There are now dozens of tinnitus apps, and nearly all of them say they help. Some teach cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) skills to reduce the distress tinnitus causes, such as Oto and MindEar. Others deliver sound therapy, such as ReSound Relief, and two of them, AudioNotch and MyPattern, offer notched sound therapy tuned to the pitch of your tinnitus.
We make AudioNotch, so we have an obvious interest here. To keep this useful, we've compared five apps only on things you can check yourself: what each one does, what it costs in the US, and what has been published about it. Prices and sources were checked on November 6, 2026.
Tinnitus apps at a glance
| App | US price | Published evidence |
|---|---|---|
| AudioNotch | $29 a month or $99 a year | Randomized controlled trial against standard care, 65 patients, 12 months |
| Oto | About $500 to $1,000 through a US clinic | Randomized trial against a wait list, 96 patients, 6 months |
| MindEar | From $5.99 a month or $58.99 a year | Pilot trial of two versions of the app, 28 completers, no untreated group |
| ReSound Relief | Free; Premium $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year | Single-group study, 52 patients, no control group |
| MyPattern | $9.99 a week, $17.99 a month, or $49.99 to $99.99 a year | None found |
How to judge the evidence behind a tinnitus app
Not all studies are equal. A study with no comparison group can't tell you whether people would have improved anyway. A wait-list comparison is better, but the people on the wait list know they're getting nothing yet. The strongest evidence an app can have is a randomized trial against a real alternative, run by researchers who don't sell the product.
By that standard, AudioNotch is the only one of these five apps tested against standard care in a 12-month randomized controlled trial. AudioNotch is among the very few consumer tinnitus apps validated in a published clinical randomized controlled trial.
AudioNotch
AudioNotch creates notched sound therapy personalized to your tinnitus. A tuner finds your tinnitus frequency, then AudioNotch "notches out" a band of sound at that frequency from music, white noise and other sounds you listen to. It runs on the web, iOS and Android, and costs $29 a month or $99 a year, with a 30-day money-back guarantee on website purchases (pricing).
In a randomized controlled trial at Northwell Health, patients given AudioNotch improved significantly more over 12 months than patients given standard care. After a year the AudioNotch group's tinnitus handicap had fallen 9.6 points while the standard-care group's had risen 5.0, and patients given AudioNotch were 2.2x more likely to still be using sound therapy at six weeks (70% vs 32%). The trial was randomized, controlled, ran for 12 months with 65 patients, and was run and published independently by Northwell Health researchers (Sturm et al., 2026; our summary). Separately, experiments on notched sound found tinnitus volume reductions of 75% (Lugli et al., 2009), 26% (Okamoto et al., 2010) and 20% (Teismann et al., 2011).
Oto
Oto is a CBT-based tinnitus program from Oto Health, a company founded in London. It began as a consumer subscription app and is now offered through US clinics, which set the price. Oto's pricing page (updated July 2026) says its basic plan typically costs $500 to $1,000 and that care plans are usually self-pay.
In a randomized trial of 96 people, Oto users' Tinnitus Functional Index scores fell 9 points over six months, and at six months they were 16 points lower than a wait-list group's. The trial was unblinded, 21% of participants dropped out, and it was funded in part by Oto Health (Mui et al., 2025).
MindEar
MindEar, from Odio Tech, combines CBT lessons with sound therapy, sleep and mindfulness content, and an AI chatbot. It's free to download, with App Store subscriptions from $5.99 a month or $58.99 a year; premium and promotional plans vary (App Store). Its pilot trial assigned 30 people to the chatbot alone or the chatbot plus four video calls with a psychologist; 28 finished, the two groups didn't differ significantly, and there was no untreated comparison group (Bardy et al., 2024).
ReSound Relief
ReSound Relief, from the hearing aid maker GN ReSound, offers layered sound therapy, relaxation exercises, meditation and guidance. The basic version is free, and you don't need a hearing aid to use it (ReSound); an optional Premium subscription costs $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year (App Store). In a study of 52 people who used it for six months, average handicap scores fell, but the authors note that "the main limitation is the lack of a control group" (Kutyba et al., 2021).
MyPattern
MyPattern, from the Norwegian company ST14 X AS, offers notched sound therapy alongside several other sound methods, a pitch quiz, CBT lessons and an AI assistant. It costs $9.99 a week, $17.99 a month, or $49.99 to $99.99 a year depending on the offer (App Store). Its listing describes it as "a self-help wellness tool, not a medical device," and we found no published study of MyPattern itself.
In summary
- AudioNotch is the only one of these five apps tested against standard care in a 12-month randomized controlled trial, run independently by Northwell Health researchers.
- Oto has a randomized trial against a wait list; MindEar and ReSound Relief have studies with no untreated comparison group; we found no published study of MyPattern.
- If your tinnitus has a pitch you can match, notched sound therapy targets that frequency directly. You can find yours with the free tinnitus frequency matcher and see where it falls among 60,835 other people's tinnitus frequencies.
Apps aren't the only option. For clinic-based treatments and their costs, see Lenire cost and evidence review, what Treble Health costs, tinnitus retraining therapy cost and Ranked: Sound Therapies for Tinnitus.