If you're searching "Migraine Buddy vs Bearable," you've probably noticed that they turn up in the same lists while being built for different questions. Migraine Buddy, by Healint, is a migraine diary and nothing else: a detailed attack record, exports designed with headache specialists, a 7-day weather forecast, and a community its listing puts at over four million users. Bearable is a symptom tracker for whatever you happen to have: migraine, yes, but also fatigue, mood, gut symptoms, chronic pain and a menstrual cycle, all in one log, with a correlation engine on top that tells you which of those move together. Both are free to start. Both have a paid tier — and the paid tiers are priced very differently.
This is an honest comparison of the two. We make MigrainePal, a one-tap migraine diary, so we'll also be clear about the one reader neither of these serves well — but for most people asking this question, one of these two is the right answer, and the goal here is to tell you which.
The core difference: one condition in depth vs every condition in one place
Everything else in this comparison follows from what each app decided to be.
- Migraine Buddy is a specialist's diary. Its attack record is customizable but migraine-shaped: pain intensity and location, aura, symptoms, triggers, medication, relief methods, how long the attack lasted, with suggestions offered as you record. It records sleep automatically, can read from Apple Health, and produces two kinds of export — a diary report and a MIR report built for neurologists and headache specialists. Around that sits an in-app news and research feed, questionnaires, and a community its description puts at 3.5 million. The subscription, MBplus, adds the 7-day weather and pressure forecast, advanced weather-and-trigger reporting, AI suggestions, end-of-attack prediction, coaching programs and its "Good Days Guide" — at $24.99 for two months or $89.99 a year, per its own MBplus page.
- Bearable is a generalist's log. You rate how you feel a few times a day and add whatever symptoms matter — unlimited custom ones, free — alongside sleep, food, weather, stress, medication, exercise and habits, and the app shows you what correlates with what. Migraine is one built-in module: pain level, location and duration, attack frequency and severity, warning signs, which treatments helped. It syncs steps, sleep and heart rate from Apple Health and Fitbit, and it was, in its own words, shaped by thousands of members of the chronic illness community. The subscription is $34.99 — about ten cents a day — with a 7-day trial, and it unlocks unlimited Goals, custom Experiments, Correlation reports and, importantly, your history beyond the last 30 days.
That split predicts nearly every row below. If migraine is the whole problem and a specialist is in the picture, Migraine Buddy. If migraine is one thread in a larger knot, Bearable.
Migraine Buddy vs Bearable vs MigrainePal at a glance
| Migraine Buddy | Bearable | MigrainePal | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it actually is | A migraine-specific diary with doctor reports and a community | A whole-body symptom tracker with a correlation engine | A one-tap migraine diary that stays on your phone |
| Logging an attack | A guided record: intensity, location, aura, symptoms, triggers, meds, relief, with suggestions as you go | Add migraine as a symptom with pain level, location and duration; rate the day alongside everything else | One tap opens the attack with a start time; add pain, aura and notes whenever you're able |
| Other conditions | Custom symptoms inside an attack; no daily log on non-attack days | Unlimited custom symptoms, mood, energy, gut, cycle, chronic pain — the whole point | No — migraine and headache only |
| Finding triggers | Trigger recording and, in MBplus, a trigger recommender and weather-vs-attack reports | Correlations between symptoms and sleep, food, weather, stress, medication and habits; full Correlation reports are paid | Logged triggers surface the ones that recur, in plain language |
| Weather | 7-day pressure and temperature forecast, in MBplus | Weather logged as a factor and included in correlations | Not built in — see our pressure-tracking method |
| For your doctor | Diary export plus a MIR report designed with specialists | Reports that summarise months of symptom logs; secure export | Insights shown on screen — frequency, pain, aura share, meds response; advanced exports are in Premium |
| Medication | Logged per attack with relief methods | Medication and supplement log with reminders and side-effect tracking | Every med per attack, with a view of when you're approaching medication-overuse territory |
| Price | Free; MBplus $24.99 / 2 months or $89.99 / year | Free with unlimited symptoms; Premium $34.99 / year, 7-day trial | Free; optional Premium for advanced exports and history |
| What's behind the paywall | Weather forecast, advanced reports, AI suggestions, end-time prediction, coaching | Unlimited Goals, custom Experiments, Correlation reports, history beyond 30 days | Advanced exports and history |
| Account & data | Account-based; optional Apple Health integration | Encrypted; export or delete from within the app; syncs Apple Health and Fitbit | No account; on device, optional iCloud sync; no ads, no data collection |
| Platforms | iPhone, iPad, Android | iPhone, Android | iPhone, iPad (iOS 18+) |
| Last App Store update | September 2026 | September 2026 | August 2026 |
| Track record | 4.8 stars from roughly 41,700 US ratings; listing cites 4M+ users | 4.8 stars from roughly 6,300 US ratings; site cites 2M+ patients and doctors | New and small — judge it on the mechanic |
Where Migraine Buddy wins
Migraine Buddy wins on depth for one condition. Because it only has to be a migraine app, its attack record asks the questions a headache clinic asks — where the pain is, whether there was aura, what you took and whether it helped, how long it lasted — and it prompts you with symptoms and triggers as you record so you don't forget the ones that matter. If you want the most complete description of each attack you can get, this is it.
It wins on the appointment. Its diary and MIR exports were built with headache specialists for that conversation — a report shaped around attacks, not around a general health summary. Turning up with one is turning up with a document made for the person reading it. Bearable's reports are good summaries of what you logged, but they are general health reports, not migraine reports.
It wins on scale and community. Over four million users by its own listing, a community of 3.5 million, in-app research news and questionnaires. If part of what you want from a migraine app is other people who have it, Bearable's community is smaller and broader — Migraine Buddy's is the largest one that exists.
And it wins on the weather forecast, if you pay for it: a 7-day pressure and temperature forecast inside the app, with reporting that lines weather up against your attacks. Bearable logs weather as one factor among many; it does not forecast.
Where Bearable wins
Bearable wins on the whole picture. Most people with migraine have something else too — poor sleep, anxiety, a cycle that changes everything, IBS, chronic pain, fatigue — and a migraine-only diary can't tell you that your attacks follow your worst gut weeks or your shortest nights, because it never asked about them. Bearable asks about everything, every day, and then shows you which factors move with your attacks. That is the feature Migraine Buddy structurally can't offer.
It wins on the free tier. Unlimited custom symptoms, weekly reports and a customisable graph without paying anything is, by Bearable's own account, unusual in symptom tracking, and it means the app is fully usable for months before you decide. Migraine Buddy's core diary is also free, but the weather layer and the deeper reports are not.
It wins on price if you do pay. $34.99 a year against $89.99 a year — under 40% of the cost — and its FAQ says the subscription is often discounted by up to 76%, with a 7-day trial before anything is charged.
And it wins on medication tracking as a daily habit: meds and supplements logged with reminders and side-effect tracking on every day, not just attack days, which is how you find out whether a preventive is actually preventing.
What each one costs, and what you actually get for it
This is the question under most "Migraine Buddy vs Bearable" searches, so here it is without the marketing. Migraine Buddy is free for the attack diary, exports and community. MBplus is $24.99 for two months or $89.99 a year, per its MBplus page, and adds the 7-day weather forecast, advanced weather and trigger reporting, AI symptom and trigger suggestions, end-of-attack prediction and a trigger recommender (both iOS only), pain-variation tracking, coaching programs and the Good Days Guide. It renews automatically and is managed through your app store.
Bearable is free for unlimited symptoms, moods and metrics, with weekly reports and its graph. Premium is $34.99 — the FAQ frames it as roughly ten cents a day — with a 7-day trial, and unlocks unlimited Goals, custom Experiments, Correlation reports and history beyond the last 30 days. Note that last limit carefully: on the free plan you can only look back a month, and a migraine pattern tied to a cycle or a season takes longer than a month to show. If you're going to rely on Bearable's correlations, budget for the subscription.
Neither app publishes in-app purchase prices on the App Store listing itself; the figures above come from each company's own site at the time of writing, so check the current listing before you subscribe.
Where a smaller tool wins: when the form is the reason you stopped
There's a third reader this comparison rarely serves. You've tried Migraine Buddy, or Bearable, or both. You logged carefully for three weeks. Then one attack arrived at 2 a.m. and the thought of opening a form — any form — with your eyes shut was too much, so you didn't, and after the second missed attack the diary quietly stopped being true. Neither app did anything wrong. Both asked you to describe the attack while you were having it.
That's the gap MigrainePal was built for. When an attack starts you tap once. The app opens an episode with the start time, and you put the phone face-down. Pain level, aura, medication and notes can wait until you're able — the diary stays honest either way. Over weeks you get a calendar of attacks, a trigger view that shows which logged factors actually recur, a medication log that warns when you're heading toward medication-overuse territory, and insights in plain language you can show a doctor from the screen. There's no account, no data collection and no ads; everything stays on your iPhone or iPad with optional iCloud sync, and it's free with an optional Premium for advanced exports and history.
It is deliberately narrower than both. It doesn't track other conditions, so if you need Bearable's whole-body correlations it can't replace them. It doesn't produce a MIR report, so if your neurologist works from that format, keep Migraine Buddy. It has no weather forecast, no community and no coaching. What it does is make the record light enough that it still exists in month four — which, for the reader this section is about, is the only feature that matters.
The bottom line
Choose Migraine Buddy if migraine is your one condition, you see a specialist, and you want the most detailed attack record and a report built for the clinic — and decide separately whether the weather forecast is worth $89.99 a year to you. Choose Bearable if migraine is one of several things you live with and the question you actually have is what is making this worse; it's the only one of the three that can answer that across conditions, its free tier is generous, and if you pay it's less than half the price. And if the honest reason you're here is that you stopped logging because the form was too long to face mid-attack, don't install a third form: keep a diary that only asks for one tap when it hurts.
Neither of these apps, nor ours, diagnoses migraine or replaces a doctor. They keep a record; what to do with it is a conversation with a clinician.
Frequently asked questions
Is Migraine Buddy or Bearable better for migraine tracking?
If migraine is the only thing you track and you see a neurologist, Migraine Buddy is better: its attack record is built around migraine specifically — aura, pain location, relief methods, medication — and its diary and MIR exports were designed with headache specialists for exactly that appointment. If migraine is one of several things going on — fatigue, mood, a cycle, gut symptoms, chronic pain — Bearable is better, because it tracks all of them in one place and shows you what correlates with your attacks, which a migraine-only app can't do. Bearable is also considerably cheaper if you end up paying: $34.99 a year against MBplus at $89.99 a year.
Is Bearable free?
Yes, and the free tier is unusually generous. Bearable's own FAQ says you can track an unlimited number of custom symptoms, moods and other health metrics for free, with weekly reports and a customisable graph included. The optional subscription is $34.99 — roughly ten cents a day, so a yearly plan — with a 7-day free trial, and it unlocks unlimited Goals, custom Experiments, Correlation reports and access to your history beyond the last 30 days. That last one matters: on the free plan you can only look back 30 days, which is short for a condition whose patterns show up over months.
Does Bearable have a migraine tracker?
Yes. Migraine and headache are a built-in part of Bearable's symptom tracker rather than a separate app: you log pain level, where the pain is and how long it lasts, record attack frequency and severity, note warning signs, and log which treatments you took. The difference from Migraine Buddy is that those entries sit alongside everything else you log — sleep, food, stress, medication, cycle, weather — and Bearable's insights show you which of those move with your attacks. What it doesn't have is Migraine Buddy's migraine-specific report format for neurologists or its community.
Can Migraine Buddy track other symptoms besides migraine?
Only within the frame of a migraine attack. Migraine Buddy's attack record is customizable, so you can add your own symptoms, triggers, medications and relief methods to each entry, and it records sleep automatically and can read from Apple Health. But everything is organised around attacks: there's no way to keep a daily log of fatigue, mood or digestive symptoms on days when you don't have a migraine and then compare the two. If that whole-body picture is what you need, Bearable is built for it; if you simply want an attack diary without the forms, a one-tap tracker like MigrainePal is the lighter option.
One tap when it starts. Details when you can.
A migraine diary that doesn't ask you to fill in a form with your eyes shut. Calendar, triggers, meds and plain-language insights — all on your phone.
Download MigrainePal on the App Store →Related: 5 Best Migraine Buddy Alternatives, The Best Migraine Tracker Apps and How to Track Barometric Pressure Migraines. Migraine Buddy's and Bearable's details come from their App Store listings and their own sites at the time of writing — check the current listing before you subscribe. Questions? Email us.