The landscape
Migraine apps fall into four loose categories: diary trackers (Migraine Buddy is the canonical option), trigger-discovery tools (N1-Headache by Curelator), forecast apps (Hermly), and prescription digital therapeutics (a separate regulatory category). Each one optimises for a different question — there's no single "best" app because the questions are different.
The comparisons below are written to help you pick the right tool for your actual goal, not to maximise Hermly's win rate. Where another app does something better, we say so. Several readers will end this page deciding a competitor is the better choice — that's the right outcome if it matches your situation.
Head-to-head
Best migraine apps in 2026 — an honest field guide
Five migraine apps, what each does best, and where they trade off. Hermly is one of them, and we'll say where the others beat us.
Hermly vs Migraine Buddy — an honest comparison
Migraine Buddy has ~10M users and a deep diary. Hermly is privacy-first, on-device, iOS-native. A feature-by-feature comparison without marketing.
Hermly vs N1-Headache — different tools, different jobs
N1-Headache (by Curelator) is a clinical-research-rooted N-of-1 trigger discovery tool. Hermly is a forecast app. Here's an honest side-by-side.
What none of these apps do
Worth saying upfront, because the marketing for some competitors implies otherwise:
- None of them diagnose migraine — diagnosis requires a clinician.
- None of them treat migraine — that's the regulatory line for medical devices, which consumer apps intentionally aren't.
- None of them are 100% accurate. The prospective AUC ceiling in this field is around 0.66 personalised after a month — see AUC-ROC for the honest read.
- None of them are a substitute for a neurologist or headache specialist for severe, chronic, or changing patterns.
How to pick
- Deepest attack diary — Migraine Buddy.
- Per-user trigger discovery analytics — N1-Headache.
- On-device forecasting + iOS-native surfaces — Hermly.
- Zero subscription + minimal features — an open-source diary.
- Clinician-prescribed digital therapeutic — whichever your clinician recommends.
The honest follow-up: many users do well with two apps. Migraine Buddy + Hermly (deep diary + forecast) is a reasonable pairing; N1-Headache + Hermly (discovery + forecast) is another. They don't conflict — most read from Apple Health rather than overwriting each other.
Common questions
Are these comparisons sponsored?
No. None of the competitor apps pay or partner with Hermly. These pages are independent editorial comparisons. If a competitor disputes a specific claim, we'll publish a correction — accuracy matters more than competitive narrative.
Why aren't there more competitor comparisons?
We compare against apps where the comparison is actually useful — the competitor solves an adjacent problem and the differences matter. Comparisons against apps that aren't meaningfully different from each other (most generic diary apps) wouldn't help readers.
Will Hermly ever come to Android?
Not in the current roadmap. Hermly's design is built around iOS-native surfaces (Widgets, Live Activity, Dynamic Island, Apple Watch, Action Button, App Intents). Replicating that on Android would be a separate product, not a port — and we'd rather do iOS well than two platforms partially.