Is Loam meditation app free?

Yes. Loam is free to download and free to start. Core tools like breathing exercises, journaling, daily check-ins, and streak tracking are always available at no cost, along with a set of complete free programs. Premium unlocks the full guided session library, monthly custom Moments, and advanced features.

What makes Loam different from Calm or Headspace?

Loam composes every session around how you feel right now — the voice, the pace, and the therapeutic approach all adapt in real time. Instead of just a catalog, Loam ships 600+ guided sessions across 77 structured programs (Burnout Recovery, Anxiety Toolkit, Sleep Stories, NSDR, ADHD-friendly practice, Mindful Menopause, and more) AND generates a new meditation tailored to your current emotional state on demand. It also ships with Sage, a wellness coach trained in Motivational Interviewing, and 21 breathing exercises with haptic-synced animations.

Is Loam safe to use alongside therapy or medication?

Yes. Loam is designed with clear clinical guardrails. Sessions never claim to diagnose or treat mental illness, never tell you to stop therapy or medication, and always defer to professional care for symptoms that warrant it. Content is constrained to evidence-based techniques (ACT, self-compassion, MBSR, somatic experiencing, CBT-I) and a carefully reviewed voice and pacing library. Meditation is a complement to care, not a replacement. If you're in crisis, please contact a local crisis line or your care provider.

What research is Loam based on?

Every therapeutic technique in Loam cites primary peer-reviewed research. Loam's breathing library is grounded in work by Balban et al. (Stanford, 2023), Zaccaro et al. (2018), and Lehrer & Gevirtz (2014). The Moment's therapeutic architecture draws on polyvagal theory (Porges), ACT (Hayes), self-compassion (Neff), MBSR (Kabat-Zinn), and somatic experiencing (Levine). A full citation library is available at /research.

Who are the voices in Loam?

Loam uses 13 research-selected voices. Each voice is chosen for the emotional state it handles best, based on polyvagal theory, ASMR research, and voice psychology — low resonant voices for grounding, warm bright voices for light moods, measured voices for heavy ones. Loam automatically picks the voice the research says will work for your current state, or you can override manually.

Does Loam work offline?

Core tools work offline, including downloaded meditations, breathing exercises, and the journal. The Moment — Loam's custom meditation composer — requires an internet connection at the moment of generation, because the session is composed on the fly. Once generated, every Moment is saved to your library and can be replayed offline without using any credits.

Does Loam have sleep stories?

Yes. Loam includes narrated sleep stories, sleep soundscapes, and wind-down rituals. The sleep content uses anti-storytelling techniques — structured to prevent the mind from latching on to narrative — based on CBT-I stimulus control research (Bootzin & Epstein, 2011).

What breathing exercises does Loam offer?

Loam offers 21 breathing techniques across beginner, intermediate, and advanced tiers, including Box Breathing (4-4-4-4), 4-7-8 Relaxation, the Physiological Sigh, Daily Cyclic Sighing, Coherent (Resonance) Breathing at 5.5-5.5, Alternate Nostril, Ujjayi, Kapalbhati, and the Wim Hof method. Every technique links to the peer-reviewed research that validates it, so you can read the study if you want to.

Will I lose my streak if I miss a day?

No. Loam's streak system is explicitly wellness-first: streaks pause, they don't break. You get two streak freezes, you can mark rest days, and the app never shames you for missing a session. Anxious users are especially vulnerable to streak mechanics turning self-care into another source of pressure — Loam is designed to avoid that failure mode.

COMPARISONS

Every claim cited · Every technique peer-reviewed

Loam vs Aura — the honest version.

Name: Loam
Availability: InStock
Author: Loam

Aura and Loam are the two apps in this category most serious about personalization — and they chase it in opposite ways. Written by the team behind Loam, and designed to be fair to Aura.

Updated July 2026·6 min read

The short answer: Aura personalizes by selection, Loam personalizes by generation. Aura is a marketplace — a very large catalog of tracks from thousands of independent coaches, therapists, and creators, with mood check-ins that tune a recommendation feed to you. Loam is a workshop — a smaller, research-curated first-party library, plus The Moment, which composes a brand new session around the feeling you type. If you want breadth and human variety, Aura. If you want coherence and made-for-this-moment, Loam.

Where Aura is the better choice

Aura's marketplace model gives it range no curated app can match: beyond meditation you'll find CBT-informed tracks, hypnosis, coaching, stories, prayer, and live sessions from real teachers — and an award-winner's polish (it's a past Apple editorial pick, as their listing notes). If part of what you're seeking is discovering teachers — different voices, different styles, a feed that surfaces someone new — Aura is built precisely for that. Its mood tracking is mature, and the breadth means one subscription covers many modalities you'd otherwise need separate apps for.

You want many human teachers, not one app's voice.
You want to explore modalities beyond meditation — coaching, CBT-style tracks, hypnotherapy — under one roof.
You enjoy feed-style discovery and community features.

Where Loam is the better choice

The marketplace model has a flip side: variable production quality, inconsistent claims, and a browsing burden — somebody still has to pick from the feed, and that somebody is you at 2am. Loam's bet is the opposite: a deliberately curated library (600+ sessions across 77 programs, every technique citing primary research, 13 research-selected voices) and, when nothing on the shelf fits, a session generated for your exact state — not selected from inventory. Add Sage for the nights you'd rather talk than meditate, and a free tier designed to be genuinely usable (ten complete programs, no card).

You want the session made for how you feel right now, not a feed to scroll.
Research transparency matters to you — you want to see the paper behind the technique.
You prefer one coherent, calm design over a marketplace's variety.

Pricing shape

Both apps anchor around $60–70/year with monthly options. The structural difference: Aura is subscription-first for nearly everything; Loam keeps a permanent free tier plus pay-as-you-go credits for AI generation, so light users can stay free indefinitely. (Our free-tier comparison covers this honestly, our own paywall included.)

The practical decision

Try Aura if the marketplace excites you — a week in the feed will tell you whether the variety energizes or overwhelms. Try Loam free and type one honest sentence into The Moment — that single generated session is the fastest way to know whether made-for-you meditation is a gimmick or the thing you've been missing. We are, obviously, betting on the second.

Loam vs Aura — the honest version.

Where Aura is the better choice

Where Loam is the better choice

Pricing shape

The practical decision

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