleep, Relax and Move. Premium adds more, including Study, Colored Noise in nine colours, Dynamic Focus, Nature Elements and a Focus Timer based on work-and-break intervals. Premium also has soundscapes made with artists such as James Blake and Richie Hawtin. Endel's ADHD page adds breathing and attention exercises, an app blocker and a 40 Hz binaural beats track. The listing says all soundscapes work offline.
How much does Endel cost?
| Plan | US | UK | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $19.99 a month | £12.99 a month | No free trial on the monthly plan in Endel's web checkout |
| Yearly | $119.99 a year | £59.99 a year | 7-day free trial. About $10 or £5 a month |
| Lifetime | $249.99 as a gift on endel.io | £249.99 as a gift on endel.io | The US App Store also lists a Lifetime in-app purchase at $124.99 |
| Free Edition | $0 | £0 | Starts if you close the payment screen in the app. Premium soundscapes and features are not included |
Endel prices, checked 19 Oct 2026
Monthly
US: $19.99 a month
UK: £12.99 a month
No free trial on the monthly plan in Endel's web checkout
Yearly
US: $119.99 a year
UK: £59.99 a year
7-day free trial. About $10 or £5 a month
Lifetime
US: $249.99 as a gift on endel.io
UK: £249.99 as a gift on endel.io
The US App Store also lists a Lifetime in-app purchase at $124.99
Free Edition
US: $0
UK: £0
Starts if you close the payment screen in the app. Premium soundscapes and features are not included
Prices checked 19 Oct 2026. The monthly and yearly prices are the ones Endel's web checkout lists for US and UK buyers, and both appear on the US and UK App Store listings. The Lifetime gift prices are from Endel's gift page. We re-check every quarter, next by 19 Jan 2027.
The App Store listings also show cheaper in-app prices, from $2.99 a month and $34.99 a year in the US, and from £2.99 a month and £17.99 a year in the UK. They don't say who gets those, so we treat them as offers, not the standard price. Google Play lists 1-month, 12-month and Lifetime plans without prices.
Endel's web checkout also promises your money back within 30 days, and Endel says verified students in the US get a 66% discount on Premium for 12 months. If you start the yearly trial only to test the app, set a reminder before it renews.
Does Endel work? What the research shows
Endel's main evidence is one peer-reviewed paper: Haruvi and colleagues, 2022, in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. All six authors worked for Arctop, a company that makes software to read focus from brain signals. The paper says Arctop and Endel Sound GmbH funded the study, and that Endel helped design it and supplied the audio. Endel was not involved in the analysis or the writing.
What it found:
- 62 adults aged 18 to 65 in the US did four one-hour sessions at home, each with different audio: Endel's Focus soundscape, a Spotify focus playlist, an Apple Music focus playlist, or silence. The authors analysed data from 51 of them.
- The researchers measured focus with an EEG headband and Arctop's software, calibrated against each person's own ratings of their focus.
- Across the 30-minute task each person chose, focus was higher with Endel than with silence. Neither playlist made a significant difference on average. The Endel effect showed in the 26 people who chose to work, not in the 25 who read, played games or did other tasks.
- In people aged 36 and under, all three kinds of audio beat silence. In people over 36, none did.
What it does not show:
- The paper says it could not separate the effect of personalisation, because it did not test the same soundscapes without it.
- It measured focus during a 30-minute task in each session, over one week. It reports focus only, not sleep, stress or weeks of use.
- We found no independent study of Endel. A PubMed search for "endel" on 19 Oct 2026 returned this paper and no other study of the app.
Endel's claims, checked
Endel's website says more than the paper does. Here is what each claim says, word for word, and what we found.
| Endel says | Where | What we found |
|---|---|---|
| "Backed by neuroscience" | Home page | For Endel itself, the site cites one peer-reviewed study from 2022 and a survey of its own. Arctop, a brain-sensing technology company, ran the study, and Endel helped pay for it. The rest of the science page cites general research on sound. |
| "7x increase in focus" | Home page, citing its white paper | Neither the white paper (a preprint of the same study on bioRxiv) nor the published 2022 paper reports a sevenfold figure. We could not find where it comes from. |
| "×7 better, more consistent focus than productivity music playlists and working in silence" | Science page | The paper's main comparison is Endel against silence. Against the playlists, it found no significant difference from Apple Music's and a higher score than Spotify's for 37% of the session. It reports no 7x figure. |
| "3.6x decrease in stress with regular use" | Home page, citing a survey | The site names the survey method but not how many people took part, when, or what they were asked. We found no published report of it. |
| "Longer, more consistent focus; maintained 95% of listening time" | Home page, citing the same survey | As above. We found no published report of the survey. |
"Backed by neuroscience"
For Endel itself, the site cites one peer-reviewed study from 2022 and a survey of its own. Arctop, a brain-sensing technology company, ran the study, and Endel helped pay for it. The rest of the science page cites general research on sound.
"7x increase in focus"
Home page, citing its white paper
Neither the white paper (a preprint of the same study on bioRxiv) nor the published 2022 paper reports a sevenfold figure. We could not find where it comes from.
"×7 better, more consistent focus than productivity music playlists and working in silence"
The paper's main comparison is Endel against silence. Against the playlists, it found no significant difference from Apple Music's and a higher score than Spotify's for 37% of the session. It reports no 7x figure.
"3.6x decrease in stress with regular use"
The site names the survey method but not how many people took part, when, or what they were asked. We found no published report of it.
"Longer, more consistent focus; maintained 95% of listening time"
Home page, citing the same survey
As above. We found no published report of the survey.
How strong is the evidence?
It is early. One peer-reviewed study, co-funded by Endel and run by the company whose software measured focus, found higher measured focus with Endel than with silence while people worked at home. We found no one else who has repeated it. Endel's headline numbers go further than that paper.
Is Endel legitimate?
Yes, it is a real company with a real app. Endel Sound GmbH is registered in Berlin, and its apps are on the App Store and Google Play. Apple shows Endel as an Editors' Choice, and Endel says it won Apple Watch App of the Year in 2020.
Ratings checked 19 Oct 2026:
- App Store (US): 4.6 out of 5 from about 34,000 ratings.
- App Store (UK): 4.6 out of 5 from about 3,600 ratings.
- Google Play: 4.4 out of 5 from about 22,600 reviews, with more than 1 million downloads.
We couldn't read Endel's Trustpilot page on 19 Oct 2026 because it showed us a bot check, so we don't quote a Trustpilot score. The App Store pages show only a few written reviews. The critical ones there were about having to start a subscription to get the free trial, soundscapes that can sound alike from day to day, the price, and controls some people found confusing.
Endel vs Calm and Brain.fm
Brain.fm plays music written by people, with fast volume pulses added for focus. It costs less than Endel: $14.99 a month or $99.99 a year on its web pricing page (checked 16 Oct 2026). Its published study is also company-run. See our Brain.fm review and Brain.fm pricing.
Calm is mainly a meditation app, with guided sessions, Sleep Stories and music. Endel has a few guided exercises, but it is mainly generated sound. If you want a voice to guide you, Calm fits better. If you want sound to work or sleep to, Endel fits better.
Does Endel work for ADHD?
We don't know of any study of Endel in people with ADHD. A PubMed search for Endel and ADHD on 19 Oct 2026 returned nothing, and the 2022 study excluded volunteers who reported neurological or psychiatric conditions that could affect the results. Endel markets an ADHD toolkit, but we make no ADHD claim for Endel, or for our own focus music. Neither is a treatment for ADHD. This is general information, not medical advice.
Free options
NSDR.co's Focus Mode is free to use and needs no account. It has focus sessions across Deep Work, Study, Creative and Sprint, binaural beats plus a pulse in the music for speakers, ambient sounds to layer underneath, and a Pomodoro timer. It runs in the browser. It does not adapt to your heart rate, the weather or the time of day, it has no offline downloads, and the library is much smaller than Endel's.
If you mainly use Endel for noise, our free noise player has brown, pink, white and green noise with a sleep timer. For a feature-by-feature table, see Endel vs NSDR.
Is Endel worth it?
Pay for Endel if:
- You will use it most days, so the yearly plan gets real use.
- You want sound that changes through the day without you picking tracks.
- You use an Apple Watch, Alexa or Apple TV and want it there too.
- You are happy that its evidence is one study it helped fund.
Try a free option first if:
- You only need background sound now and then.
- Steady noise or simple focus music already works for you.
- You want guided rest between work blocks. NSDR.co has free guided NSDR sessions next to Focus Mode.
FAQ
Is Endel free?
Partly. Endel's App Store listing says you can close the payment screen and "The Free Edition of Endel will start automatically", but its Premium soundscapes and features need a paid plan. On 19 Oct 2026, Endel's web checkout offered a 7-day free trial on the yearly plan, then $119.99 a year in the US or £59.99 in the UK.
Is there an Endel lifetime plan?
Yes. On 19 Oct 2026, Endel's website sold Lifetime access as a gift for $249.99 (£249.99 in the UK), and the US App Store listed a Lifetime in-app purchase at $124.99. The listing does not say when the app offers it.
How do I cancel Endel?
Cancel where you subscribed. On iPhone, iPad or Mac, cancel in your Apple account's subscription settings. On Android, cancel in Google Play under Payments and subscriptions. Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription. Endel's store listings say auto-renewal must be turned off at least 24 hours before the period ends, and that the current period cannot be cancelled once it has started. If you paid on Endel's website, contact Endel at ask@endel.io.
Help pages: cancel a subscription from Apple and cancel a subscription on Google Play.
Sources
- Endel home page, endel.io (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel science page, endel.io/science (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel technology page, endel.io/technology (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel ADHD page, endel.io/adhd (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel web checkout, reached from "Try Today" on endel.io, and its price list for the US and UK (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel gift page, payment.endel.io/gifts (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel for Students, payment.endel.io/students (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel on the US App Store (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel on the UK App Store (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Endel on Google Play (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Haruvi A et al. (2022). Measuring and Modeling the Effect of Audio on Human Focus in Everyday Environments Using Brain-Computer Interface Technology. Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 15:760561. PMID 35153708
- Haruvi A et al. (2021). Modeling The Effect of Background Sounds on Human Focus Using Brain Decoding Technology. bioRxiv preprint
- PubMed search for "endel" (checked 19 Oct 2026)
- Apple Support: cancel a subscription from Apple
- Google Play Help: cancel a subscription on Google Play
NSDR.co is not affiliated with Endel. Endel is a trademark of its owner.