Calm is a $70/year meditation and wellness app with breathing exercises as one feature among many. Breathwork Tools with Aria is a free, purpose-built breathing tool with AI personalization. They serve different needs and compete on different axes.
Calm's breathing exercises are pre-recorded sessions with guided audio. They're well-produced and calming, but they're static — the same session plays the same way every time regardless of your current state. Their 'Daily Calm' and breathing content are designed to be consumed like media rather than adapted as training.
Breathwork Tools with Aria generates every session dynamically. The AI selects the pattern, sets the pace, and adjusts the duration based on your current state and goals. There's no pre-recorded audio — the guidance is visual (breathing circle) and auditory (phase transition cues). This makes it more responsive but less 'produced.'
The practical difference: if you want a soothing guided experience where someone walks you through a breathing meditation with a nice voice and ambient music, Calm is excellent. If you want the right breathing protocol for your current state, optimized over time, at zero cost — Breathwork Tools with Aria delivers that.