I tried every major migraine tracker. Here's the honest comparison.

I’ve used five migraine trackers across the last few years. Three on the App Store now, two long-since deleted. This is what I learned writing my own (Migra) — what each does well, what each does badly, and what nobody covers.

Honest disclaimer: I built Migra. I’m going to try to tell you when something else is genuinely better.

TL;DR

App	Best for	Price	Notable weakness
Migraine Buddy	Aggregate data + sharing reports	Free / $4.99/mo	Cloud-based; data privacy is OK but not on-device
Bearable	Multi-condition tracking (migraines + mood + sleep + meds)	Free / $4.99/mo	Not migraine-first; UI is dense
MiG (Migraine Tracker & Diary)	Fast lightweight logging	Free / $3.99/mo	Limited insights, no weather
Migraine Monitor	None — outdated	Free	Last meaningful update ~2022
Migra (mine)	On-device AI + barometric pressure + Apple ecosystem	Free / $4.99/mo or $29.99/year (7-day trial)	Newest; smaller user base than Migraine Buddy

Skip down for the deep dive on what actually matters when picking one.

What actually matters in a migraine tracker

After ~400 of my own attacks logged across years and apps, four things turned out to actually move the needle:

1. Speed of logging during an attack. If logging takes more than 30 seconds while light hurts your eyes, you’ll skip days. Skipped days = useless data.
2. Quality of correlation insights. “You logged caffeine before this attack” is useless. “Across your last 30 attacks, the combination of less than 6 hours sleep + falling barometric pressure was present in 73%” is useful.
3. Doctor-shareable reports. Your neurologist doesn’t have time to scroll your timeline. They need a 1-page PDF.
4. Privacy. Migraine data is sensitive. Most apps store it on a cloud you’ve never heard of.

Things that don’t matter as much as the marketing implies:

• Whether the app has a watch app (logging from wrist is useful only if you’re wearing one)
• “Beautiful design” — the app you’ll actually use is the one that’s fast, not the one that’s prettiest
• Number of fields per entry (more fields = slower logging = less data)

The deep dive

Migraine Buddy

The default. Largest user base. Has been around the longest, owns the SEO for “migraine tracker,” and is what your neurologist is most likely to recognize.

What it does well:

• Massive aggregate data → useful population trends
• Reports are clinical-quality
• Cross-platform (iOS + Android)

What it does badly:

• Cloud-based; your data lives on their servers
• Owned by Voluntis, a pharma-aligned company (note: not necessarily bad, but worth knowing)
• Insights are generic — it doesn’t learn your patterns deeply, it shows you population averages
• Heavy app, slow on older phones

Pick Migraine Buddy if: you want the biggest existing database, your doctor recognizes it by name, and you don’t mind cloud sync.

Bearable

The general symptom tracker. Best when migraines are one of several things you’re tracking — mood, sleep quality, energy, multiple medications.

What it does well:

• Tracks anything (mood, sleep, food, supplements, symptoms)
• Cross-correlation across all those dimensions
• Active development

What it does badly:

• Not migraine-first; the UI doesn’t optimize for fast attack logging
• Information density is high — overwhelming for a casual user
• No barometric pressure detection

Pick Bearable if: you have multiple chronic conditions or your migraines are likely connected to something larger (like POTS, fibromyalgia, hormonal cycles).

MiG (Migraine Tracker & Diary)

The lightweight option. Solo-developer app, very fast, no fluff.

What it does well:

• Fast attack logging
• Clean UI
• Good free tier

What it does badly:

• Limited insights — basically a spreadsheet
• No weather/pressure detection
• No clinical screening tools (MIDAS/HIT-6)

Pick MiG if: you just want a clean log, you’re not interested in deep correlation analysis, and you want the cheapest premium tier.

Migraine Monitor

Don’t. It still works, but the app hasn’t received a meaningful update since 2022. The dev team appears to have moved on. It’s a placeholder in App Store search results, not a real choice.

Migra (mine — be skeptical)

The on-device AI and barometric pressure-first option.

What it does well:

• iPhone has a built-in altimeter (since iPhone 6) — Migra uses it for real-time barometric pressure detection. No other major app does this.
• All AI processing happens on-device using Apple Foundation Models (iOS 26+). No data leaves your phone.
• Designed for use during an attack: Migraine Mode dims the screen and amplifies haptics. Logging takes 5–10 seconds.
• Generates MIDAS and HIT-6 PDF reports automatically.

What it does badly:

• Newest of the major options. Smaller user base = less aggregate data.
• iOS-only (no Android, no web)
• AI insights work best after 20+ logged attacks; first month is sparse
• I built it. I’m biased.

Pick Migra if: weather/pressure is a known trigger for you, you care about privacy, and you live in the Apple ecosystem.

What none of them get right (yet)

After all five, here are the gaps I’d love someone to fix:

• None of them integrate well with menstrual cycle tracking. Hormonal migraines are 60%+ of migraines in women, and stitching together a cycle app + a migraine app is awkward.
• None of them do “remediation tracking” well. What worked? What didn’t? You log “took sumatriptan” but no app systematically asks 4 hours later “did it work?”
• None of them help with the mental load of explaining migraines to non-sufferers. A “share my disability score with my partner” feature would be huge.

If anyone reading this is building one of those, get in touch.

How to actually pick

Don’t pick based on features. Pick based on which one you’ll actually log every attack into. The best tracker is the one that gets used. Try the free tier of two for a month, count how many attacks you logged in each, and keep the one with more.

Whatever you pick — log every attack. The patterns are buried in the data you don’t bother to write down.