The Short Version
WHOOP, Sonar, and Beacon all claim to help you understand your body. They are not direct competitors. WHOOP is a dedicated hardware platform for recovery and strain. Sonar is an aggregator app that pulls data from your existing wearables and turns it into health scores. Beacon is an AI coaching layer that uses your data to decide what you should do next.
Most people who get serious about health end up using two of these three, not all of them.
WHOOP - The Hardware Platform
WHOOP gives you a screenless band, a 24/7 sensor, and an app built around a tight recovery and strain loop. It is opinionated, polished, and excellent for athletes who like the daily recovery percentage as the center of their training decisions.
It is also a closed ecosystem. WHOOP wants you to wear WHOOP and use WHOOP. It is not designed to interpret your Apple Watch or Garmin data alongside its own.
Sonar - The Aggregator
Sonar takes a different approach. It does not sell hardware. It connects to Apple Watch, Garmin, WHOOP, Oura, Fitbit, Polar, Strava, Withings, MyFitnessPal, Peloton, and more, then computes its own Recovery, Sleep, Strain, and Nutrition scores from the combined data.
This is genuinely useful for people who already own multiple devices. Instead of switching between four apps to compare a Garmin recovery score with an Oura readiness, Sonar consolidates the picture.
What Sonar mostly does not do is decide for you. It is a sophisticated dashboard, not a coach. You see the score. You make the call.
Beacon - The Coaching Layer
Beacon overlaps with both. Like Sonar, it reads data from several sources: WHOOP, Oura and Withings directly, and Apple Watch, Garmin and others through Apple Health (Fitbit has no route in today). Like both, it scores your day, with Sleep, Exercise, Diet, Focus and Mindfulness scores rolling into one overall score. Where it diverges is the next step.
Beacon is built around decisions. Its scores can lead the daily plan to suggest training or rest, and its coach can use your health and training context when answering questions or generating a workout. It does not automatically raise intensity, rewrite a saved session, or move nutrition targets whenever one metric changes.
How They Fit Together
The cleanest stack for a serious user is one device and one coach. That is usually Apple Watch plus Beacon, Oura plus Beacon, or WHOOP plus Beacon. Sonar adds value if you own three or more devices and want a single dashboard to interpret them.
Stacking WHOOP and Sonar is possible, but you may notice that both produce overlapping scores. Stacking WHOOP and Beacon is more complementary because Beacon's scores feed its coaching and plans rather than standing alone as a dashboard.
Pricing
WHOOP runs roughly $199 to $359 a year and includes the hardware. Sonar Pro is around $50 to $230 a year depending on plan and region, with a free tier. Beacon is $19.99 a month or $119.99 a year, with no hardware requirement.
Sonar and Beacon are both software-only and significantly cheaper than WHOOP. They are also the two products you are most likely to confuse, because both claim to be the brain across your wearables.
The Real Difference
Sonar will show you that your recovery is low. Beacon will tell you to swap today's lift for mobility and shift the heavy session to Friday. Both products are useful. They are answering different questions.
If you want to see your data, Sonar is excellent. If you want your data to change the day, that is what Beacon is built for.
Who Should Pick Which
Pick WHOOP if you want dedicated recovery hardware and a coaching culture built around it. Pick Sonar if you own multiple wearables and want one dashboard to reconcile them. Pick Beacon if you want recovery, workouts, nutrition, and daily planning decided by an AI coach that reads the wearables you already have, on iPhone.
FAQ
Is Sonar a real competitor to WHOOP?
Sort of. Sonar competes with the WHOOP app, not the WHOOP band. It produces similar Recovery and Strain scores using data from devices you already own. If you do not need the dedicated 24/7 band, Sonar can replace much of what the WHOOP app does at a much lower cost.
Should I use Sonar or Beacon?
Use Sonar if your goal is to consolidate dashboards from many wearables into one view. Use Beacon if your goal is to have an AI coach read that data and tell you what to do next with your workouts, nutrition, and recovery. Many users start with Sonar for visibility and adopt Beacon for action.