What's the best migraine app overall?

There's no single answer — the right app depends on what you want. For exhaustive diary tracking, Migraine Buddy. For trigger discovery, N1-Headache. For on-device forecasting and iOS-native surfaces, Hermly. For a simple symptom log without a paywall, Migraine Diary.

Are any migraine apps FDA-cleared?

Very few. Most migraine apps including Hermly are wellness apps, not medical devices. Some apps in the prescription digital therapeutic space (RelivePT, certain neuromodulation tools) have FDA clearance but they're a different category.

Should I pay for a migraine app?

Free tiers are usually enough for basic tracking. Paid tiers add doctor reports, deeper analytics, or premium features. Hermly's free tier includes the prediction model and widgets — the paywall is for doctor reports, Spouse Mode, and the large widget.

Do migraine apps actually help?

Tracking apps measurably improve doctor visits by giving you structured data. Forecast apps may help with planning if the prediction quality is honest. Neither is a substitute for medical care, and any app claiming to 'treat' migraine should be treated with suspicion.

Best migraine apps in 2026 — an honest field guide

There are roughly two dozen migraine apps in active development in mid-2026. Most fall into one of four categories: diary trackers, trigger discovery tools, forecast apps, and acute intervention tools. This page covers the five most credible options across those categories, with honest notes on where each fits — including where competitors beat Hermly.

This isn’t a ranking. The “best” app depends on what you’re actually trying to do.

1. Migraine Buddy — for exhaustive diary tracking

The oldest and largest, with ~10M users. Migraine Buddy lets you log nearly every facet of an attack: pain, symptoms, triggers, medication, weather, photos, and free-text notes. Available on both iOS and Android.

Best for: people who want the deepest attack diary in the category and don’t mind logging extensively.

Trade-offs: data is uploaded to Healint’s servers for the community-scale weather correlations. Native iOS integration is limited (widgets but no full Apple Watch app of comparable depth).

For the detailed comparison: Hermly vs Migraine Buddy.

2. N1-Headache — for trigger discovery

By Curelator, with a strong clinical research pedigree (40+ peer-reviewed publications). The methodology is N-of-1 trigger analysis — surfacing per-user trigger associations across 70+ tracked daily factors using multivariate statistics.

Best for: people who want rigorous statistical trigger discovery and are willing to log many daily factors over months.

Trade-offs: heavy daily logging burden. Server-side analytics (your data is uploaded). Output is descriptive (what your triggers are) rather than predictive (what your tomorrow looks like).

For the detailed comparison: Hermly vs N1-Headache.

3. Hermly — for on-device forecasting

The newest of the five. Hermly is built around a 24-hour migraine risk forecast that runs entirely on your iPhone. It reads HealthKit (sleep, HRV, heart rate, wrist temperature), Apple Health cycle data, WeatherKit barometric pressure, and your own attack history. Output is a single 0–100 number plus the three factors that moved it.

Best for: iOS users who want low-friction sensor-driven forecasting and want their raw health data to stay on-device.

Trade-offs: iOS only. Newer with a smaller user base. The attack diary is streamlined (pain, meds, notes) rather than exhaustive.

Where Migraine Buddy and N1-Headache beat us: depth of attack-level logging (Migraine Buddy) and per-user trigger discovery analytics (N1-Headache). If those matter more than forecasting and on-device privacy, those are the better choices.

For the methodology: /how-it-works.

4. Migraine Diary (open-source / no-paywall options)

Several open-source or no-paywall apps exist for users who just want a basic symptom log without subscription overhead. “Migraine Diary” by various developers and the open-source “Migraine Tracker” projects fall here. They’re functional and free; they don’t have prediction models or advanced analytics.

Best for: people who want a no-fuss log and don’t trust proprietary apps with their health data.

Trade-offs: usually limited maintenance. UI quality varies. No prediction, no doctor report generation, no Apple Watch support of substance.

5. Prescription digital therapeutics

This category includes apps prescribed by clinicians — some FDA-cleared as Class II medical devices for migraine-adjacent indications (chronic pain, CBT for migraine, biofeedback). These are obtained via a prescription, often through a specialty pharmacy, and aren’t directly comparable to consumer apps.

Best for: patients in active care whose clinician has prescribed one specifically.

Trade-offs: prescription required. Insurance coverage varies widely. Not consumer-comparable.

How to choose

A practical decision tree:

Want exhaustive logging? → Migraine Buddy.
Want per-trigger statistical discovery? → N1-Headache.
Want a forecast that runs on-device? → Hermly.
Want zero subscription and minimal features? → an open-source diary.
Have your clinician recommend a specific app? → use what they recommend.

You can also use more than one. They don’t conflict — most read from Apple Health rather than overwriting each other.

A word on apps that overpromise

Treat with extreme suspicion any app that claims:

“95% accuracy” in predicting migraines. Peer-reviewed prospective models top out around 0.66 AUC personalised. Anything significantly higher in published literature has been label-leak or overfit. See our methodology for the honest numbers.
“Stops migraines” without FDA clearance. Acute and preventive migraine treatment is medicine. Apps that claim otherwise are either making a regulatory mistake or misleading users.
“Identifies your true triggers” with unrealistic confidence. Trigger analysis is genuinely useful for some people, but the Holsteen 2020 cohort found that self-reported trigger exposure predicted poorly at the population level (C-statistic 0.56).

What no app can do

Diagnose your migraines (only a clinician can).
Replace a neurologist or headache specialist for severe or changing patterns.
Substitute for the right preventive or acute medication when one is indicated.

What apps can do is make your patterns more legible — to you and to your doctor. The best app is the one whose specific affordances match your situation.