Elite HRV Alternative: Free iPhone HRV Tracker (No Chest Strap)

Elite HRV helped popularise morning HRV testing, but its full feature set sits behind an $8.99 monthly plan. Pulse Rate offers the same core daily workflow — a 60-second resting reading, an RMSSD trend, and a recovery score — for free, using the iPhone camera instead of a paired chest strap. This page compares the two for everyday HRV tracking.

Side-by-side

How Pulse compares to Elite HRV & Athlytic.

Elite HRV pioneered the space. Pulse just removed the paywall — and the extra hardware.

	Pulse Rate iPhone-only · free	E Elite HRV App · $8.99/mo	A Athlytic App · $3.99/mo (Apple Watch req.)
Up-front cost	$0	$0	$0
Monthly subscription	None	$8.99 / mo	$3.99 / mo
Apple Watch required	No	No	Yes
Data stays on device	✓	Cloud-only	Cloud sync
Heart rate	✓	✓	✓
HRV (RMSSD & SDNN)	✓	RMSSD only	RMSSD only
Blood pressure	✓	—	—
Apple Health 2-way sync	✓	—	Read only
Wellness Index (ESC/AHA-aligned)	✓	Readiness score	Recovery score
3-year total cost	$0	$323	$143

The argument

Why iPhone-only beats a wearable.

Four things a $349 ring or a $30/mo strap can't actually give you back.

No new device

The best wearable is the one already in your pocket.

Your iPhone camera is a clinical-grade PPG sensor. Pulse uses it to read your heart in 60 seconds — no ring, no strap, nothing else to remember.

Zero charging

A heart monitor that's never dead at 6 a.m.

Wearables forget you exist when the battery dies. Your iPhone has 80% at 7 a.m. — that's all the runway Pulse needs.

On-device privacy

Your heart data never leaves the phone.

No cloud upload. No "anonymous" research-partner data deal. Just your iPhone, your numbers, and the Apple Health vault you already trust.

$0 in 36 months

$1,080 saved over the next 3 years.

That's the lifetime cost of a Whoop subscription. Pulse charges you once — never. Every metric they measure, we measure. For free.

FAQ

Your questions, answered.

Is Pulse Rate really a free Elite HRV alternative?

For the daily essentials, yes. Pulse takes a morning resting reading, tracks your RMSSD trend, and scores recovery against your baseline without a subscription, where Elite HRV gates much of that behind $8.99 per month.

Do I need a separate heart-rate strap?

No. Elite HRV is usually paired with an external chest strap; Pulse reads HRV from the iPhone camera, so there is nothing extra to buy or connect.

Does Pulse use RMSSD like Elite HRV?

Yes. Pulse reports RMSSD (and SDNN), the same parasympathetic metric that Elite HRV built its morning-readiness workflow around.

Can I keep a long-term HRV history?

Pulse stores your readings on device and charts the multi-week trend, and it mirrors everything into Apple Health so your history is portable.

Stop renting your heart data.

Download Pulse Rate and take a reading in the next 90 seconds. No card. No ring. No regret.

Download on the App Store

Free to download · Core tracking always free · iOS 15+