5 Best Free Heart Rate Monitor Apps in 2026
5 Best Free Heart Rate Monitor Apps in 2026
Your iPhone can do something surprisingly useful without any extra sensor: measure your pulse using the phone’s camera. 📱❤️
A good heart rate monitor app can now do much more than show an instant heart rate number. Depending on the app, you can track resting heart rate 📊, measure HRV, follow long-term trends 📈, connect Apple Watch data ⌚, monitor stress, analyze sleep and recovery, and even estimate VO2Max.
For this 2026 iPhone comparison, we reviewed:
🫁 BreathNow
📊 Welltory
❤️ Instant Heart Rate
💓 InPulse
🩺 iCardiac
We focused on what each iPhone app actually does, including phone-camera pulse measurement, HRV, Apple Watch and Apple Health integration, trend analysis, wellness tools, useful free functionality and recurring themes in App Store user feedback.
📋 Comparison Table: Best Free Heart Rate Monitor Apps for iPhone in 2026
App | Phone-Camera Heart Rate | HRV | Apple Watch / Apple Health | Key Features | Best For | Free Version |
🫁 BreathNow | ✅ | ✅ RMSSD + SDNN | ✅ Apple Watch + Apple Health | Heart rate and HRV tracking, AI Coach, Tracker, 60+ follow-along exercises, sleep heart-rate drop, 5-minute VO2Max test | Combining measurement with personalized actions to improve cardiovascular fitness, HRV, pulse and BP | ✔ Core features free; Pro available |
📊 Welltory | ✅ | ✅ Advanced HRV analytics | ✅ Apple Watch + Apple Health | HRV, stress, nervous-system insights, sleep, recovery, activity and extensive data integrations | Deep HRV, stress and recovery analysis | ✔ Free download/use; Premium available |
❤️ Instant Heart Rate | ✅ | ⚠️ HRV not a main advertised feature | ❌ Apple Watch / ✅ Apple Health | Fast pulse measurement, waveform, heart-rate zones, trends, tags, StandUp test | Fast and simple instant heart rate checks | ✔ Free download; Premium available |
💓 InPulse | ✅ | ❌ Not currently advertised as a core feature | ✅ Apple Watch + Apple integration | Pulse checks, BP and oxygen logging, reminders, wellness journal, habits and lifestyle content | Simple pulse tracking plus wellness journaling | ✔ Free download; trial/subscription model |
🩺 iCardiac | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ Apple Watch + Apple Health | HR and HRV measurement, wellness journal, BP/SpO2 logging, AI summaries, reports and nutrition tracking | Multi-metric wellness tracking | ✔ Free download/use; Premium available |
📌 Features, subscriptions and integrations can change. Information and US App Store listings were reviewed on September 1, 2026.
⭐ 1. BreathNow — Best All-Round Heart Rate + HRV + Action Companion
📱 Platform: iPhone + Apple Watch
❤️ Best for: People who want to do something useful with their heart-rate and HRV data rather than simply collect numbers.
BreathNow takes a different approach from a conventional heart rate monitor.
It can measure heart rate with the iPhone camera, but it also calculates two important time-domain HRV measurements — RMSSD and SDNN — so users can monitor both pulse and changes in heart-rate variability over time.
The current App Store listing describes BreathNow as a heart rate, HRV, pulse and stress monitor for iPhone and Apple Watch and confirms phone-camera measurement of heart rate and cardio fitness.
Useful features include:
❤️ Phone-camera heart-rate measurement
📉 RMSSD and SDNN HRV measurement
📊 Heart-rate and HRV history in the Tracker
🤖 AI Health Coach that analyzes historical heart-rate and HRV data and helps create customized plans to lower resting heart rate and increase HRV
🫁 Guided slow breathing
💨 IMST breathing
🧘 Meditation and relaxation
🚶 Walking and aerobic exercise
💪 Isometric exercises
🎥 More than 60 follow-along video exercises
🩺 Blood-pressure tracking in addition to heart rate
⌚ Apple Watch integration
🌙 Analysis of heart-rate drop during sleep for Apple Watch users
🏃 5-minute home VO2Max test co-developed with scientists from the University of Cambridge
One of BreathNow’s biggest differences is its track → act → track again approach.
Instead of simply telling you that your resting pulse was 76 BPM or that your HRV changed, the AI Coach can examine your historical data and suggest activities such as breathing, meditation, walking or other exercise. You can then track subsequent heart rate, HRV or blood-pressure changes to see which activities appear most useful for you personally.
BreathNow’s official materials state that its AI Coach uses health information such as heart rate, HRV, blood pressure, sleep and activity to provide personalized recommendations.
🧪 Two HRV measurements instead of just an HRV “score”
Another useful distinction is that BreathNow provides RMSSD and SDNN rather than relying only on a proprietary stress score.
RMSSD is especially sensitive to short-term beat-to-beat variability and parasympathetic activity, while SDNN represents overall variability during the measurement period. Different measurement durations and devices can produce different values, so HRV is generally most useful when you compare your own measurements under similar conditions over time rather than comparing your number with somebody else’s.
🤖 From heart-rate data to a personalized plan
This is where BreathNow goes beyond many simple pulse apps.
The AI Coach can review historical heart rate and HRV information from the Tracker and help build a customized plan aimed at objectives such as:
❤️ lowering resting heart rate
📈 increasing HRV
🩺 improving blood-pressure trends
🫁 reducing stress
🏃 improving cardiovascular fitness
The app then provides a library of more than 60 follow-along exercise and relaxation videos, covering breathing, meditation, aerobic activity, isometric exercises, stretching and other heart-health activities.
🌙 Heart-rate drop during sleep
For Apple Watch owners, BreathNow can also analyze how much heart rate declines during sleep.
This can provide an additional view of nighttime cardiovascular and autonomic recovery. Research has found that an unusually blunted heart-rate dip during sleep was independently associated with higher all-cause mortality in an ambulatory-monitoring cohort, although this is an observational association and the metric should not be treated as a diagnosis by itself.
BreathNow displays this sleep heart-rate-drop metric for Apple Watch users as one of its cardiovascular indicators.
🏃 A 5-minute VO2Max test at home
BreathNow also includes something unusual for a heart rate app: a guided 5-minute VO2Max step test co-developed with scientists from the University of Cambridge.
You perform a standardized stepping exercise at home, measure your heart-rate response and receive an estimate of your cardiorespiratory fitness. The test is designed to make VO2Max-style fitness assessment more accessible without laboratory equipment.
👍 What do users say?
The US App Store currently shows 4.7/5 from approximately 2,800 ratings.
Positive feedback frequently focuses on the combination of tracking with breathing and relaxation exercises, while some users specifically mention the Tracker and ability to observe changes in pulse or blood pressure.
📌 Best choice for: People who want heart rate + HRV + Apple Watch + blood pressure + VO2Max tracking combined with practical activities and AI-assisted plans.
📊 2. Welltory — Best for Deep HRV, Stress and Recovery Analytics
📱 Platform: iPhone + Apple Watch
❤️ Best for: People who enjoy detailed HRV, stress, recovery and lifestyle data.
Welltory is probably the most analytics-heavy app in this comparison.
Its central concept is heart rate variability. The app combines HRV with information from Apple Watch, Apple Health and a large ecosystem of other apps and devices to create reports around stress, nervous-system balance, recovery, sleep and activity.
Useful features include:
❤️ Heart-rate tracking
📉 HRV analysis
📱 Phone-camera HRV and heart-rate measurements
⌚ Apple Watch integration
🍎 Apple Health integration
😴 Detailed sleep analysis
🧠 Stress and nervous-system reports
🏃 Workout and recovery analysis
🩺 Blood-pressure logging and reports
🔗 Connections with a large number of third-party apps and devices
One important clarification: Welltory explicitly states that it does not measure blood pressure through the phone camera or Apple Watch. Blood pressure has to come from another measurement source or be entered into the app.
👍 What do users say?
Welltory currently has approximately 133,000 US App Store ratings and a 4.7/5 score, giving it one of the largest review bases in this comparison.
Recent positive reviews particularly praise the depth of health data, Apple Watch integration, sleep information and nervous-system insights. Critical feedback includes users who find some recommendations too general, occasional synchronization or interface issues, and complaints related to subscriptions or promotional messages.
The trade-off is therefore straightforward: Welltory offers enormous amounts of data, but users who simply want to check their pulse may find it more complex than necessary.
📌 Best choice for: Data-oriented users who want extensive HRV, stress, sleep and recovery analysis.
❤️ 3. Instant Heart Rate — Best for Fast, Simple Pulse Checks
📱 Platform: iPhone
❤️ Best for: People who mainly want a fast instant heart rate reading without a complex health platform.
Instant Heart Rate is one of the oldest and most widely reviewed camera-based pulse apps on the App Store.
The concept is extremely simple: place your fingertip over the iPhone camera and flash, and the app detects tiny changes in light caused by blood flow through the finger. It then converts those changes into an estimated heart rate.
The current App Store listing advertises a heart-rate result in less than 10 seconds.
Useful features include:
❤️ Camera-based heart-rate measurement
⚡ Fast instant heart rate checks
📈 Real-time pulse waveform
🏃 Heart-rate activity-zone calculator
🔁 Continuous or automatic-stop modes
🏷️ Tags for previous measurements
📊 Long-term data storage
🧍 StandUp fatigue and fitness test
🍎 Apple Health support
Its biggest strength is simplicity.
If your main question is simply, “What is my pulse right now?”, Instant Heart Rate requires fewer layers of analysis than Welltory or BreathNow.
The main limitations are that the current iPhone listing does not advertise Apple Watch support and does not position detailed HRV analysis as a central feature.
👍 What do users say?
Instant Heart Rate has the highest App Store rating in this comparison at approximately 4.9/5 from 229,000 ratings.
Recent users have described it as simple and useful and some report that measurements appear close to their expectations. Other reviews report failed pulse scans or problems unlocking paid Premium functionality, so — as with every camera-based heart rate monitor — unusual measurements are worth repeating rather than accepting automatically.
📌 Best choice for: Someone who mainly wants a straightforward instant heart rate and pulse tracker.
💓 4. InPulse — Best for Simple Pulse Tracking + Wellness Journal
📱 Platform: iPhone + Apple Watch
❤️ Best for: People who want pulse measurement together with a simple wellness journal.
InPulse uses the iPhone camera and flash for heart-rate measurement.
You place a fingertip over the camera and the app uses contact photoplethysmography to identify blood-volume pulsations and estimate your pulse.
Useful features include:
❤️ Phone-camera heart-rate measurement
📊 Pulse history
⏰ Measurement reminders
🩺 Blood-pressure logging
🫁 Oxygen-saturation logging
🏷️ Tags and comments
🧠 Emotional-wellbeing tools
✅ Habit tracking
🥗 Lifestyle and diet content
⌚ Apple ecosystem integration
An important distinction is hidden in the wording.
InPulse measures heart rate with the camera, but its App Store description says users log blood pressure and record oxygen saturation. It should therefore not be interpreted as an iPhone camera blood-pressure monitor.
👍 What do users say?
InPulse currently has approximately 178,000 ratings and a 4.6/5 App Store score.
Some users report comparing InPulse with manual pulse checks or other monitors and getting very similar readings. Others report noticeable differences compared with Apple Watch or complain that they expected the app to measure blood pressure directly, while the developer itself confirms that its heart-rate function uses contact PPG and that the app is not intended for medical use.
That mixed feedback reinforces an important point: camera pulse measurement can be useful, but it should not be confused with medical monitoring.
📌 Best choice for: Users who want quick pulse checks combined with reminders, journaling and general wellness features.
🩺 5. iCardiac — Wellness Journal
📱 Platform: iPhone + Apple Watch
❤️ Best for: People who want heart rate and HRV combined with a broader health journal.
iCardiac combines camera-based heart-rate measurement with HRV, Apple Watch data and tracking of several other wellness measurements.
The current App Store description specifically states that it can measure heart rate and HRV using either the phone camera or Apple Watch.
Useful features include:
❤️ Heart-rate measurement
📉 HRV measurement
📱 Phone-camera measurement
⌚ Apple Watch integration
🍎 Apple Health sync
🩺 Blood-pressure logging
🫁 Oxygen-saturation records
🌡️ Temperature records
🙂 Mood and activity logging
🤖 AI-generated summaries
🥗 AI nutrition tracking from meal photos
📄 Shareable reports
Again, terminology matters.
The current listing specifically describes direct phone-camera measurement for heart rate and HRV while describing blood pressure, temperature and SpO2 as measurements that can be kept in its wellness journal. Users should not interpret the app as meaning that an iPhone camera can medically measure blood pressure.
👍 What do users say?
iCardiac currently has approximately 29,000 ratings with a 4.7/5 score.
Positive reviewers mention convenience and having wellness information in one place. Critical reviews include reports of unsuccessful camera readings and confusion over marketing around measurements such as blood pressure or glucose, making it particularly important to distinguish between values the app measures directly and information it merely records or imports.
📌 Best choice for: Users who want heart rate and HRV inside a broader multi-metric wellness dashboard.
🧪❤️ Why Tracking Your Heart Rate Matters — Backed by Research
Heart rate is one of the simplest physiological signals to measure.
But modern research suggests that resting heart rate, HRV and cardiorespiratory fitness can each reveal different pieces of the cardiovascular-health puzzle.
The important principle is:
❤️ Measure consistently.
📊 Look for trends.
👩⚕️ Do not use a consumer app to diagnose yourself.
📚❤️ 1. Resting Heart Rate Is Associated With Long-Term Cardiovascular Risk
A major study published in Heart Rhythm in 2026 analyzed 108,257 adults with an average follow-up of 8.53 years.
Compared with participants in the low resting-heart-rate group, those with high resting heart rate had:
⚠️ 58% higher non-accidental mortality risk
❤️ 71% higher cardiovascular mortality risk
The association became particularly strong when elevated resting heart rate appeared together with high predicted cardiovascular risk. This was an observational study, so it demonstrates association rather than proving that lowering heart rate itself will produce an equivalent reduction in mortality.
📄 Research: Shen A. et al., Impact of resting heart rate and predicted cardiovascular risk on mortality in nearly 110,000 Chinese adults, Heart Rhythm, 2026.
📚📱 2. Smartphone Cameras Can Measure Resting Heart Rate — With Important Limitations
A 2024 review in Frontiers in Digital Health examined 10 studies comparing contact-based smartphone PPG heart-rate measurement with ECG.
Across those studies, smartphone measurements showed good to very strong agreement with ECG in healthy participants. However, the researchers emphasized that most testing was performed under highly controlled conditions and called for more validation in real-world situations and clinical populations.
That is the right way to think about a camera heart rate monitor:
✅ Useful for convenient resting pulse measurements and trends
❌ Not a replacement for ECG or professional medical assessment
📄 Research: Validity of resting heart rate derived from contact-based smartphone photoplethysmography compared with electrocardiography: a scoping review and checklist for optimal acquisition and reporting, Frontiers in Digital Health, 2024.
📚📉 3. HRV Contains Useful Information — But Interpretation Is Complicated
HRV measures the variation in time between successive heartbeats.
A 2025 cardiovascular review concluded that HRV has been reported to predict mortality and cardiovascular events in several patient populations. At the same time, the authors emphasized that differences in recording techniques, analysis methods and lack of randomized evidence currently limit how HRV can be used for clinical treatment decisions.
A separate 2024 meta-analysis of 27 observational studies in people following myocardial infarction found that low SDNN had the strongest association among the evaluated HRV indices with cardiac mortality. That finding applies to a specific clinical population and should not be converted into a universal “good” or “bad” consumer-app HRV threshold.
📄 Research: Heart rate variability in patients with cardiovascular diseases, Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 2025.
📄 Research: Which indices of heart rate variability are the best predictors of mortality after acute myocardial infarction?, Journal of Electrocardiology, 2024.
📚🏃 4. VO2Max and Cardiorespiratory Fitness May Tell You Even More
Heart rate becomes particularly useful when it is combined with exercise response.
A major 2024 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine combined evidence representing more than 20.9 million observations from 199 cohort studies.
Compared with low cardiorespiratory fitness, high fitness was associated with substantially lower all-cause mortality. Every additional 1-MET of cardiorespiratory fitness was associated with approximately an 11%–17% lower risk of all-cause mortality, although these are observational associations rather than proof of causation.
This helps explain why tracking VO2Max or another standardized measure of cardiorespiratory fitness can add information beyond simply checking your resting pulse.
📄 Research: Lang J.J. et al., Cardiorespiratory fitness is a strong and consistent predictor of morbidity and mortality among adults, British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2024.
🍎⌚ Apple Health and Apple Watch Integration
For iPhone users, the difference between a standalone pulse app and an integrated heart-health app can become much more obvious once you own an Apple Watch.
🫁 BreathNow
✅ Apple Health integration
✅ Apple Watch app
✅ Heart-rate and HRV analysis
✅ HRV-based stress monitoring
✅ Sleep heart-rate-drop analysis
✅ BP history from Apple Health
✅ Guided breathing directly on Apple Watch
🤖 AI Coach can use historical health data to personalize recommendations.
📊 Welltory
✅ Apple Health
✅ Extensive Apple Watch integration
✅ HRV and nervous-system analytics
✅ Sleep, activity and recovery analysis
Its strength is turning large amounts of Apple Watch information into detailed reports.
❤️ Instant Heart Rate
✅ Apple Health support
❌ Current App Store listing is iPhone-only and does not advertise an Apple Watch app.
It works best as a standalone instant heart rate and pulse-measurement tool.
💓 InPulse
✅ iPhone
✅ Apple Watch app listed
✅ Apple ecosystem integration
Its main focus remains phone-camera pulse measurement plus wellness journaling.
🩺 iCardiac
✅ Apple Health
✅ Apple Watch
✅ Heart rate and HRV from the camera or Apple Watch
Its wider journal can combine these measurements with other manually recorded or synchronized wellness data.
💡❤️ How to Get More Value From a Heart Rate Monitor App
✅ 1. Measure resting heart rate under similar conditions
Your pulse changes with movement, stress, caffeine, temperature, illness, hydration and many other factors.
For trend tracking, try measuring at roughly the same time and under similar conditions.
🛏️ 2. Consider measuring in the morning
The American Heart Association says that for many adults, a resting heart rate between 60 and 100 BPM is considered typical and notes that a useful time to check it is in the morning before getting out of bed or having coffee. Well-trained or highly active people can have resting rates substantially below 60 BPM.
📱 3. Use the camera correctly
Place your fingertip gently over the camera and flash.
Pressing too hard can reduce blood flow, while cold fingers, movement and poor positioning can interfere with the PPG signal.
🔁 4. Repeat an unexpected reading
If your normal resting pulse is around 65 BPM and your app suddenly says 130 BPM, do not automatically assume either that the reading is correct or that it is meaningless.
Sit quietly, repeat the measurement and, if appropriate, compare it with your Apple Watch, another validated device or a manual pulse check.
📊 5. Focus on your trend, not one number
A heart rate of 72 today and 76 tomorrow tells you very little on its own.
A gradual change in resting heart rate over several weeks — particularly when examined together with sleep, exercise, illness, stress or medication changes — can be much more informative.
📉 6. Treat HRV as a personal trend
HRV varies substantially between individuals and between measurement methods.
Instead of competing with somebody else’s RMSSD or SDNN, compare your measurements under similar conditions and watch how your personal baseline changes.
👩⚕️ 7. Know when an app is not enough
An unusual pulse reading is not a diagnosis.
If you repeatedly see unexpectedly high or low resting heart rate, or if a heart-rate change occurs together with chest pain, fainting, severe shortness of breath or other concerning symptoms, seek appropriate medical assessment rather than relying on an app.
🏁❤️ Final Recommendation
There is no single best iPhone heart rate monitor app for everybody.
🫁 If you want the broadest combination of heart rate, HRV, AI coaching, Apple Watch, blood-pressure tracking, 60+ follow-along exercises and VO2Max, BreathNow provides the most action-oriented feature set among these five.
📊 If your priority is deep HRV, sleep, nervous-system and recovery analytics across a large ecosystem of connected data, Welltory is particularly strong.
❤️ If all you really want is to put your finger on your phone and obtain a fast instant heart rate, Instant Heart Rate keeps the experience relatively simple.
💓 If you want a camera pulse monitor combined with reminders and a general wellness journal, InPulse is worth considering.
🩺 If you want phone-camera heart rate and HRV inside a wider multi-metric wellness journal, iCardiac offers an extensive set of tracking tools.
The biggest distinction is what happens after you measure.
❤️ A simple pulse app tells you your heart rate.
📊 A good tracker helps you understand the trend.
🫁 An action-oriented app can help you test what activities are associated with better heart rate, HRV, blood-pressure and fitness trends.
✨ Measure consistently. Track intelligently. Take action.
❓❤️ Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the best free heart rate monitor app for iPhone in 2026?
BreathNow is a strong choice if you want camera heart-rate measurement together with HRV, Apple Watch, AI coaching, blood-pressure tracking, exercises and VO2Max. Instant Heart Rate may be preferable if your main priority is simply getting a fast pulse reading.
2. Can an iPhone really measure heart rate with its camera?
Yes, compatible apps can use photoplethysmography to detect small changes in fingertip blood volume and estimate your heart rate. Research suggests smartphone PPG can agree well with ECG for resting heart rate in healthy people under controlled conditions, but it is not a replacement for medical-grade assessment.
3. Are heart rate monitor apps accurate?
Camera-based apps can provide useful resting pulse estimates when the finger is positioned correctly and the user remains still. Accuracy can be affected by movement, cold fingers, pressure on the camera and other real-world factors, so unexpected readings should be repeated or checked with another device.
4. What is the difference between heart rate and HRV?
Heart rate describes how many times your heart beats per minute, while HRV describes how much the interval between successive beats varies. HRV can provide additional information about autonomic regulation, stress and recovery, but it should generally be interpreted as a personal trend rather than a diagnostic score.
5. Which heart rate monitor app measures HRV?
BreathNow measures both RMSSD and SDNN, while Welltory and iCardiac also provide substantial HRV functionality. Instant Heart Rate and InPulse currently focus more heavily on pulse measurement than detailed HRV analysis.
6. Can a heart rate app help lower my resting pulse?
An app cannot guarantee a lower resting heart rate, but it can help you track patterns and support activities such as appropriate aerobic exercise, relaxation or breathing that may influence heart rate over time. BreathNow goes further by using historical heart-rate and HRV information to help create customized activity plans and then allowing users to track their response.
7. Is Instant Heart Rate free?
Instant Heart Rate is free to download and includes in-app purchases, with Premium functionality available through a subscription. Its main attraction is the ability to obtain a fast camera-based pulse reading without requiring a dedicated heart-rate sensor.
8. What is a normal resting heart rate?
For most adults, the American Heart Association describes a resting heart rate of about 60–100 beats per minute as typical, although trained athletes and very active people may be lower. Your individual rate is affected by fitness, stress, medication, temperature, illness and other factors, so persistent changes can matter more than a single reading.
9. Can a heart rate monitor app diagnose an abnormal heart rhythm?
No, a normal phone-camera pulse app should not be used to diagnose arrhythmias or other heart conditions. If you receive repeatedly unusual readings or experience concerning symptoms, seek medical assessment rather than relying on the app.
10. How is BreathNow different from a standard pulse app?
BreathNow combines phone-camera heart rate with RMSSD and SDNN HRV, AI analysis of historical data, Apple Watch insights, blood-pressure tracking, more than 60 follow-along exercises and a 5-minute home VO2Max test co-developed with University of Cambridge scientists. Its goal is to move beyond simply showing a pulse number and help users track which healthy activities are associated with better heart-rate, HRV, blood-pressure and cardiovascular-fitness trends.
