Meditation Timer | Samsara vs Transcend Timer
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Meditation Timer | Samsara
This minimalist app provides a customizable timer for various meditation and mindfulness practices. It features calming chimes, detailed statistics, and iCloud support for seamless data syncing across devices. Designed for simplicity, it helps users focus on their practice without distractions.
- Customizable meditation timer
- Support for various practices (mantra, mindfulness, zazen, yoga, reiki)
- Collection of calming chimes (Tibetan bells, singing bowls)
- Detailed practice statistics and progress tracking
- iCloud support for data syncing across devices
- Profile management for easy switching between practices
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For the past twelve years, Samsara has been the meditation timer of tens of thousands of people around the world. This meditation timer is designed for iPad and iPhone, and caters to a wide range of practices, including mantra meditation, transcendental meditation, tm for short, mindfulness, zazen, yoga, reiki, shiatsu, and more. This elegant mindfulness app brings a unique approach to incorporating mindfulness into your everyday life. It's a perfect choice for practitioners of various flavors of meditation and mindfulness. Samsara's clean and minimalist design keeps your focus steady. The app's interface is thoughtfully crafted with simplicity at its core, ensuring your yoga, meditation, or mindfulness session isn't interrupted by complex features or visually overwhelming elements. Profiles make it easy to switch between practices. Switching between profiles takes a second. Whether you are moving between a yoga session and a mindfulness timer, or shifting between personal and group sessions, your settings can be adjusted with just a few simple taps. This meditation timer includes a collection of calming chimes, such as Tibetan bells, singing bowls, and meditation bells. They allow you to personalize your sessions and create the ideal atmosphere for your practice. The bells and chimes are gentle reminders, guiding your yoga or meditation journey and helping you build a deeper connection with your practice. The app provides detailed, insightful statistics for those who want it. Stay motivated by tracking your progress and patterns over time. Monitor the duration, frequency, and type of your practices to get a deeper understanding of your journey and gain insights into your personal growth. Samsara optionally integrates with Apple's HealthKit. This meditation timer comes with iCloud support, one of the most requested features. Your profiles and sessions are stored in iCloud on Apple's servers. Communication with iCloud is encrypted end-to-end, which means it is safe and secure. What does that mean for you? You don't run the risk of losing your data when you lose your device. Switching to a new device is also a breeze. Another benefit is that you can use Samsara on multiple devices, sharing profiles and sessions. It works like magic. Download Samsara for free and let it be your meditation timer during your practice. Privacy Policy: https://www.adropofzen.com/privacy-policy/ Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Transcend Timer
This app provides a guided meditation experience with customizable phases for warming up, meditating, and cooling down. It automatically logs sessions to Apple Health and prioritizes user privacy with no account or internet required.
- Three-phase meditation timer (Warm Up, Meditate, Cool Down)
- Customizable phase durations
- Screen stays on during sessions
- Automatic Apple Health logging
- Adjustable brightness reduction
- Background operation with screen lock
- No account or internet required
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Transcend Timer is a timer for Transcendental Meditation. It does one thing: it holds the length of your practice so you do not have to. Three phases. Warm Up to settle in, Meditation, then Rest. Set each one once and press play — the home screen shows the plan, so starting is never a decision. WHAT IT DOES NOT DO No guided voices. No courses, no narrators, no daily episode, no library to look through. Nothing plays unless you turn it on: the start and end sounds and the haptics are all off by default, because in TM the mantra is the technique and a bell is an interruption. THE SCREEN TELLS YOU WHERE YOU ARE Each phase has its own background, ordered by brightness rather than colour. Warm Up steps down toward meditation, meditation is nearly black, and rest lifts sharply. That lift is the largest change in light in the whole session and it happens the moment meditation ends — perceptible through a closed eyelid, so you can stay where you are until it comes. If you do open your eyes to check the time, the timer is large, centred, and set in figures that do not shift as they count down. PROGRESS Two counters: days you meditated, and days you meditated twice. A monthly calendar shows the shape of your practice — missed, once, twice — and pages back through every month you have kept. Completed sessions are written to Apple Health as Mindful Sessions. APPLE WATCH Run a full session from your wrist and leave the phone in another room. The Digital Crown sets the durations. The Smart Stack shows which phase you are in and how long is left. IF YOU WANT IT Curated sounds for the start and end of meditation, with their own volume so a cue can carry through twenty minutes of closed eyes. Ambiance: one looping sound that fades in as the session begins and out across the rest phase, at a volume set deliberately lower. Eight themes, each changing all four phases together and keeping the same order of light. Night dimming for sessions in the dark. Pause and resume, counting active time only. A daily reminder, if you set one. PRIVACY No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, no network requests. Your preferences stay on your device. Health data is read only to calculate your streaks and never leaves the phone. Transcend Timer is an independent app. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any Transcendental Meditation organisation, and it does not teach the technique.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Transcend Timer at none against Meditation Timer | Samsara's 6. Transcend Timer also leads on rating (5.0 vs 4.7) and review sentiment (100% vs 91%). Meditation Timer | Samsara's advantage is update cadence (every 10 days vs every 2 months) and ratings volume (431 vs 3). On price, ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Meditation Timer | Samsara sells 6 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Transcend Timer asks for nothing beyond the download.
Transcend Timer holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 4.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Meditation Timer | Samsara has 431 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 91% of Meditation Timer | Samsara's written reviews are positive against 100% of Transcend Timer's.
Meditation Timer | Samsara ships an update every 10 days, Transcend Timer every 2 months. The most recent releases landed on September 20, 2026 and August 23, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Meditation Timer | Samsara | Transcend Timer |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.7 (431 ratings) | 5.0 (3 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 90.5% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 431 — better | 3 |
| Update frequency | Every 10 days — better | Every 2 months |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | Yes | No — better |
| Monetization | Free with in-app purchases | Free — better |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 — better | 18.4 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 22 MB | 12 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Bart Jacobs | Martin Di Giglio |
Customer experience
Meditation Timer | Samsara
Transcend Timer
Bugs and requests
Meditation Timer | Samsara
Reported bugs
2 issues- Crashing on launch for some users
- Chimes cutting off prematurely
Requested features
6 requests- Apple Watch support
- More color options for highlights
- Additional sound effects like other bells and instruments
- Ability to delete saved profiles
- Option to continue timer after initial duration
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- Ability to set multiple timers within a single session
Transcend Timer
Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.
In-app purchases
Meditation Timer | Samsara
- Samsara Premium Monthly7 Days trial$2.991 Month
- Samsara Premium Weekly3 Days trial$3.997 Days
- Samsara Premium Yearly14 Days trial$9.991 Year
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- Samsara Premium Yearly14 Days trial$19.991 Year
- Samsara Premium Yearly$29.991 Year
- Samsara Premium Lifetime$59.99
Transcend Timer
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Meditation Timer | Samsara free?
Is Transcend Timer free?
Which has better reviews, Meditation Timer | Samsara or Transcend Timer?
Do Meditation Timer | Samsara or Transcend Timer have ads?
Which is updated more often, Meditation Timer | Samsara or Transcend Timer?
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