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Underlay.fm vs Endel
Endel adapts to your environment: the time of day, the weather, your heart rate if you're wearing something that tracks it. Underlay.fm adapts to you. It just asks.
Endel adapts to your environment, not to you
Endel is well built, and its passive personalization is genuinely clever: it infers a soundscape from signals like time of day, weather, and biometrics from a connected wearable, with no manual setup. The output sits closer to ambient texture than Brain.fm's composed tracks, but it's still music-adjacent, layered and evolving with more structure than pure texture.
The ceiling is what it can't sense. Endel doesn't know you're anxious because of a hard conversation, or tired because you slept badly rather than because it's late. No sensor picks that up. It also leans on external signals over your actual internal state, and its best feature depends on owning a supported wearable.
What Underlay.fm does differently
Underlay.fm skips the inference entirely. Before every session it asks what you're working on and how you're feeling, then synthesizes a soundscape around that combination directly. No wearable, no weather data, no guessing from the clock. Just the two things that actually determine what kind of audio environment helps.
The audio itself is also further from music than Endel's. Underlay.fm uses no music-adjacent structure at all: no melody, no evolving harmonic movement, just layered tonal texture with nothing to follow. Mid-session, you can adjust warmth, depth, and individual layers without breaking your concentration.
| Underlay.fm | Endel | |
|---|---|---|
| Audio type | Tonal texture, no music | Generative soundscapes (music-adjacent) |
| How it knows your state | Asks directly, every session | Infers from time, weather, biometrics |
| Wearable required for full effect | No | Yes, for biometric adaptation |
| Binaural beats | Yes (Pro) | Yes, as a specific scenario |
| Headphones required | Recommended | Not required |
| Free trial | One session, no account | Trial period, then billed |
| Monthly price | $7.99 | $6.99 |
| Annual price | $47.99 | From $39.99 |
| Lifetime option | $79.99 one-time | $249.99 one-time |
Common questions
What is Endel?+
Endel is a generative soundscape app that adapts automatically to signals like time of day, weather, and biometrics from a connected wearable. You pick a scenario (Focus, Sleep, Relax, Activity) and Endel builds a soundscape around those passive inputs, no manual setup needed.
Is Endel's audio music, or is it ambient texture?+
Endel calls its output generative soundscapes, and it sits closer to ambient texture than Brain.fm's composed tracks. But it's still music-adjacent: layered, evolving, with more structure than pure texture. It's a real middle ground, not the same thing as Brain.fm's functional music and not the same thing as audio with no musical structure at all.
How is Underlay.fm different from Endel?+
Endel infers your state from external signals: the clock, the weather, your heart rate if you have a supported wearable. Underlay.fm just asks. Before every session you tell it what you're working on and how you're feeling, and it synthesizes the soundscape around that directly, no wearable required. It also uses no music-adjacent structure at all, just tonal texture with nothing to follow.
Do I need a wearable to use Endel?+
No, but its most distinctive feature (biometric adaptation) needs one. Without a connected device, Endel still adapts to time of day and weather, but the personalization is thinner. Underlay.fm doesn't use biometrics at all. It asks directly instead, which works the same way on any device.
Can I try Endel for free?+
Endel offers a trial period before billing starts. Underlay.fm lets you start a full session immediately with no account. After that, creating a free account (still no credit card) gets you one session every day going forward.
Is Endel or Underlay.fm better for ADHD?+
Endel's soundscapes are music-adjacent, so there's more structure for an ADHD brain to potentially track than with pure texture. Underlay.fm uses no music-adjacent structure at all, and it asks how you're feeling before every session rather than inferring it from external signals, which matters for a condition that can vary hour to hour independent of the weather or the clock.
Also comparing Brain.fm, Focus@Will, lo-fi, or Noisli? See the full comparison →
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