Calm - Sleep, Meditate, Relax: What Users Actually Complain About
Overview
The primary pain points revolve around subscription pricing and restrictive paywalls, followed by billing issues and poor customer support. Technical problems and user experience issues also significantly impact user satisfaction.
Top complaints
1. Subscription Pricing Concerns
cluster 1/7Users find the subscription pricing too expensive and feel misled about what they're paying for.
“£228 a year if you pay per month !!!!!!!!!! WTAF !!!!!!! ARE ****ING SERIOUS????????”
“I thought when I paid for a year in advance that I would get hypnotherapy sessions or a nice array of guided meditations”
2. Restrictive Paywall
cluster 2/7The app offers very limited free content with most features requiring a subscription.
“Barely any free features, you have to purchase the subscription to use anything”
“almost all tracks are behind a paywall, the rest you have to provide an email address.”
“Very deceptive! It said there was free content, and there isn't any at all! I wouldn't give them 1 red cent for a subscr”
3. Billing and Payment Problems
cluster 3/7Users experience issues with subscription management, unauthorized charges, and payment processing.
“I cancelled my subscription days ago and they keep charging my account!!!”
“got code for 3 free months. only offered 30 days in app instead. fake promises”
“does not make it easy to find and difficult to cancel”
4. Poor Customer Support
cluster 4/7Users report unresponsive customer service and inability to get assistance when needed.
“NO RESPONSE FOR ASSISTANCE. I've been unable to log in after renewing my paid subscription. Repeatedly reached out to Su”
“I have tried everything to get help. They just ignore my emails, chats and requests.”
5. App Performance and Technical Issues
cluster 5/7The app suffers from technical glitches, poor audio quality, and performance problems.
“The audio in guided meditations keeps glitching and stuttering, with the guide's voice briefly turning into a distorted ”
“The app easily takes 10 seconds, sometimes half a minute or more to launch”
“poor sound, could not run it. it was a new install. what has changed? unless you updated the app?”
6. User Experience and Design Problems
cluster 6/7Users find the interface annoying, experience aggressive subscription ads, and have issues with the app layout.
“Very aggressive with their constant advertising to subscribe to the app. You close one, another pops up.”
“I love Calm. I had used it every day in the past and have just recently come back to it but what on earth is this layout”
“REMOVE THE TAKE A DEEP BREATH AT THE START. I WILL THROW MY PHONE AGAINST A WALL.”
7. Account Management Difficulties
cluster 7/7Users struggle with login issues and find the app requires excessive personal information.
“when im in there its lovely. i wish it did not make me log in every time i open it. no other app does this”
“App asked for way too much personal information. Invasive.”
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This page is rendered from the App Pain API — the same clusters, evidence quotes, and severity scores are available as JSON (or via MCP for AI agents) for any app on both stores.
Read the API docs Get a free API key — 20 analyses to startBuilt from public app-store reviews · not affiliated with Apple or Google · clusters are LLM-generated from real user quotes.