The Bedtime Express vs Sleighbear
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
The Bedtime Express
Embark on a nightly adventure with animated bedtime stories featuring unique characters and interactive elements. Help passengers on their journey home and tuck them into bed with calming activities. Discover new stories and locations each night for a relaxing end to the day.
- Animated bedtime stories
- Interactive passenger journeys
- Calming narration and illustrations
- Nightly changing stories
- Variety of characters and locations
- Interactive bedtime routines
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"The Bedtime Express by Unit11 is a stunning and delightful app for your kids at bedtime! The perfect app to create a relaxing time and help your kids to go to bed!" 5/5 funeducationalapps.com "This app has delightful illustrations, animation and calming narration. Beautifully done!" 5/5 Reading Buddies Board the "Bedtime Express" for the perfect animated bedtime story. Meet the unusual passengers on their way home at the end of the day and visit them in their homes to say goodnight. Each night, the train stops at different locations and picks up different passengers. One night you could be making Badger a hot chocolate and playing "I-Spy" with the fox family. The next night, you could be helping the Mouse family find their lost tickets and waking a sleeping Polar Bear! Once you have stamped all the passengers' tickets, the train pulls into the last station and you are taken to each of the passengers' homes to put them to bed. To send them off to sleep, you'll need to do things like switching off lights, closing curtains or lighting a log fire. Children will love meeting the adorable characters and helping them on their journey. There are 6 different groups of passengers, from meerkats to polar bears, and 5 different locations to visit, from the city to the arctic. The story is packed with highly detailed illustration and animation and the gentle pace of the story provides a calm atmosphere at bedtime. Climb aboard the Bedtime Express and discover who has boarded the train tonight! www.unit11apps.com | facebook.com/unit11apps
Sleighbear
An interactive Christmas storybook where watercolor illustrations come alive with animations, music, and sound effects. Children can engage with the story through touch-based interactions and enjoy a tale of friendship and holiday joy.
- Animated watercolor illustrations
- Interactive touch elements
- Original music and sound effects
- Bilingual text (English/Spanish)
- Read-aloud narration
- Hide and seek mini-games
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"Once there was a baby bear who lived at the top of the world..." So begins Sleighbear, a gentle, often humorous Christmas story by award-winning author/illustrator Virginia Wright-Frierson. With a tap of the screen, you can watch her original watercolors come to life! The animations, music, and sound effects let you feel the Christmas magic in a way that no traditional holiday book can bring. Sleighbear is a story of friendship, determination and the joy of Christmas. A polar bear baby sees her reindeer friends flying and wants to help carry Santa's sleigh too! You'll fall in love with the little bear and her owl, fox, and reindeer friends. Play hide and seek, tug of war, and practice flying with the little bear and her friends. Santa and Mrs. Claus come up with a wonderful solution that makes little bear so happy! The text appears on the pages in either English or Spanish, chosen by touching the language button in the main menu hidden at the top of each page. Accompanied by soft music, the story is beautifully read in either language or can be muted so that it can be read to a younger child by an adult or older child. Children can interact with the text by touching a small red mitten on each page to produce sound and action events. Touching the Christmas tree green arrow turns each page. As an author/illustrator, Virginia Wright-Frierson is most noted for her scrapbook series of three nature books, each of which won placement on the John Burroughs List of Nature Books for Young Readers (A Desert Scrapbook, An Island Scrapbook, and a North American Rainforest Scrapbook). Virginia is also a fine artist, most well known for the large, inspiring mural painted on canvas and installed permanently on the ceiling of the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Her recent exhibitions have included watercolor and oil paintings.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Sleighbear at weekly against The Bedtime Express's every 11 months. Sleighbear also leads on review sentiment (100% vs 86%). On price, rating, ratings volume and ads 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
The Bedtime Express costs $1.99 and Sleighbear $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.8 for The Bedtime Express against 4.7 for Sleighbear. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 24 and 13 respectively. Written reviews are what separate them: 86% of The Bedtime Express's written reviews are positive against 100% of Sleighbear's.
The Bedtime Express ships an update every 11 months, Sleighbear weekly. The most recent releases landed on October 26, 2026 and October 24, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | The Bedtime Express | Sleighbear |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.99 | $1.99 |
| Rating | 4.8 (24 ratings) — better | 4.7 (13 ratings) |
| Positive reviews | 86.2% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 24 — better | 13 |
| Update frequency | Every 11 months | Weekly — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Paid | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 13.0 | 13.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 125 MB | 129 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Unit11 | Dargan M. Frierson |
Customer experience
The Bedtime Express
Sleighbear
In-app purchases
The Bedtime Express
No in-app purchases
Sleighbear
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is The Bedtime Express free?
Is Sleighbear free?
Which has better reviews, The Bedtime Express or Sleighbear?
Do The Bedtime Express or Sleighbear have ads?
Which is updated more often, The Bedtime Express or Sleighbear?
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