Endel vs Brain.fm: 4 Tests To Decide Which Is Better?

Last updated on June 26, 2024

Struggling to choose between Endel and BrainFM?

As a user of both apps for many years, I’ve learnt a lot about their strengths, weaknesses, and key differences. Here’s a quick summary of my learnings about Endel vs BrainFM if you’re short on time:

Criteria	Endel	BrainFM
Technology	Adapts music to your surroundings using AI based on contextual signals like circadian rhythms, location, weather, time of day, heart rate, and more.	Uses rhythmic audio to guide brain activity through entrainment to help you focus, relax, sleep, and meditate.
The Music	Personalized music for various scenarios, but the library is small and it can get repetitive over time.	Thousands of tracks with a patented sound, highly customizable, and never gets boring.
App Experience	Available on various devices, sleek UI, and more focused on style.	Available on various devices, simple UI, and more focused on practicality.
Pricing	$89.99/year	$55.99/year (use code ESM)

My short conclusion is that BrainFM wins over Endel because of the effectiveness of their music, more affordable pricing and a more practical app experience vs Endel.

Want the details on how I got to this conclusion? Read the full comparison between BrainFM and Endel below.

Endel vs BrainFM: Comparison Overview

To provide you with a comprehensive and honest comparison, I assessed BrainFM vs Endel in 4 crucial areas, including music, technology, app experience and pricing, determining the better productivity music app in each category.

1. Technology

Both Endel and BrainFM use their own patented technology to produce their music. Here’s the science behind their music and how it compares with each other.

Endel adapts music to your surroundings

Endel adapts it’s music real-time based on your surroundings to produce personalized music for the users. Their science-backed technology uses AI to look at contextual signals like circadian rhythms (body’s internal clock), location, weather, time of day, heart rate and other factors and generated personalized sounds for you.

In simple words, instead of you choosing what music to play to get to your desired state (focus, relax or sleep), Endel will do the job for you by analyzing your surroundings and deciding what sound to play for you.

BrainFM has created a sound that guides brain activity

The science behind BrainFM’s music is completely different. BrainFM uses rhythmic audio that guides brain activity through a process called entrainment. Brain activity can be shifted via entrainment to help you focus, relax, sleep and meditate much better.

BrainFM’s patented technology helps you get to your desirable mental state (focus, relaxation, meditation or sleep) in minutes by locking in your neurons with the rhythmic patterns emitted from BrainFM’s music.

In simple words, BrainFM created “one-of-a-kind” music that sounds different—and affects you differently—than any other music. There is no other music on the market that does what BrainFM’s music does.

Using this patented technology, their team claims that the electrical activity and blood flow in the brain is the highest while using BrainFM vs others.

Verdict

It’s a tie. Both have their own patented technology with tangible results to back their science and the music generated because of it.

2. The Music

Endel’s music is endless, personalized, and evolving through the day based on your environment. You can define scenarios like deep work, chill, read, meditate, workout etc. and then it will play the sounds accordingly. You can also integrate music created with popular music artists (like Miguel) into your Endel soundscape to bring some variety into your sounds.

Here’s what it sounds like:

While Endel’s music may sound great at the beginning, it actually gets boring and repetitive over time. Their library of music is quite small and you can’t customise it much.

On the other hand, BrainFM has a huge library of music (thousands of tracks) with their patented sound. You will never get bored of their music and there will be new tracks to discover every single time.

What’s more important is that BrainFM’s music works really, really well and gets you into your desired state quickly and consistently. For example – it takes me just <10 minutes to get into focus mode with BrainFM’s music every-single-time.

Here’s what it sounds like:

The level of customisation is insane in BrainFM. You can customise the music to:

• your desired state (focus, relax, sleep or meditate)
• genre of music (lo-fi-, classical, post-rock, ambient, cinematic etc.)
• neural effect (low, medium or high)
• activity (deep work, learning, creativity, chill, unwind etc).

Also, these tracks can be combined with built-in nature sounds like the sound of waves, forest, rain, wind, chimes and bowls.

Verdict

BrainFM is the clear winner here.

Overall, I found BrainFM’s music to be much more interesting and customisable than Endel’s music. Endel’s music seems repetitive and boring after a while because it kinda sounds the same all the time. While BrainFM offers a lot more music choices based on what you prefer – ambient, low-fi, grooves, post rock… you name it.

3. App Experience

Endel’s apps are available on iOS, Android, Web, MacOS, Apple Watch and Alexa. Endel offers a sleek black and white user interface which is very artfully done. It’s fairly simple to use.

Overall, it seems like the Endel experience is built around Apple’s ecosystem. For example, if you don’t have an Apple Watch, you won’t be able to get the most out of their Apple Watch integration which automatically adapts the music based on your heart rate.

Overall, while Endel’s apps are artfully done, I don’t care much about the graphics on the app as much as the music and how effectively it gets me into my desired state.

BrainFM also offers apps for iOS, Android, Alexa and Web. BrainFM offers a simple interface than Endel which focuses more on practicality than style. It’s easy to navigate around the app and play the music that fits your needs.

BrainFM’s apps work equally well for Android users as the Apple users, so it seems like a more universal approach.

BrainFM’s app also offers features like a built-in pomodorro timer, the ability to download tracks for offline access and you can even save your favorite tracks.

Verdict

It’s a tie.

I think both interfaces are great and easy to use. BrainFM’s app interface is more suited towards practicality while Endel’s seems more suited towards style. BrainFM offers more features in the app, while Endel is available natively on more devices like Apple Watch and MacOS. Both apps are good.

4. Pricing

Pricing is another important point to consider when it comes to choosing between BrainFM vs Endel. After all, you want to make sure that the app you choose is going to be affordable for you, so that you can use it without worrying about breaking your budget.

Endel costs $90 per year, while BrainFM costs $56/year (use coupon code ESM).

Using the discount code ESM will get you an additional 20% off your BrainFM subscription, which brings down BrainFM’s annual price to $56/year or just $4.6/year!

Verdict

BrainFM is the winner here.

BrainFM costs $56/year (after discount) while Endel costs $90/year which means that you can save yourself $34/year by choosing BrainFM over Endel! Plus you get more value for money by choosing BrainFM over Endel.

Which is better – BrainFM or Endel?

When you compare Endel vs Brain.fm across all features and pricing, BrainFM is better than Endel. Don’t get me wrong, Endel is great too. But what matters the most to me is the productivity music itself, not how stylish the app is.

I’ve been using BrainFM for 5 years and even wrote a detailed review about BrainFM. My assessment is that BrainFM has a wider variety of music available and is more value for money compared to Endel. It’s a no-nonsense app that just delivers.