The best period tracker apps in 2026, one pick for each need

We make Plum, one of the apps on this list. That’s the first thing to know about any “best period tracker” article. Most of them come from a company that sells one, and they rarely say so up top. Every claim about another app here comes from that company’s own site, help centre or App Store listing. We link each source, and we read them all on September 3, 2026. Where another app is the better choice, this page says so. Where Plum is, it says that too, and you can grade that paragraph hardest.

Our pick for each need

• A simple iPhone tracker with no ads. Plum logs a day in a tap or two, predicts your period, fertile window and ovulation, and reminds you before your period starts. None of that sits behind its subscription, and your history is backed up to your account.
• Sharing with a group of friends. Plum is the only app here built around more than two people.
• No ads. Plum, Euki, Drip and Apple’s Cycle Tracking all have none. Of those, Plum is the one built for a group of friends, and its App Store label lists nothing under Data Used to Track You. Does Plum have ads? explains how it makes money without them.
• A free period tracker app. Euki, Drip and Apple’s Cycle Tracking cost nothing at all. Plum, Clue and Flo are free to track with and charge for more. Plum’s no-cost part includes predictions of your period, fertile window and ovulation, reminders and groups.
• Nothing on any server. Pick Euki, or Drip if you want it open source and on Android.
• Already on your iPhone. Apple’s Cycle Tracking is inside the Health app.
• Irregular cycles, perimenopause and clinical detail. Clue goes furthest on these.
• The most features and the biggest library. Pick Flo, and turn on Anonymous Mode. Torn between Flo and Clue? Read Flo vs Clue.
• Made by women. Clue, Natural Cycles, Stardust and drip. were all founded or co-founded by women. Our list of period tracker apps made by women says who built each one.
• No account at all. Euki and Drip work without signing up. Our list of period trackers with no account has the rest.
• Birth control. Natural Cycles is the only app here cleared for that. Plum isn’t.

A closer look at each question

Each of these pages answers one question in more depth, with its own table and sources.

• The best period tracker app for iPhone
• The best free period tracker app
• The best period tracker for irregular periods
• The best period tracker app for PCOS
• The best app to track your period and symptoms
• The most accurate period tracker app
• The best period tracker app for teens
• Period tracker apps that don’t sell your data
• Alternatives to Flo
• Alternatives to Clue

Which are the top rated period tracker apps?

By star average, most of the big ones sit between 4.6 and 4.9, which tells you almost nothing. Apps ask for a rating right after they’ve done something you liked. The average also goes back years. And a 4.8 from two million ratings means something different from a 4.8 from nine hundred. Read the one and two star reviews from the last month instead. That’s where a bad update, a paywall that moved or a prediction that stopped working shows up first. Then open the App Store privacy label and read the Data Used to Track You section, which no rating covers. The top rated period tracking apps by that second test aren’t the same list as the one by stars.

What is the most accurate period tracker app?

No app is clearly more accurate than the rest, because every period app predicts from the dates you logged. Don’t trust an app that promises an accuracy percentage. If your last six cycles ran 27 to 31 days, all the apps land within a day or two of each other. If your cycles ran 24 to 45 days, none of them will, however clever the model. What does differ is whether the app admits it. Some show a single confident date anyway. Plum says it’s still learning. Clue shows a range. On an irregular cycle that honesty matters more than any accuracy figure an app claims. Our guide to how accurate period tracker apps are goes through what the studies found.

What is the best cycle tracking app?

Period tracking and cycle tracking are different jobs, so the answer depends on which one you mean. Logging bleeding days and getting a date back is period tracking, and every app here does it. Cycle tracking means the fertile window, ovulation and the phases in between, and the apps differ a lot there. Natural Cycles reads a daily temperature and is the only one cleared as birth control. Clue and Flo estimate phases from your dates. Plum shows the fertile window and phase tips. It works them out from your dates, with no temperature, so treat the window as an estimate. If you’re tracking to conceive or to avoid pregnancy, a calendar estimate on its own isn’t enough. If what you want is the phase you’re in today, see the apps that show your cycle phases. If you’re on an iPhone already, start with our guide to Apple Health cycle tracking.

How we chose

We didn’t score anything, and there are no affiliate links. We read each company’s own pages and asked the same six questions of every app. What platforms is it on? What does it cost, and what’s behind the subscription? Where does your data live, and does the privacy policy rule out selling it or using it for ads? Do you need an account? Can you share your cycle, with whom, and what do they see? And what’s the one thing it does better than the rest? An app made the list if it’s the clear pick for at least one of those answers. Popularity alone wasn’t enough, which is why a few of the top period tracker apps by download count aren’t here.

We left out dollar amounts from the start. App Store prices change by country and by month, and a stale price is worse than none. Where there’s a subscription, the table says what it unlocks and the store shows the price.

Plum, for a simple iPhone tracker with no ads

Plum is an iPhone app from a small studio in Albany, New York. You log a period day in a tap or two, it fills in the rest of the period, and it predicts your next period, fertile window and ovulation. When it hasn’t seen enough cycles yet, it says it’s still learning. You can track 27 things, from cramps and mood to sleep and discharge, and it reminds you three days before your period, the day before and on the day. Predictions, reminders and groups come with the app. Plum Premium, the subscription, adds symptom insights and phase tips.

Sharing your period with a group of friends is what no other app here does. You send a private invite link, and everyone who joins sees each other’s last period, next expected period and whether they’re on their period today, on one shared timeline. Members see dates, and which days you worked out if you track exercise. Plum never shares your symptoms, moods, phase or fertile window. Sharing is on from the moment you join, and each group has its own switch you can turn off whenever you like. Every other app here shares one-to-one or not at all. Our friends-sharing comparison covers Stardust, HerFlow and Cycles as well.

Plum is a synced app, so your data sits on its servers, encrypted in transit and at rest, and you need an account. The privacy policy says health data will never be sold, shared with advertisers or used for advertising. There are no ads, and you can delete your account and everything in it from inside the app. Our page on why Plum has no ads and never sells your data names every service that gets anything. There’s no Android version. Its predictions aren’t a form of contraception, and that’s true of every app here except one.

Euki, for keeping everything on the phone

Euki is the strict answer to “which period tracker is most private”. Its own site quotes a WIRED line that the five most popular period apps all falter next to more secure options like Euki. It’s free, open source, and run by an independent nonprofit. It has no account, no email and no backup to any server, so there’s nothing for a company, an advertiser or a court order to reach. Its site says it never uses your data to target you with ads, and there are no paywalls. It’s on iPhone and Android in English and Spanish, and it tracks pregnancy too. The trade is that a lost phone takes the history with it. There’s also no sharing of any kind, by design.

Drip, for open source on Android

Drip is the other on-device option, an open-source project whose code is public on GitLab. Its own site says that everything you enter stays on your device. It tracks periods, and if you want it to, fertility by the symptothermal method, with temperature and cervical mucus. It’s on iPhone and Android, and you can install the Android build directly as an APK without the Play Store. In its own words it’s deliberately not cute. It’s the pick if you want to read the code that predicts your cycle. Its F-Droid listing says it doesn’t sell your data and has no ads. It has no account, no sharing and no subscription.

Apple Cycle Tracking, for the app you already have

Every iPhone ships with a period tracker inside the Health app. Cycle Tracking logs periods and symptoms, predicts your next period and fertile window, and needs no account beyond the Apple ID you already use. Apple’s privacy page says Health data is encrypted whenever the phone is locked, and that with two-factor authentication on, the iCloud backup is made in a way Apple can’t read. For dates and a prediction, that’s hard to beat.

Sharing works through Health Sharing, a general Health feature. Apple’s support article says you can share categories of Health data, cycle tracking among them, with up to five people who each need an iPhone. They see your data inside their own Health app, one-to-one, so it’s private and not very social. It has no phase tips and no insights beyond Health’s charts.

Clue, for irregular cycles and clinical detail

Clue comes from BioWink GmbH in Berlin. Its product pages go further into the hard cases than anyone else’s, with dedicated modes for trying to conceive, pregnancy, perimenopause and cycles with no period at all, though perimenopause mode needs Clue Plus. It runs on iPhone and Android, with a free tier and a Clue Plus subscription, and it publishes its own research. Its privacy policy says data stays on servers in the European Union and that the health data you track is never shared with or sold to advertisers.

For sharing, Clue Connect lets you share with people you invite, who see your period days, fertile days, ovulation and PMS on their own calendar. It now works with more than one person, but only one way. Sharing needs Clue Plus, and viewing is free.

Flo, for the most features

Flo is the largest app in the category. Its own site claims over 420 million people have used it to track periods, ovulation, pregnancy and perimenopause. The app has a health library, a symptom checker, calculators and Flo for Partners, a one-to-one partner mode. It’s on iPhone, Android and Apple Watch with a free tier and Flo Premium. If you want the most things in one app, this is it.

Its privacy record is the reason people ask for alternatives. In 2021 the US Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Flo Health over allegations that the app shared users’ health details with analytics and marketing services after promising not to. Flo admitted no wrongdoing. In 2022 it launched Anonymous Mode, which detaches your name, email and device identifiers from your health data. If you use Flo, turn Anonymous Mode on.

Natural Cycles, for birth control

Natural Cycles is the only app here cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration as a form of birth control. That’s why it’s on this list. It says so on its home page, along with its own effectiveness figures. It works from your body temperature, which you take with a measuring device the app pairs with. You pay for a subscription plus that device. If you’re asking “can I use a period app instead of contraception”, the answer is no for every other app on this page, Plum included. Natural Cycles is the one built and regulated for that job.

Side by side

Which of these period trackers are free?

Three of the seven cost nothing at all. Euki is free and run by a nonprofit, Drip is free and open source, and Apple Cycle Tracking is already on the iPhone you own. None of the three has a paid tier above it, so none of them has a reason to nag you towards one.

Three more are free to track with and charge for the extras. Plum includes tracking, predictions, reminders and groups, and puts insights and tips behind a subscription. Clue and Flo each have a free tier with a larger paid one above it, and on Clue the sharing feature is one of the paid parts. Natural Cycles is the only app here with no free version at all.

If free is the whole requirement and you’d rather not make an account, pick Euki or Drip. If you want a free tracker that a group of friends can see, that narrows to Plum. The others charge for sharing, keep it one-to-one, or leave it out.

The ten-second check that beats “no ads”

Plenty of period apps show no ads and still hand data to advertising companies, so a screen without ads doesn’t prove much. Apple makes every developer declare the real answer on the App Store listing, under Data Used to Track You, and you can read it before you install anything. We read these on September 26, 2026. Anyone can read these labels on the App Store, so you can check ours the same way you check theirs.

Euki, drip. and PrivateCycle collect nothing, because nothing leaves the phone. None of them shares your cycle with anyone. Clue, Flo and Stardust each list something under tracking. Plum keeps your history under an account, which is what lets a group of friends see each other’s period days. Its tracking section is still empty. That makes it the only app here that shares and isn’t tracked. It’s the reason to pick Plum over the on-device apps if you want friends in on it. Our reading of Plum’s own label goes through every line of it, the awkward ones included. For the bigger question of whether period tracker apps are safe, and what happened with Flo’s data, we’ve written those up separately.

What to look for in any period tracker

• A privacy policy that names advertisers. The good ones say health data is never sold or shared with them. A policy that only says “we take privacy seriously” hasn’t said anything. Our guide to period apps that don’t sell data lists the checks to run on a policy, which take about ten minutes.
• A prediction that admits doubt. Cycles vary, and an app that pins a date with no range will be wrong and confident about it. Look for a range or a plain “still learning”, especially with PCOS and other irregular cycles.
• Sharing you control. Know who can see what before you connect anyone, and whether the fertile window travels with the period dates. In some apps it does.
• A diary you’ll keep. Symptoms logged on the day they happen are what a clinician can read later. Our period diary guide covers what to put in it.
• A delete button that removes your account. Deleting the app doesn’t delete the account. The app should let you delete the account from inside its settings.
• No contraception claims, unless it’s cleared for that. A fertile window is an estimate. Only Natural Cycles on this list is regulated as birth control.