If you're pricing sleep consultants

A sleep consultant writes the plan. Cradle is what runs it — every single day.

A good consultant gives you a real plan, stages and all. Then they go home, and you're the one who has to execute it at 5:40am on four hours' sleep — remembering which stage you're on, and spotting the day your baby is ready for the next one. That's the part Cradle does. It reads your baby's own logged sleep, tells you today's windows, and moves you up the moment the pattern says it's time.

Show me how it works ↓

A real Cradle dashboard runs further down this page — no download, no sign-up.

Sweet spot in 18 minMorning nap
Ready for 4 napsMoved up today
The Cradle home screen: the next nap window, today's log, and one-tap Feed, Sleep and Diaper buttons.
Watch it re-plan

Same baby. Three completely different days.

Below is a four-month-old's schedule. The two dates beside it are the days their nap count actually changes — step through them. Cradle makes that move on the day, without being asked, and tells you it did.

Wake-up held at 6:40 so only the plan moves. Times are generated by the same wake-window engine the app schedules from; naps assumed roughly an hour.

Where it actually breaks down

The plan was never the hard part.

Ask any parent who's paid for one. The plan made sense in the call. What's hard is three weeks later, at dawn, when you can't remember whether you're supposed to be on four naps or three — and nobody is watching to tell you.

It tells you today

Not a PDF you re-read. Today's wake windows and the next sweet spot, on the home screen and on your lock screen, one hand, in the dark.

It levels you up on time

The stage moves when your baby's own logged sleep says it's time — not when a calendar reminder fires, and not three weeks after you first suspected it.

It never forgets

You don't have to hold any of it in your head. Every sleep is logged, every stage is tracked, and it's all still there when you're too tired to think.

The 2am test

You shouldn't have to open anything.

This is the hour a consultant genuinely can't help you in — and the hour you're least able to do arithmetic. So the running feed and the next window sit on the lock screen, and logging is one thumb, no unlock, no typing, screen still dark.

  • Live Activity on the lock screen — the feed timer runs where you can see it without waking the phone properly.
  • Four taps to log a feed — side, start, stop, done. One hand.
  • It remembers so you don't — in the morning the night is already in the record, and today's schedule has shifted to match it.
Left side · 7:42Running on the lock screen
Cradle's Live Activity on the iPhone lock screen, showing a running nursing timer for the left side.
The stages you'll move through

Knowing the stages is easy. Catching the day you move is not.

Any decent plan lists these. The question is whether anyone notices the morning your baby is genuinely ready for the next one — or whether you spend a fortnight fighting a schedule they outgrew.

Typical wake window by age · the ladder Cradle actually schedules from

Between three months and six and a half, the typical window stretches from about 1h 45m to 2h 18m — 33 minutes longer, on a day that's lost a nap. Cradle makes that move for you, on the evidence of your own baby's sleep, and tells you it did.

Two different jobs.

This isn't a knock on consultants — a good one is genuinely worth the money for what they do. It's just that what they do ends, and what Cradle does doesn't.

A sleep consultant

Diagnoses and prescribes

  • Listens to your whole situation and reads things no app can see
  • Writes a plan, including the stages ahead
  • Coaches you through the hard first nights
  • Is a human being who tells you you're doing fine
Cradle

Runs it, every day, for two years

  • Turns the plan into today's times, shifted by this morning's actual wake-up
  • Moves you to the next stage on the evidence of your baby's own logs
  • Is awake at 2am, on the lock screen, with no appointment
  • Keeps every caregiver on the same live schedule and the same log
If you've already hired a consultant, this is the layer that makes their plan stick. Log against it and you'll see the day the windows have genuinely moved past what they gave you — instead of guessing, or booking another session to ask.
See it in action

Don't take our word for it — go poke at it.

There's a full Cradle dashboard running on this site right now, on a simulated baby. Every card is computed live by the same engine the app uses. No download, no sign-up, no email — just click it.

cradlebabytracker.com/dashboard

Cradle Rhythm Score

▲ 9 this week
Settling — nights are
lengthening steadily.

Longest stretch

6h 12m
Personal best · Tue night

Current window

1h 45m
age band 1h 30m–2h

Day → night pattern · 30 days

Night sleep Daytime naps Feeds

Where they sit on the ladder

The band moves; the schedule moves with it.
Open the live dashboard → Free wake-window chart

Runs on a simulated baby. Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for.

The app

Four taps to log. One screen to know.

Cradle schedule screen showing today's plan from morning wake to bedtime with check-off circles.
ScheduleToday's plan, checkable, adjustable.
Cradle reports screen showing the 30-day pattern chart with sleep, feeds and diapers.
ReportsThe pattern, 30 days at a glance.
Cradle nursing timer showing left-side elapsed time and per-side ounce entry.
FeedingPer-side timer, one hand, in the dark.
The math

Sixteen cents a day.

$59.99a year
about 16¢ a day
or $9.99 monthly · first 7 days free · cancel from your phone
  • Every day of it, newborn to two years — not a fortnight of support
  • Every caregiver on the same live schedule and the same log
  • Every report, on the phone and on a real screen
  • No session to book, no follow-up to pay for

For context, published industry cost guides put most sleep-consultant packages between $250 and $500 as of 2026, with a single initial consultation at $100–$250. Pricing varies widely by consultant, credential and format — check with anyone you're considering.

Huckleberry cost guide Bornbir US & Canada survey

Straight answer

Sometimes you should hire the consultant.

We'd rather say this than sell around it. Hire a person if:

  • Something about your baby's breathing, reflux, weight gain or development worries you. That's a pediatrician first, and no app is a substitute for one.
  • You have twins or multiples, or a medically complex baby.
  • You've tried structured approaches already and they haven't worked for your family.
  • What you actually need is a human being to tell you you're doing okay at 3am. That's real, and it's worth paying for.

Cradle is a tracker and a scheduling tool. It is not a medical device, it does not diagnose anything, and it does not replace professional judgement. What it does is the part a person can't be there for: every day, for two years.

What it's built on

The method has a source, and it isn't a guess.

The wake-window ladder, nap counts by age and overtiredness cues are adapted from published pediatric sleep research, then checked against what families actually log in Cradle. The bands on this page are the same ones the app schedules from — we didn't make them up for the landing page. Every reference is on Sources & method.

Read every source we use Free wake-window chart by age

We make no claim that Cradle causes babies to sleep longer, and nothing here is a clinical result. How any individual baby responds varies.

What you're probably thinking.

My consultant's plan already covers the later stages. What does this add?

Execution. Their plan tells you what four months looks like and what six looks like; Cradle tells you what today looks like, shifted by when your baby actually woke up, and flags the morning the pattern says you're ready to move on. The plan is the map. This is the part that keeps you on it.

How does it know when to move my baby up a stage?

From your baby's own logs. Cradle tracks when they're actually falling asleep against the window it predicted, and when that gap says the current stage no longer fits, it moves the schedule and tells you it did. The age bands it moves between come from a published pediatric protocol, not from guesswork.

Does Cradle make me let my baby cry?

No. Cradle doesn't prescribe a settling method at all. It tells you when the sleep window is open — how you get them down inside it is entirely yours.

Can an app really replace a trained consultant?

For the diagnostic, human parts — no, and we've said so above. For the daily running of a schedule over two years, an app is genuinely better suited: it doesn't forget, it doesn't sleep, and it doesn't charge you for a follow-up.

What happens after the free trial?

It's $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year, billed through the App Store or Google Play. Cancel any time in your device's subscription settings — including during the trial.

Try it tonight. Decide in a week.

Seven days free. If it isn't earning its place by then, cancel from your phone and you've spent nothing.

Start the free trial