Comparison

The Bedtime Express vs Sleighbear

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

Head to head
About

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.

Highlights
  • Animated bedtime stories
  • Interactive passenger journeys
  • Calming narration and illustrations
  • Nightly changing stories
  • Variety of characters and locations
  • Interactive bedtime routines
Features
Read full description

"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

About

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.

Highlights
  • Animated watercolor illustrations
  • Interactive touch elements
  • Original music and sound effects
  • Bilingual text (English/Spanish)
  • Read-aloud narration
  • Hide and seek mini-games
Features
Read full description

"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

The Bedtime Express4 screens
Sleighbear4 screens

Verdict

The call

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

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

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.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

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.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

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.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
The Bedtime Express versus Sleighbear: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterThe Bedtime ExpressSleighbear
Price$1.99$1.99
Rating4.8 (24 ratings) — better4.7 (13 ratings)
Positive reviews86.2% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings24 — better13
Update frequencyEvery 11 monthsWeekly — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidPaid
DevicesiPhone, iPad, iPodiPhone, iPad, iPod
Requires iOS13.013.0
Further details — not scored
Size125 MB129 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperUnit11Dargan M. Frierson

Customer experience

The Bedtime Express

All ratings24 ratings
Positive95.8%
Neutral0.0%
Negative4.2%
Written reviews29 reviews
Positive86.2%
Neutral3.4%
Negative10.3%

Sleighbear

All ratings13 ratings
Positive92.3%
Neutral0.0%
Negative7.7%
Written reviews6 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

The Bedtime Express

No in-app purchases

None

Sleighbear

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is The Bedtime Express free?
The Bedtime Express costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Sleighbear free?
Sleighbear costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, The Bedtime Express or Sleighbear?
The Bedtime Express is rated higher. The Bedtime Express averages 4.8 out of 5 from 24 ratings, while Sleighbear averages 4.7 from 13 ratings.
Do The Bedtime Express or Sleighbear have ads?
Neither The Bedtime Express nor Sleighbear shows ads.
Which is updated more often, The Bedtime Express or Sleighbear?
The Bedtime Express ships an update every 11 months, and Sleighbear weekly. Most recently, The Bedtime Express was updated on October 26, 2026 and Sleighbear on October 24, 2026.

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