Migraine tracker apps compared: what each one actually measures, and what none of them see

Short answer

Most migraine tracker apps do one job: they hold the record of an attack you have already noticed. Migraine Buddy has the deepest attack log and the largest community in this category, and for most people it is the obvious first stop. Broad symptom trackers such as Bearable cover more of your life but less of the attack. Wearables — Apple Watch, Garmin, Oura — measure your body continuously but have no migraine form at all. None of them, including the wearables, can tell you an attack is coming.

If you have kept a diary for months and still cannot see a pattern, that is not laziness and not a failure of attention. You are being asked to remember, after the pain has started, what your body was doing a day earlier — and the research on self-reported triggers shows that some of what people log as a trigger was already the attack beginning. The record is doing its job. It is the wrong instrument for that particular question.

So the useful question is not "which migraine app is best" but "which kind of record am I missing?" This guide splits the category into four kinds, compares nine tools on what each records and what it cannot see, answers the Oura question directly, and sets out what a neurologist wants you to bring.

Note: this article compares consumer wellness tools against their makers' own published descriptions. It is not medical advice, and none of these apps diagnoses, treats or predicts migraine. A sudden, severe or new kind of headache needs urgent care — see the red flags further down.

What kinds of migraine tracker are there, and which do you actually need?

Searching "migraine tracker app" returns a flat list, as if everything on it were the same product. There are four distinct kinds of tool, and they answer different questions.

1. Attack diaries. You open the app when an attack starts or ends and fill in a form: when it began, how long it lasted, how bad it was, what else you felt, what you took, what you suspect set it off. Migraine Buddy, Migraine Monitor and N1-Headache are in this family. This is the record clinicians recognise. The UK's NICE guideline on headaches (CG150) asks people to record "the frequency, duration and severity of headaches," associated symptoms, "all prescribed and over the counter medications taken to relieve headaches," possible precipitants and the relationship of headaches to menstruation — for a minimum of eight weeks.

2. Broad symptom trackers. Not built for migraine specifically. You define what you want to log — symptoms, mood, energy, sleep, food, medication, habits — and the app looks for correlations across all of it. Bearable is the best-known example. The strength is coverage; the cost is that the attack gets recorded in less detail than a dedicated migraine form would capture.

3. Wearable and physiology apps. Apple Watch, Garmin, Oura and Welltory sit here, measuring heart rate, heart rate variability (HRV), sleep, skin temperature and activity continuously or on a schedule. None has a migraine attack form. What they hold is a record of your body that exists whether or not you opened an app — including on the days before an attack.

4. Clinic-grade and research tools. Diaries supplied by a headache clinic, validated questionnaires, research platforms. Usually paper or a portal, structured around what the clinician needs.

Knowing which kind you need is most of the decision. A 2022 evaluation of 55 commercially available headache apps found they cluster around either self-monitoring or stress management rather than doing both well, and concluded that "patients' needs should be used to inform app selection." The same year, an assessment of 201 apps for headache, insomnia and pain found around 90% were free to download but only about half of the headache and pain apps were "truly free" to use.

The quality problem is older. A 2014 systematic review of 38 headache diary apps set seven minimum criteria for an app a clinician could reasonably prescribe. None of the 38 met all seven, only 18% had been built with any clinical headache expertise, and none reported psychometric properties. The market has matured since, but the lesson has not expired: an app store ranking is not evidence.

If you are still working out whether what you have is migraine at all, start with telling a headache from a migraine, because the answer changes which of these tools is worth your time.

Migraine tracker apps compared: what each one records and what it does not see

The table below covers the nine tools people most often weigh against each other, plus the option many headache clinics still hand out. Every row was checked against the vendor's own website or app-store listing on 6 October 2026. Features and plans change, so check before you commit. We state whether a free tier and a paid plan exist, not what they cost.

Sources for each row, all checked on 6 October 2026: the Migraine Buddy site and its US App Store and Google Play listings; Migraine Monitor on the App Store and on Google Play; N1-Headache and its App Store listing; Bearable and its App Store listing; Apple's support page on Cycle Tracking on Apple Watch; Garmin's Body Battery manual page; Oura's support article on Using Tags and its Symptom Radar page; and Welltory's help centre on camera measurements, the Today screen, data sources and data export.

Read the table down the second and third columns rather than across the rows. What an app records is a design decision; what it cannot see is one too, and the second is usually invisible in the marketing.

How does each one work, and who does it tend to suit?

Migraine Buddy

Migraine Buddy is the category leader, and the numbers are not close. Its App Store description opens by asking why "4 million migraine sufferers trust Migraine Buddy" and elsewhere describes "a vibrant community of 3.5 million users" — two figures in one listing, so treat both as marketing. What is checkable: on 6 October 2026 the US App Store showed 41,944 ratings averaging 4.8, and Google Play over a million downloads with 67,100 reviews, also at 4.8. No other app here is in the same order of magnitude.

What it records is an attack, in detail and on your own terms: "Glean insights from shared triggers, symptoms, medications, and relief methods. Customize the tool to record your unique migraine attributes." It records sleep automatically and produces two exports built for appointments — a diary export described as "comprehensive reports you can share with your healthcare professional," and an MIR export for discussions with a neurologist.

Its premium AI features are easy to over-read. "Attack Duration" uses your recorded attacks to show "how long your current attack may last." Smart suggestions propose symptoms and triggers while you fill in the form. A seven-day weather forecast shows pressure and temperature changes, with the listing's own careful wording that these are "variations in atmospheric pressure, which some users associate with their migraine attacks." None of that forecasts when an attack will begin.

Who it tends to suit: anyone whose main need is a thorough, exportable attack record, and anyone who wants other people with migraine to talk to. If you install one thing from this list, this is the default.

Migraine Monitor

Migraine Monitor, from RPM Healthcare, calls itself "the first headache monitoring app that connects you to your doctor" and says it was "designed by neurologists." The feature list is a clean attack diary — duration, severity, aura and stress, a medication tracker that records effectiveness, a trigger tracker, shareable reports, automatic weather data and an anonymous community. The distinguishing feature is the clinician link: it "allows your doctor to follow your progress between visits," with its own "Headache Navigator" as an alternative.

The caution is maintenance. On 6 October 2026 the US App Store listed version 4.2.9, last updated 31 March 2023, with 226 ratings; the Google Play listing was updated in August 2026, with 367 reviews and 10,000+ downloads.

Who it tends to suit: people whose clinic actually uses the doctor-connection feature. Ask your clinic first — that is the reason to choose it.

N1-Headache

N1-Headache, from Curelator, is built around a different idea. Instead of asking you to name triggers, it asks for a short daily diary — "activities, habits, moods, sleep cycle, and more" in five minutes a day, on days with and without headache — then tells you which of your own factors are associated with higher risk, which appear protective, and which show no association at all: "Scientifically discover everyday factors that can increase, decrease or have no association with your risk of migraine." The output is a PDF Personal Analytical Report for a clinician.

That third category — no association — is the interesting part, and almost nothing else offers it. Most trigger tracking generates suspects and never clears any. Two caveats: the diary has to be kept on good days too, or the comparison does not work; and the US App Store version was last updated 18 January 2023.

Who it tends to suit: people with a long list of suspected triggers who want to know which survive scrutiny. For the underlying problem with trigger lists, see your migraine trigger might be the migraine already starting.

Bearable

Bearable is a general symptom tracker popular with people who have migraine — the company says it was "founded by someone with chronic migraines." It lets you "track your mental health, physical health, symptoms, health conditions, sleep, energy levels, fatigue, pain, chronic illness, menstrual cycle and more," log pain level, location and duration, and define custom metrics, then looks for correlations with sleep, food, weather, stress, medication and habits.

The free tier covers unlimited custom tracking and weekly reports; correlation reports, experiments and goals sit behind an optional subscription. It syncs from Apple Health and Google Fit and connects directly to Fitbit; Oura, Garmin and Samsung Health are listed as planned. On 6 October 2026 its App Store listing showed 6,423 ratings at 4.8.

The trade-off is specificity: a migraine in Bearable is pain plus whatever fields you built, not the structured attack record a dedicated migraine app produces.

Who it tends to suit: people whose migraine sits alongside other conditions and who want one app for all of it.

Apple Health and Apple Watch

Apple has no migraine product. It has a hub and a sensor set, and both matter.

The watch records heart rate, HRV, sleep and activity continuously. The Health app is where almost every other app here reads from or writes to — Migraine Buddy's listing notes it "optionally integrates with the Health app for a holistic health view," and Bearable and Welltory sync through it. That makes Apple Health the quiet connective tissue of the category.

Symptom logging exists, but narrowly: Apple's support page describes it inside Cycle Tracking, where you "can add flow information and record symptoms such as headaches or cramps." That is a checkbox against a date — not how long it lasted, how bad it was, or what you took.

Who it tends to suit: everyone with an iPhone, as plumbing. Nobody, as their migraine record.

Garmin (Body Battery)

Body Battery is a feature on compatible Garmin watches, not a stand-alone app. Garmin's manual puts it this way: "Like a gas gauge on a car, it indicates your amount of available reserve energy." The watch combines HRV, stress level, sleep quality and activity into a score from 5 to 100, and Garmin advises wearing it while sleeping for more accurate results. The manual notes that food and stimulants such as caffeine have no impact on the number.

There is no headache logging at all. Garmin's role in a migraine setup is a continuous physiological record read next to a diary kept elsewhere — and Welltory's help centre lists Garmin stress level, energy level, sleep and heart rate among the data a direct Garmin connection can send.

Who it tends to suit: people who already wear a Garmin and want an all-day picture of drain and recharge beside their attack log.

Oura

Oura is the wearable people most often ask about in connection with migraine, so it is worth being exact.

It measures sleep, resting heart rate, HRV, skin temperature, respiratory rate and inactive time. Its tagging system is more useful here than most people realise: Oura says tags "help you track how certain factors affect your Sleep, Readiness, and Activity Scores," and offers "over 100 searchable tags, including alcohol, caffeine, fasting, headache, late meal, meditation, melatonin, nap, sauna, sick, stress, travel, and more," plus custom tags. Tags appear on your Trends graphs, and tapping one highlights every day it occurs.

So you can mark headache days in Oura and see them against your own sleep and temperature history. What you cannot do is record an attack: no duration field, no severity scale, no aura, no medication log, no report. "Migraine" is not among the preset tags.

Symptom Radar is a separate question. Oura describes it as helping "identify early signs of strain in your body," built from skin temperature, respiratory rate, resting heart rate, HRV and inactive time, where "a deviation in a combination of these metrics over time may indicate that you should focus on rest." Oura also states it "may not work optimally with pre-existing medical conditions" and that the ring "is not intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions." It is not a migraine feature, and Oura does not present it as one.

Who it tends to suit: people who already wear the ring and want headache days visible on the same timeline as their sleep and temperature.

Welltory

Welltory is in this comparison for one reason, and the limit comes first: Welltory has no migraine diary and no attack log. No attack form, no pain score, no aura field, no trigger analysis, no migraine report. If a migraine tracker is what you are shopping for, Welltory is not one, and nothing below changes that.

What it holds is the other layer. You can take a short HRV and heart-rate reading with the phone camera — a fingertip over the camera and flash, using photoplethysmography, where the help centre notes "the flashlight acts as the light source, and the camera serves as the photodetector." The same page is explicit that this "is not an electrocardiogram (ECG) recording; it cannot replace an ECG or a doctor's consultation," and that the free version allows one measurement a day. Readings can also come from a compatible chest strap, an Apple Watch or a Samsung Watch.

On an iPhone paired with an Apple Watch or Oura ring, the Today screen adds all-day stress minutes, recovery, sleep analysis and a Battery score; the help centre states it "is exclusively available to iOS platform users who use Apple Watch or Oura." When the app flags a stress stretch and asks "What happened?", you can tap a tag, type a few words or talk. Tags collect in My Patterns; notes go to your Journal. From the web app you can export a CSV.

Who it tends to suit: people who already keep a migraine diary elsewhere and want to see what their nervous system was doing in the days around their attacks. Not people looking for their first and only migraine app.

A paper or printable diary

The oldest option is the one no clinic has failed to read. NICE CG150 asks for a minimum of eight weeks covering frequency, duration and severity, associated symptoms, every prescribed and over-the-counter medication taken for the headache, possible precipitants and the relationship to menstruation. That fits on a grid. Our headache diary guide has a version you can copy.

One point against paper, from outside migraine research: in a BMJ study of 80 adults with chronic pain, paper-diary users reported 90% compliance while their actual compliance — measured with an instrumented binder — was 11%; an electronic diary achieved 94%. Back-filling is the specific risk, and it matters most when timing is the question.

Who it tends to suit: anyone whose clinic asks for it, anyone who finds apps draining, and anyone who wants one page a doctor can read in a minute.

The gap every one of these shares: they record what you report

Migraine Buddy, Migraine Monitor, N1-Headache, Bearable and a paper diary all record what you noticed and chose to write down, after you noticed it. Apple Watch, Garmin, Oura and Welltory all record what your body was doing, whether or not you noticed anything. Almost nothing joins the two.

That matters because of where migraine starts. The clinical description of migraine includes a prodrome — an early phase that can begin hours or days before the pain, with fatigue, yawning, neck pain, light sensitivity, food cravings or mood changes. In the screening period of the PRODROME trial, 920 adults who said they could recognise their own prodrome logged 4,802 events over 60 days; 81.5% of those prodromes were followed by headache within one to six hours. How common a prodrome is overall is far less settled: a 2022 meta-analysis put it at about 29% in population studies and 66% in clinic patients, with extreme heterogeneity and high risk of bias in most included studies.

And some of what people confidently log as a trigger appears to be that early phase already running. In a 2021 study of 53 people, self-reported triggers lined up with early attack symptoms: bright light agreed with premonitory light sensitivity, and skipping meals or craving particular foods agreed with premonitory food cravings. Craving chocolate and then getting a migraine does not establish that the chocolate did it. More on this in migraine triggers: what the evidence supports.

So the attack diary, by design, starts recording at roughly the moment the useful information has already passed. That is not a flaw in Migraine Buddy or in you. It is what a self-report instrument is.

What does a continuous physiological record add? Less than the marketing implies, and more than nothing. In a 12-week Fitbit study of people with tension-type headache or migraine, 350 participants had enough data for the main analysis: on headache days they slept more, moved less and had a lower maximum heart rate, and the more a headache disrupted daily life, the further both fell. That is what an attack does to a day, not a signal of what came before one — the honest state of the art for passive data.

The practical upshot is that the two layers answer different questions, and most people have only one of them:

For what the physiological layer does and does not show in migraine specifically, our sibling guide covers the research and our own data: migraine and your nervous system.

Can an Oura ring track migraines? What the evidence on wearables actually shows

This question comes up constantly, so here is the direct answer in three parts.

Can Oura record that you had a migraine? Partly. There is a preset headache tag among its 100-plus tags, and you can create a custom "migraine" one. Tagged days show on your Trends graphs next to sleep, HRV, temperature and resting heart rate. That is a marker, not a diary — no duration, no severity, no medication, no report.

Does Oura have a migraine feature? No. Symptom Radar is about strain and early illness, and Oura states it "may not work optimally with pre-existing medical conditions." Oura makes no migraine claim, and we found no published study of Oura and migraine prediction.

Can any wearable predict a migraine attack? Not at a level that would be useful to you. Four studies define the current edge, and they agree more than the headlines suggest:

Put together: personalised models on small, motivated samples sometimes do well; nothing generalises; the one study reporting sensitivity missed most attacks; no model has been independently validated. No consumer wearable on sale today — Oura, Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit or any other — is running one of these models, and none is cleared to tell you an attack is coming. Any product implying otherwise is claiming more than the research supports. We cover the claims and the studies behind them in can a smartwatch predict a migraine?

What a wearable can give you is context after the fact: whether your attacks cluster after short nights, whether a heavy stretch preceded a bad week, whether your resting heart rate has drifted. That is information for a conversation, not an alarm.

Which migraine tracker fits your situation?

You were recently diagnosed and need a record a doctor will accept. Start with a dedicated attack diary — Migraine Buddy is the safe default, or paper if your clinic supplied a form. Cover at least eight weeks, per NICE CG150, and count medication days from day one.

You have a neurologist appointment coming up. Choose for the export, not the interface. Migraine Buddy produces a diary export and an MIR export; N1-Headache a PDF report; Bearable exports data; paper can be photographed. In a qualitative analysis of 945 consumer reviews across 15 headache apps, "ease with exportation and viewing data" emerged as one of four themes critical to users — a polite way of saying that apps which trap your data get abandoned.

You suspect a stress or let-down pattern. This is where an attack diary alone struggles, because the suspected cause sits a day or two before the entry. Pair a diary with something that records your body continuously — an Apple Watch, Garmin, Oura, or Welltory on an iPhone with one of those — and read the days before the attack, not the day of it.

You already keep a diary and want the layer underneath it. You do not need a second diary, only the physiological record and a way to look at both together.

You want the least possible daily effort. A wearable you already own records without you doing anything — add a headache tag on the days it happens and nothing else. Or keep a four-line paper diary: date, how long, how bad, what you took. The best migraine tracker is the one you will still be using in March.

What a doctor actually wants to see from a tracker

Fewer screens than you think, and one number you probably are not counting.

Migraine days per month. Not attacks, not headaches — migraine days. This figure drives most treatment decisions, including whether prevention is on the table.

Days of acute medication use, by medicine. Frequent use of acute headache medicines can itself make headaches more frequent, which the International Classification of Headache Disorders calls medication-overuse headache. Your clinician needs the count, split by drug class. NICE CG150 asks specifically for "all prescribed and over the counter medications taken to relieve headaches."

Duration, severity and features. How long attacks last untreated, how bad they are, whether pain is one-sided or pulsating, whether routine activity makes it worse, and which associated symptoms occur — nausea, vomiting, light and sound sensitivity. These are the criteria migraine is diagnosed by.

Aura, separately. Whether it happens, what it is, how long it lasts, and whether it precedes the pain. Flag it rather than burying it in notes.

The relationship to menstruation, if relevant. NICE asks for it, and the formal definition of menstrual migraine requires a prospective diary showing attacks in a specific window across at least two in three cycles.

What changed since the last visit — frequency, character, response to treatment.

Notably absent: HRV charts, readiness scores, Body Battery and step counts. Those belong in the conversation as context — "my attacks tend to follow short nights, here is a month of sleep data next to my diary" — not as the headline. A clinician can act on six migraine days and nine medication days. They cannot act on a readiness score.

Living with migraine tracking: the questions people ask next

Is Migraine Buddy free, and what does the paid tier add?

Migraine Buddy is free to download and free to use for attack tracking, with a paid tier called MBplus. According to its App Store listing on 6 October 2026, the premium tier adds personalised insights and an adjustable action plan, coaching plans developed by experts, detailed reports and "actionable programs," plus the "Attack Duration" feature that estimates how long a current attack may last. The core attack log, the diary and MIR exports, and the community are available without paying. Features move between tiers over time, so check the listing before assuming.

Do I need a migraine app at all, or is paper enough?

Paper is enough for the job clinicians need, and NICE CG150 does not specify a format. The argument for an app is timing: in a BMJ study of 80 adults with chronic pain, paper diaries reported as 90% complete were actually 11% complete, while an electronic diary reached 94%. If screens are part of what makes your days harder, paper wins. If you tend to fill the week in on Sunday, a timestamp does something paper cannot.

Can an app tell me what my migraine triggers are?

It can narrow the list, and N1-Headache is the one here designed to do so — including telling you which factors show no association with your attacks. Two cautions: correlation across your own days is not proof of cause, and a month is rarely enough data; and some things people log as triggers appear to be early symptoms of the attack already underway, since in a 2021 study self-reported light and food triggers matched premonitory light sensitivity and food cravings. Bring candidate triggers to your clinician as a question, not a conclusion.

Are any of these apps medical devices?

None of them is. Migraine Buddy's listing states it "is a self-management tool and should not replace professional medical advice." Migraine Monitor says its content "does not, under any circumstances, constitute medical advice or diagnosis." Oura says its ring "is not intended for use in the diagnosis of disease or other conditions." Welltory is a general wellness product with no regulatory clearance. The authors of the 2026 forecasting study made the same point from the research side: a tool that actually predicted attacks would likely be regulated as a medical device.

Could my headaches be something other than migraine?

Most are exactly what they seem, but some headaches need urgent attention. Call 911 or go to an emergency department for a sudden, explosive headache ("the worst headache of my life"); a headache with new weakness, numbness, confusion, trouble speaking or vision loss; a headache with fever and a stiff neck; or a headache after a head injury. See a doctor promptly for a headache pattern that is new or has changed, a new headache in later life, a headache that is steadily worsening, or one that changes with posture or is set off by coughing or straining. These are drawn from the SNNOOP10 red-flag list published in Neurology. No tracker substitutes for that judgment.

How to bring this up with your doctor

Lead with the count. "I had seven migraine days last month and took a triptan on five of them." Frequency and medication days, in the first sentence.

Bring one page, not the app. Migraine Buddy's diary and MIR exports, N1-Headache's PDF report, a Bearable export or a photographed paper diary all work. Scrolling through an app during a ten-minute appointment uses the appointment.

Say which parts are measured and which are remembered. "These entries I logged at the time; this sleep data came from my watch; the trigger column is my guess." Clinicians weigh those differently, and they are right to.

Present physiological data as context. "My attacks tend to follow nights under six hours — here is the month" is useful. "My HRV says a migraine is coming" is not supported by the evidence, and a good clinician will say so.

Ask these directly. Is this episodic or chronic migraine? Given my number of migraine days, does preventive treatment make sense? Am I at risk of medication-overuse headache? Is there a diary format your clinic prefers, and does it read any app's reports?

Mention aura and anything autonomic separately. Dizziness or a racing heart on standing is its own topic and may deserve its own evaluation.

If you feel dismissed, ask what would change their assessment, and whether a referral to a headache specialist is possible.

How Welltory helps — and what it cannot do

The limits first, because they decide whether any of this is relevant to you.

Welltory is a general wellness product, not a medical device. It does not diagnose, predict, monitor, prevent, treat or mitigate migraine or any other condition. And the limit that matters in a comparison of migraine trackers: our data has no migraine diary and no attack log. No attack form, no pain score, no aura field, no trigger analysis, no migraine report, no appointment PDF. If you want one app that does what a migraine tracker does, choose from the first four rows of the table and keep Welltory, if at all, for the layer underneath.

What Welltory adds is that layer, and only that:

A morning reading taken the same way each day. A short HRV and heart-rate measurement with the phone camera — a fingertip over the camera and flash, held still — or from a compatible chest strap, Apple Watch or Samsung Watch. It is one snapshot, not continuous monitoring, and it is not an ECG. See how accurate HRV from a phone camera is.

The days before, as your own trend. On an iPhone with an Apple Watch or Oura ring, the Today screen adds all-day stress minutes and stress stretches, recovery, sleep analysis and a Battery score, compared against your own recent baseline.

A tag on what was happening. When Welltory flags a stress stretch and asks "What happened?", you can tap a tag, type a few words or talk: "migraine," "aura," "short night," "period day 1." Notes added with the plus icon go to your Journal (Premium). These are context markers beside your physiology, not a substitute for the dated, structured attack record a clinician needs.

My Patterns, after a few weeks. Once a tag has recurred enough times, My Patterns shows which tagged situations tend to come before stressful stretches, which tags are rare but hit hard, day-of-week trends and heart rate during those stretches. Tags there come only from stress and rest stretches, so it needs an iPhone with an Apple Watch or Oura ring; notes added on their own do not feed it.

A CSV for your appointment. From the web app: Dashboard → choose a chart → Export. Bring it alongside your diary, not instead of it.

Whatever turns up, treat it for what it is: patterns are associations to discuss with your doctor, not proof of a trigger and not a warning system.

Further reading. If you already use Migraine Buddy and want to know how to run the two side by side — what to log where, and how to read them together without duplicating work — see pairing Migraine Buddy with a nervous-system tracker.

How we made it

Made with AI tools, then edited and fact-checked by the Welltory team. See our Editorial & AI policy.

Data analysis by Jane Smorodnikova, co-founder of Welltory and the person who built the methodology behind how we read physiological data.

Written by Tatsiana Yashyna.

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