Best Chronic Pain Apps for Tracking Pain and Function
The best chronic pain apps compared: Bearable, Manage My Pain, Branch, PainScale, and an offline pain and function planner you own for one price.
If you want to track pain alongside function, medication and what actually helps, and keep it all private on your own device, PainMgmtOS is the best chronic pain app for most people at $23 once. If you want a broad symptom-and-mood engine that finds correlations across many conditions, Bearable is the stronger pick, and Branch is the one to choose if you want a clinician-connected program built around cognitive behavioral therapy. PainScale is the free diary to start with if you are not ready to spend anything.
| Tool | Best for | Price | Subscription | Works offline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PainMgmtOS | Pain plus function, meds and coping in one private file | $23 one-time | No | Yes |
| Bearable | Correlating symptoms, mood and habits across conditions | Free tier | Optional, yearly | Partly |
| Manage My Pain | Fast daily check-ins and doctor-ready reports | Free tier | Optional, for Pro and reports | Partly |
| Branch | A clinician-connected, CBT-based program | Free | No | No |
| PainScale | A free diary with a large article library | Free | No | Partly |
1. PainMgmtOS - best for tracking pain, function and what actually helps
Here is the honest framing of this whole category. Pain intensity is one number, and on its own it is a poor guide to whether your life is getting bigger or smaller. Function - how long you can sit, how far you can walk, how well you slept, whether you made it to the thing you cared about - tells the real story. PainMgmtOS is built around that idea.
It is a single offline HTML file you open in a browser, with seven tabs: Today, Pain Log, Medication, PT Exercises, Non-Med Coping, Function Metrics and Settings. The Pain Log captures date, time, body location, intensity on a 0 to 10 scale, pain type, how long it lasted, what helped and what made it worse, plus notes. The Today view rolls that up into today’s average, a 7-day and 30-day average, a pain-by-location breakdown and a 7-day trend.
The Function Metrics tab is the part most trackers skip: sit time without pain, walking minutes, sleep quality, work hours and whether you took part in social activity, with 7-day averages so you can see function expanding even on weeks the pain number barely moves.
Medication is handled properly for this population. You record each drug with dose, schedule, type, start date and a refill-due date, mark doses taken to build an adherence history, and log side effects with a 1 to 5 severity. For opioids you can enter a morphine-milligram-equivalent per day, and the app shows an informational flag if your total passes 50 MME per day, echoing CDC guidance to talk to your prescriber. It never tells you to change a dose, and neither should any app.
Two more tabs round it out. PT Exercises gives you a library of 12 evidence-based movements plus a personal program and a session log with a “feels easier” rating so you can see progression. Non-Med Coping offers 10 evidence-supported, non-drug options - heat, ice, TENS, mindfulness and the like - that you tap to log and rate 1 to 5, with an effectiveness-over-time table that shows which ones are actually working for you. Everything exports to JSON, so you can back it up or hand a clean record to your clinic.
It costs $23 once. No subscription, no account, no cloud. Everything you type stays in your own browser on your own device, and Ecuato never receives it, because there is no server for it to reach. It works on a laptop, iPhone or Android, and runs fully offline after the first load.
Where it is not the right pick, plainly: it does not remind you. There are no push notifications and no alarms, so the refill flag and the daily view only appear when you open the app yourself. It has no sensors and no automatic tracking, which means every entry is typed in. And it does not connect to your care team or sync anywhere; sharing means exporting or printing and handing it over. If you need medication reminders that buzz your phone, or a dashboard your clinic logs into, choose a connected app instead.
2. Bearable
Bearable is the strongest general symptom tracker for people whose pain sits inside a wider picture of fatigue, mood, migraine or another chronic condition. Its whole design is correlation: you track custom symptoms, mood, sleep, medication and habits, and it surfaces patterns between what you do and how you feel. It is widely used, and the free tier is genuinely usable for daily tracking.
The paid subscription, billed yearly, unlocks the parts people upgrade for: unlimited history beyond the recent window, correlation reports, custom experiments and goals. If your question is “what is driving my flares across everything, not just my back,” Bearable answers it better than a pain-specific tool.
Who should skip it: anyone who wants a focused pain-and-function record rather than a broad quantified-self app, and anyone uneasy about health data living on a company’s servers. Bearable stores your data in its app and syncs it, which is the trade-off for its cross-device reports.
3. Manage My Pain
Manage My Pain is built around two things it does very well: fast daily check-ins and doctor-ready reports. You can record pain, medications and a short reflection in under a minute with sliders and checkboxes, and the app turns your history into clear charts and, crucially, structured reports designed by clinicians to bring to an appointment.
The core app is free with no ads. Deeper analytics and full reports beyond a recent window sit behind an in-app purchase or a Pro subscription, and there is educational content plus gentle daily reminders to keep you logging. For someone who mainly wants a clean record to show a physician, it is one of the best in the category.
Who should skip it: anyone who wants function tracking and a non-drug coping log built in, or anyone who wants to avoid any cloud storage of health data.
4. Branch
Branch, formerly Ouchie, is the pick if you want a program rather than a logbook. It connects to your care team, leans on cognitive behavioral therapy, and pairs tracking with curated resources, exercises, goals and rewards. CBT-based self-management has real evidence behind it for chronic pain, and Branch packages it in a friendly, free app.
The trade-off is that its value comes from being connected. Reports flow to your clinicians, content is served from its library, and the experience assumes you are online and inside its ecosystem. That is a strength if your clinic uses it and a limitation if you just want a private record.
Who should skip it: anyone who wants an offline, self-contained tool with no account and no data leaving their device.
5. PainScale
PainScale is the free diary to start with when you are not ready to pay for anything. It logs pain, triggers, sleep and mood, measures pain overall and by body area, and wraps the tracking in a very large library of articles, exercises and educational content. For basic tracking plus a lot of reading material, the free version goes a long way.
The trade-off is the usual one for free health apps: some advanced features and resources sit behind a paywall, and your data lives in the app’s ecosystem rather than only on your device. It is a content-and-community product as much as a tracker.
Who should skip it: anyone who wants function metrics, an MME check for opioid tapering, or a purely private file they control.
How to choose
- Pick PainMgmtOS if you want pain, function, medication, PT and non-drug coping in one private file you own for $23, with nothing leaving your device.
- Pick Bearable if your pain is one thread in a wider web of symptoms and you want an engine that finds correlations across all of them.
- Pick Manage My Pain if your main goal is a fast daily check-in and a clean, doctor-ready report to bring to appointments.
- Pick Branch if you want a clinician-connected, CBT-based program and you are comfortable being part of its online ecosystem.
- Pick PainScale if you want a free diary with a large library of articles and are fine with a paywall on the extras.
Track the loop, not just the number
The most useful thing you can do in the first two weeks is log without changing anything, so you get an honest baseline. Record pain by location and intensity, the medication you actually took, one non-drug method you tried, and the four function markers: sit time, walking, sleep and whether you made it to what mattered. Patterns show up fast once they are written down.
Sleep deserves special attention, because poor sleep and higher pain feed each other in a loop that is hard to see from the inside. If your log keeps showing bad nights before bad days, our guide to the best sleep trackers covers the tools that target that side specifically. You can browse every planner on the apps page or see more comparisons in our best-of guides.
None of these apps is a medical device, and none of them, ours included, diagnoses anything or replaces professional care. They are logs and educational tools. Chronic pain is worth managing with a clinician, and a good record makes those conversations sharper. If your pain is new, changing suddenly, or coming with red-flag symptoms like weakness, numbness, fever, or loss of bladder or bowel control, stop tracking and seek medical care. And never adjust medication, especially opioids, based on anything an app shows you, because that is a conversation for your prescriber.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best app for tracking chronic pain?
For most people who want pain alongside function, medication and what actually helps in one place, PainMgmtOS is the best pick, because it records what changes your day rather than only a 0 to 10 number, and it costs $23 once with no subscription. If you want to correlate pain with a wider set of symptoms and habits, Bearable is stronger. Branch is the better choice if you want a clinician-connected program.
Are there chronic pain apps without a subscription?
Yes. PainMgmtOS is a one-time $23 purchase with no subscription, no account and no cloud. Several others, including Bearable and Manage My Pain, are free to start but keep their most useful analytics and reports behind a paid plan. Branch and PainScale are free, though PainScale paywalls some extras.
Can a chronic pain app remind me to take my medication?
PainMgmtOS does not send reminders or push notifications. It logs adherence and shows a refill flag when you open it, but it will not buzz your phone. If you specifically need medication alerts, Manage My Pain offers gentle daily reminders, or run a dedicated reminder app alongside your tracker.
Is my health data private in a pain tracking app?
It depends on the app. Most pain apps store your entries on their servers so their reports and cross-device sync can work. PainMgmtOS keeps everything in your own browser on your own device, and Ecuato never receives your data, because the app has no server to send it to.
Do these apps work offline?
PainMgmtOS works fully offline after the first load, on a laptop or added to your phone's home screen. Most of the others need a connection for reports, articles or syncing, though basic daily entry may work offline. Branch in particular is built around being connected to your care team.
Can a pain app help with opioid tapering?
A tracker can support a taper by recording doses, morphine-milligram-equivalent per day, and how function and side effects change over time, which gives you and your prescriber real data. PainMgmtOS includes an MME field and an informational flag above 50 MME per day based on CDC guidance. It does not advise dose changes, and no app should, because tapering must be planned and supervised by your prescriber.
Will a chronic pain app replace seeing a doctor?
No. These apps are logs and educational tools, not medical devices, and they do not diagnose or treat anything. Their value is making your appointments sharper by showing patterns over time. New, sudden or red-flag symptoms need medical care, not more logging.
Ecuato builds interactive dashboard planners as single offline HTML apps. Browse all planners or see more best-of guides.