Comparison

Meditation Timer | Samsara vs Transcend Timer

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Read full description

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/

About

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.

Highlights
  • 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
Features
Read full description

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

Meditation Timer | Samsara4 screens
Transcend Timer4 screens

Verdict

The call

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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

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.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

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.

Scorecard6 real differences · 4 level
Meditation Timer | Samsara versus Transcend Timer: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterMeditation Timer | SamsaraTranscend Timer
PriceFreeFree
Rating4.7 (431 ratings)5.0 (3 ratings) — better
Positive reviews90.5% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings431 — better3
Update frequencyEvery 10 days — betterEvery 2 months
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesYesNo — better
MonetizationFree with in-app purchasesFree — better
DevicesiPhone, iPadiPhone, Apple Watch
Requires iOS17.6 — better18.4
Further details — not scored
Size22 MB12 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperBart JacobsMartin Di Giglio

Customer experience

Meditation Timer | Samsara

All ratings431 ratings
Positive92.6%
Neutral2.6%
Negative4.9%
Written reviews475 reviews
Positive90.5%
Neutral4.2%
Negative5.3%

Transcend Timer

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews2 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

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
Show 1 more
  • Ability to set multiple timers within a single session

Transcend Timer

Not enough reviews yet to summarise bugs or requests.

In-app purchases

6 purchases

Meditation Timer | Samsara

Subscriptions5
  • Samsara Premium Monthly7 Days trial$2.991 Month
  • Samsara Premium Weekly3 Days trial$3.997 Days
  • Samsara Premium Yearly14 Days trial$9.991 Year
Show 2 more
  • Samsara Premium Yearly14 Days trial$19.991 Year
  • Samsara Premium Yearly$29.991 Year
One-time1
  • Samsara Premium Lifetime$59.99
None

Transcend Timer

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Meditation Timer | Samsara free?
Meditation Timer | Samsara is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Is Transcend Timer free?
Transcend Timer is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, Meditation Timer | Samsara or Transcend Timer?
Transcend Timer is rated higher. Meditation Timer | Samsara averages 4.7 out of 5 from 431 ratings, while Transcend Timer averages 5.0 from 3 ratings.
Do Meditation Timer | Samsara or Transcend Timer have ads?
Neither Meditation Timer | Samsara nor Transcend Timer shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Meditation Timer | Samsara or Transcend Timer?
Meditation Timer | Samsara ships an update every 10 days, and Transcend Timer every 2 months. Most recently, Meditation Timer | Samsara was updated on September 20, 2026 and Transcend Timer on August 23, 2026.

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