Rise Sleep App Awakes to Digital 100 Win

Rise increased active users 165% in the US and 154% in the UK, making it the fastest-growing sleep app.

Rise Science CEO Jeff Kahn is in the business of helping everyone get a better night’s sleep, and his company’s Digital 100-winning app RISE: Sleep Tracker coaches them on how to do it. He also demonstrated determination to follow his own advice during a video interview he joined by WiFi from the porch of a coffee shop in a national park in Atlanta.

He tries to make sure he gets “enough natural sunlight to set my Circadian rhythm so that tonight I’m actually going to get a stronger melatonin release,” he explains. “I’m going to get better sleep. I’m gonna wake up more refreshed. So this is something we help people do in the app. But if I can, I like to try and be outside. We’re a remote company – so it’s nice to see other people, it’s nice to be in nature.”

On top in a popular category

The Rise app was the top-ranking sleep app in both the US (with a 165% gain) and the UK (up 154%). In the UK, it placed #1 in Beauty and Wellness, whereas in the US it was #3 in the same category. It probably says something about the sleep-deprived state of the nation that in the US, the Beauty and Wellness category included three similar apps, Muse (meditation and sleep, up 68%), Sleep Monitor: Sleep Tracker (up 39%), and Oura ,(up 37%) . In addition to Rise, the UK list included Endel: Focus, Relax & Sleep (up 36%). Those are year-over-year comparisons of app’s monthly active users for 2024 versus 2023. According to Similarweb estimates, American consumers searched for “sleep app” and related terms about 9,500 times per month in 2024.

Excerpt from the Similarweb Digital 100 US 2025

The Digital 100 is Similarweb’s annual ranking of the fastest growing websites, and this year’s edition included expanded coverage of mobile apps. Both the US and UK versions where Rise placed included the top ten apps in across ten different categories, plus a Digital Winner award for companies that achieved strong growth both on the web and with its app.

The Rise app coaches its users to follow science-based best practices for tracking how much they sleep – using when they put down their phone at night and when they pick it up in the morning as a proxy if they don’t have a device such as a Fitbit or Apple Watch to track it directly. The app presents a score for whether they are running a “sleep deficit” and advice on things like adjusting bedtimes and caffeine intake to improve their sleep and their health.

Relentless discipline

For Rise, the app is the product, although the website is an important vehicle for promoting that product. Kahn emphasizes the importance of a scientific approach to measuring and improving on the performance of marketing campaigns, in addition to getting the science right within the product itself.

“Since we launched, if you look at our app store release history, we’ve shipped about 2 tests per week for the last couple of hundred weeks … In any given week we might be running 120 different ads – just to give you a sense of the level of experimentation.” — Rise Science CEO Jeff Kahn on the importance of testing and benchmarking.

“Since we launched, if you look at our app store release history, we’ve shipped about 2 tests per week for the last couple of hundred weeks,” Kahn says. While there is an element of luck involved in Rise’s growth story, it also reflects “just relentless discipline from the team,” he says. The discipline of testing and experimenting includes aspects of product design like improving the onboarding experience, but also refining the marketing and advertising of the app. “In any given week we might be running 120 different ads – just to give you a sense of the level of experimentation.”

Kahn is most motivated by the impact his company has had on individuals—insights he first began to explore as a sleep-deprived engineering student at Northwestern University, where he was introduced to sleep experts among the faculty.

“I think it really starts with, who is the person that needs what you’re offering? Do people want it – are you solving a real problem?” Kahn says. Clearly, a lot of people feel they have a problem with feeling exhausted all the time, and the science is clear that they can sleep better if they make a few consistent changes to their daily routine, he says. “We just want to help people have better days, and we believe that sleep is the biggest thing you can do to have a better day.”

Want to learn how to win in 2025? Check out the full list of Digital 100 winners and see who dominated across key categories and eight different markets.

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by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".