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The six best period tracking apps of 2023
We’ve rounded up the best period trackers for 2023 to help you find the right one for you
In the age of technological advancements, period tracking apps have emerged as invaluable tools for women to monitor and manage their menstrual cycles.
With a range of features that allow women to log in their periods, track symptoms, identify patterns and gain a better understanding of their bodies, these apps have become increasingly popular and have revolutionised the way women approach their reproductive health.
But that’s not all they are good for. Research shows apps can also provide timely information about specific contraceptive methods, ovulation and fertility windows, making them great tools for family planning.
Trackers can also foster open conversations about menstruation and provide platforms for sharing experiences and insights within supportive communities, destigmatising discussions around menstruation and female health more generally.
However, most period tracking apps are not appropriate to prevent pregnancy, so do use them with caution, if you had that in mind.
But if you are keen to learn more about cycle tracking, map your periods, monitor your ovulation, or keep tabs on your reproductive health, try some of our top picks below.
Flo’s mission is to build a better future for female health by helping to harness the power of body signals. Flo’s team of 100+ doctors and health experts create evidence-based medical articles, tips and recommendations designed to improve your health.
The app uses AI so you can easily know when you ovulate, track your period and view future cycles. In Flo, you can track more than 70+ symptoms and events for more personalised tips, relevant content and even more precise cycle and ovulation predictions.
Flo also offers Pregnancy Mode which provides you with the information you need during pregnancy. You will be able to receive insight each day into how the baby is developing, what happens in your body as a mum-to-be, which supplements and foods you should include in your diet and which you should avoid, how to recognise the approaching labour, what you could expect from the postpartum period and much more.
Within the app you can also discuss sensitive topics, questions and get support from other Flo community members anonymously.
Flo ensures that your data is safe with end-to-end encryption, secure access (Face or touch ID), anonymous mode (no name or email) and control over what you share. Your data won’t be shared with third parties.
Clue is a Berlin-based reproductive health company that supports, educates and empowers women and people with cycles with personalized health insights to support them from their first period to their last.
Created with science and technology at its core, the company’s mission is to be a trusted companion, empowering people around the world on their journeys to self-discovery and reproductive health.
Founded in 2012, Clue was one of the first femtech companies, serves millions of people around the world in 190 countries, and regularly partners with universities, researchers and clinicians on research to help address health gaps.
Clue’s app is free to download and includes its signature Period Tracking feature, with additional personalised modes like Clue Conceive and others available in the premium subscription offering, Clue Plus.
For more, visit helloclue.com.
Premom offers personalised, science-backed insights to help you better understand your body—whether you’re just tracking your cycle or actively trying to conceive.
What makes Premom different? It’s designed by fertility experts and powered by smart technology.
When you log ovulation tests, basal body temperature (BBT), cervical mucus, and other symptoms, Premom’s AI algorithm learns from your unique patterns—even if your cycles are irregular.
You’ll get a clear, easy-to-read period and ovulation calendar, automatic hormone and BBT charting, and real-time predictions so you can confidently spot your fertile window.
Created by the makers of Easy@Home ovulation tests, it’s helped over 1 million users get pregnant while using Premom.
Need extra support?
- FastPass™ to Pregnancy gives you a step-by-step plan to conceive faster, with smarter ovulation predictions, weekly expert video tips, and personalized guidance.
- Fertility AI Pro helps you make sense of your hormone results and gives you instant, expert-backed answers so you’re never left guessing.
- Pregnancy Mode kicks in once you’re expecting—with weekly updates on your baby’s development, body changes, and tips to feel your best each trimester.
- Predad™ keeps your partner involved with updates and ideas to stay connected and supportive through it all.
Want to go deeper? Premom Premium unlocks advanced fertility reports, expert-led webinars, and tools like a PCOS self-assessment so you feel informed and empowered every step of the way.
The Premom app is free to download with the option to upgrade for further support.
Learn more at www.premom.com
*Over 1 million users logged pregnancy or positive pregnancy test results while using the Premom App
WomanLog
WomanLog is a reliable and easy-to-use period tracker app tailor-made for women of all ages in every moment of their health.
There are dozens of complex processes that take over a woman’s body every day. Why not be aware of them and be prepared for everything?
WomanLog, a free multi-use app, is much more than a digital calendar that tracks menstruation cycle, sex life and contraception used. It has an encyclopedia of more than 200 symptoms that may occur in a woman’s body during her cycle.
The Latvia-based start-up is among the leaders in the global market for more than 10 years. Translated into 30 languages, it has 1.5 million active monthly users worldwide and more than 20 million installs.
WomanLog app has three modes: period tracker, pregnancy and menopause mode. WomanLogBaby app helps to track every step of baby’s daily activities while “Intelligent Assistant” with cutting-edge Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technology offers even more detailed analysis.
Users are constantly introduced to articles on women’s health, psychology, daily life and activities.
Data safety in the key point of every app, and WomanLog is the leader with the highest security level that meets all the GDPR standards.
Moreover, the web version of WomanLog, available without even signing-in, features online calculators that count the days left until your next period or fertility windows within seconds.
For more, visit womanlog.com.
Wild.AI
Wild.AI has done extensive research on what a woman is, studying what the female body needs and when.
The company translates this research into the app, helping woman track, train, eat, and recover, with their physiology – whether they menstruate, use birth control, or are in perimenopause or menopause.
While all products, apps, and wearables seem to serve men well, Wild.AI interprets data through a female lens. The readiness score is calculated by the combination of wearable data and daily subjective check-ins, including symptoms, stress levels and periods.
As an example, if the body temperature goes up, as a man, it could mean you are sick. As a woman, it may mean you ovulate, you’re pregnant, or have perimenopausal symptoms.
Wild.AI provides daily adaptive and personalised recommendations that take the ever-changing daily context into account and adapts with you, effectively acting as human data-scientist, a coach, and a nutritionist.
The app is launching the coach interface alongside the coach academy, to upskill coaches and let them train women with their physiology seamlessly.
Led by Helene Guillaume and Dr Stacy Sims, this is possible thanks to the research conducted internally and in partnership with universities, continuously advancing the knowledge on female health, and covering more life stages over time, 50+ female-specific symptoms, 149 different birth controls – and counting.
In a one-stop-shop, Wild.AI is the performance platform for women, establishing itself as the gold standard in the industry.
For more, visit wild.ai.
Spot On
Spot On is Planned Parenthood’s free, medically accurate, period and birth control tracking app. The app — available in both English and Spanish — has over six birth control methods you can choose to track (the pill, patch, ring, shot, IUD, and implant) and over 180 brands represented that you can sync the app to.
It also offers advice tailored to you based on your unique cycle and schedule, birth control, and reproductive goals.
Since its launch in 2016, Spot On has had over 2.6 million downloads, and close to 73,000 monthly engaged users who log on and track their period, mood, activity and/or birth control.
Spot On offers an inclusive user experience, never making assumptions about your gender, sexual orientation, or reproductive goals. This app talks about your period and birth control the way real people do (so, no pink flowers or butterflies).
In a post-Roe world, Spot On is committed to data privacy, allowing users to choose to create an account or use the app anonymously.
Spot On’s usership over-indexes BiPOC representation in comparison to the US population: Spot On has 58 per cent BiPOC users as compared to 42 per cent of the US population.
The majority of Spot On users are between ages 18-24 (42 per cent), closely followed by ages 25-29 (24 per cent). Most of its engaged users are patients at Planned Parenthood health centres.
Spot On does not display ads or prompt users to upgrade. The app’s north star is to increase user engagement and satisfaction and to empower BiPOC community members to make informed decisions about their sexual and reproductive, mental, and physical health goals.
For more, visit plannedparenthood.org.
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HIV research has identified a new target for ovarian cancer by selectively blocking a cleft in the retinoblastoma protein that protects tumour-supporting macrophages.
The discovery could make ovarian – and potentially other – cancers more responsive to immunotherapies, treatments that use the body’s immune system to fight disease.
Scientists at the Wistar Institute found that targeting a specific cleft in the retinoblastoma protein removed only tumour-supporting macrophages while sparing those that fight disease.
Macrophages are immune cells that can either attack tumours or shield them from harm.
The work builds on decades of HIV studies led by Dr Luis Montaner, executive vice president of the Wistar Institute and director of its HIV Cure and Viral Diseases Center.
Montaner said: “This target emerged from our work understanding how macrophages survive HIV infection.
“It shows how insights from one field of medicine can inform breakthroughs in another.”
Targeting tumour-protecting macrophages without harming beneficial ones has long been a challenge.
Wistar researchers showed that selectively inhibiting this protein cleft depleted only tumour-supporting macrophages, leaving protective immune cells intact. Animal studies confirmed tumour shrinkage using this approach.
Montaner said: “This is a first-in-kind target against a solid tumour.
“It opens new avenues for therapies that could complement existing immunotherapies.”
The study highlights the value of long-term, cross-disciplinary research. It took more than 10 years from the initial HIV-linked finding to identifying this cancer target.
Next steps include exploring applications in acute myeloid leukaemia, pancreatic cancer and combination therapies.
Mental health
US incineration of contraceptives denies 1.4m African women and girls lifesaving care, NGO says
The US decision to incinerate US$9.7m worth of contraceptives is expected to result in 174,000 unintended pregnancies and 56,000 unsafe abortions across five African countries.
The medical supplies, many of which were not due to expire until between 2027 and 2029, would have supported more than 1.4 million women and girls in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Mali.
The products had already been manufactured, packaged and prepared for delivery. Around 77 per cent were earmarked for distribution in the five African nations.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), a global healthcare provider and advocate for sexual and reproductive rights, offered to take the contraceptives for redistribution at no cost to US taxpayers. The offer was declined.
IPPF said the decision would deny women and girls in the affected countries access to lifesaving care.
Tanzania will be hardest hit, losing more than 1 million injectable doses and 365,100 implants – small devices inserted under the skin that release hormones to prevent pregnancy.
This amounts to 28 per cent of the country’s total annual contraceptive need.
Dr Bakari, project coordinator at Umati, IPPF’s member association in Tanzania, said: “We are facing a major challenge.
“The impact of the USAID funding cuts has already significantly affected the provision of sexual and reproductive health services in Tanzania, leading to a shortage of contraceptive commodities, especially implants.
“This shortage has directly impacted clients’ choices regarding family planning uptake.”
In Mali, women will lose access to 1.2 million oral contraceptive pills and 95,800 implants, nearly one-quarter of the country’s annual requirement.
In Zambia, 48,400 implants and 295,000 injectable doses will no longer be available. In Kenya, 108,000 women will go without contraceptive implants.
Marie Evelyne Petrus-Barry, IPPF’s Africa regional director, called the move “appalling and extremely wasteful”.
She said: “These lifesaving medical supplies were destined to countries where access to reproductive care is already limited, and in some cases, part of a broader humanitarian response, such as in the DRC.
“The choice to incinerate them is unjustifiable.”
In Kenya, the cuts compound an already strained system.
Nelly Munyasia, executive director of the Reproductive Health Network in Kenya, said stocks of long-term contraceptives had already run out, and warned of further consequences.
She said: “There is a 46 per cent funding gap in Kenya’s national family planning programme,.
“These systemic setbacks come at a time when unmet need for contraception remains high. Nearly one in five girls aged 15 to 19 are already pregnant or has given birth.
“Unsafe abortions remain among the five leading causes of maternal deaths in Kenya.”
Munyasia also warned that health workers’ skills are being eroded and said a lack of contraceptive access would increase maternal deaths as more women seek unsafe abortions.
While Kenya’s 2010 constitution allows abortion when a pregnant person’s life or health is at risk, the 1963 penal code still criminalises the procedure.
As a result, healthcare providers often avoid offering abortion care, even in emergencies.
A US state department spokesperson confirmed last month that the decision to destroy the supplies had been authorised.
Reports indicated the products were to be incinerated in France, prompting the French government to say it was “following the situation closely” following objections from rights and family planning groups.
The state department said the contraceptives could not be sold or donated to “eligible buyers” due to US legal restrictions, which prohibit foreign aid to organisations that provide abortion services, counsel on abortion, or advocate for abortion rights overseas.
The Gates Foundation will invest US$2.5bn in women’s health research by 2030, it announced on Monday, focusing on conditions from preeclampsia to menopause.
The pledge is around one-third more than the foundation spent on women’s and maternal health research and development over the past five years.
It is also among the first major commitments since Bill Gates said he would give away his US$200bn fortune by 2045.
Gates said: “Women’s health continues to be ignored, underfunded and sidelined. Too many women still die from preventable causes or live in poor health,” said Gates.
“That must change.”
The new funding will support research into under-studied conditions affecting hundreds of millions of women in both high- and low-income countries.
These include preeclampsia – a pregnancy complication that causes high blood pressure – and gestational diabetes, as well as heavy menstrual bleeding, endometriosis and menopause.
Investment will focus on five priority areas: obstetric care and maternal immunisation; maternal health and nutrition; gynaecological and menstrual health; contraceptive innovation; and research into sexually transmitted infections.
The aim is to kickstart research, develop new products, and ensure equitable global access to treatments.
Just one per cent of healthcare research and innovation spending goes to female-specific conditions beyond cancer, according to a 2021 analysis by McKinsey & Co.
Dr Anita Zaidi, the foundation’s head of gender equality, said the field has been held back by data gaps and bias.
She noted that key questions remain unanswered – including how some medicines interact with the uterus.
She told Reuters: “If you look at the literature, there may be only 10 women who’ve been studied, ever.
“We don’t even have the answers to these basic questions.”
Zaidi said the US$2.5bn pledge is a “drop in the bucket” compared to what is needed, and called on governments, philanthropists and the private sector to step in.
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