I drink water like a camel. Two sips at 9am. Nothing until dinner. Then I wonder why I have a headache.

You don’t need an app to drink water. You need an app because you keep forgetting to drink water.

Here are seven that are worth knowing about, with the parts you can actually check.

How this list is sourced

I have not run all seven of these for a month each, and you should be sceptical of any blog that claims it has.

What I have done is verify the checkable parts. Every developer name, star rating and rating count below was pulled from the US App Store on 11 August 2026. Descriptions of how each app behaves come from its own store listing.

I’ve left prices out of the comparison table on purpose. All seven are free to download and charge through in-app purchases that change by region, by platform and by promotion. Every specific figure I checked while writing this disagreed with at least one other source. Open the App Store listing and read the actual price before you commit to anything.

A correction about WaterMinder

Older articles, including an earlier version of this one, list WaterMinder as a $4.99 one-time purchase. That is no longer how it works.

As of August 2026 the App Store listing is Water Tracker by WaterMinder® from Funn Media, LLC, free to download, rated 4.7 across 34,116 ratings, with paid tiers layered on top. Reported figures for those tiers vary between sources, which is exactly why I’m not quoting one.

So “buy it once and you’re done” is not a reason to pick it any more.

Pick what you’re actually solving first

Most lists throw a dozen apps at you and let you sort it out. There are really only four problems here.

  • You forget → you need reminders that fire at sensible times
  • You forget AND you don’t care → you need a game or a pet
  • You want the data → you need charts and Apple Health sync
  • You want it on your wrist → you need a real Apple Watch app

Pick the line that’s you and skip the rest.

Quick comparison

Developers, ratings and rating counts verified on the US App Store, 11 August 2026.

AppDeveloperRatingRatingsApproach
WaterllamaLlama Luna Apps Inc4.9158,650Characters and streaks
Water Tracker by WaterMinderFunn Media, LLC4.734,116Data and Health sync
Plant NannySPARKFUL INC.4.7105,998Grow a plant
Water Reminder - Daily TrackerVGFIT LLC4.777,780Plain reminders
Drink Water Reminder N TrackerPhoenix Games LLP4.5152,121Plain reminders
My Water: Daily Drink TrackerMy Water Drink Tracker Oy4.624,118Plain reminders
Hydro Coach - Hydration AppWired Betterment4.7958Calculated goal

If you want the one with the most goodwill behind it

Waterllama: 4.9 stars, 158,650 ratings

The highest-rated app here and the most-rated, which is a rare combination. Llama-themed tracking with streaks, drink types beyond plain water, and Apple Health sync.

Pick this if you have no strong opinion and just want the option most people have stuck with.

If you want the data

Water Tracker by WaterMinder: 4.7 stars, 34,116 ratings

The one that treats hydration as a tracking problem. Custom container sizes, history charts, Apple Watch app, widgets, Apple Health sync.

Its App Store listing was updated on 11 August 2026, the day I checked, so it is actively maintained.

Pick this if you want to look at a chart at the end of the month. Skip it if you want something you set up in thirty seconds, because the setup is the price you pay for the detail.

If you need a reason to care

Plant Nanny: 4.7 stars, 105,998 ratings

From SPARKFUL INC. Your water goes to a virtual plant. Hit your target and it grows, miss it and it doesn’t.

Two honest notes. First, guilt mechanics are load-bearing here, and if you already run on self-criticism, an app that gives you something to disappoint is not the right tool. Second, this style of motivation tends to fade once the novelty does, which is true of every gamified tracker and not a knock on this one specifically.

Pick this if you respond well to caring for something. Skip it if dead-plant guilt sounds exhausting.

If you just want a nudge

Three apps in this bracket, all free to download, all doing broadly the same job. The differences are interface and how noisy the free tier is, so pick on how the screenshots look to you.

  • Water Reminder - Daily Tracker: VGFIT LLC, 4.7 stars, 77,780 ratings.
  • Drink Water Reminder N Tracker: Phoenix Games LLP, 4.5 stars, 152,121 ratings. Worth knowing that its last listed update was September 2025, older than everything else here.
  • My Water: Daily Drink Tracker: My Water Drink Tracker Oy, 4.6 stars, 24,118 ratings.

If you want the goal calculated for you

Hydro Coach - Hydration App: 4.7 stars, 958 ratings

From Wired Betterment. Works out a target from your details rather than handing you a flat number, and adjusts it.

Read the rating count before you install. 958 ratings is a fraction of everything else on this page. A 4.7 across a thousand people is a much weaker signal than a 4.7 across a hundred thousand, and it means fewer edge cases have been found. There is also a second, unrelated listing called Drink Tracker by Hydro Coach from Codium App Ideas OG sitting at 3.7 stars across 24 ratings, so check the developer name before you tap install.

Two I could not verify

An earlier version of this article listed four apps in a “don’t recommend” section with one line of vague criticism each. That was not useful to anyone, so it’s gone. Here is what’s left of it that is actually checkable.

Aqualert. I could not find a listing matching the app people mean when they say this. The closest results are two apps with 2 and 1 ratings between them. If you were sent here looking for it, I have nothing solid to tell you.

Water Time - My Drink Reminder. Roman Nikolaev, 4.7 stars, 2,335 ratings, but the last listed update was September 2024. That is nearly two years without a release. On iOS that eventually becomes a compatibility problem rather than a taste problem.

Neither of these is a claim that the apps are bad. It’s a claim that I can’t stand behind a recommendation I can’t check.

How much water do you actually need?

This is where most app articles quietly invent a number, so let me not do that.

There is no single correct daily figure for adults. The most commonly cited reference, the Institute of Medicine’s Dietary Reference Intakes, puts adequate total water intake at roughly 3.7 litres a day for men and 2.7 litres for women. Total water means everything, all drinks plus the water in your food, not glasses of plain water. Quoting those numbers as a plain-water target, which happens constantly, overstates them significantly.

Any flat number is also the wrong shape for the problem. A 55 kg person and a 95 kg person do not need the same amount, which is the whole argument in the 8 glasses of water a day myth. A weight-based starting point scales with the person. It’s still a starting point, not a prescription.

So: don’t pick an app because it promises you a scientifically exact goal. None of them have one. Pick the app whose reminders you’ll actually respond to.

What makes one of these worth keeping

  1. Reminders that respect your day. Not hourly spam. Quiet while you sleep, quiet once you’ve hit the goal.
  2. One-tap logging. More than one tap and you’ll stop doing it inside a week.
  3. A real Apple Watch app. Logging from your wrist removes the main excuse.
  4. Apple Health sync. Your water data should sit with the rest of your health data, not stranded in one app.
  5. An export or Health hand-off. Every one of these apps is a business that may not exist in three years.

The awkward part: switching later

None of these apps import each other’s history. If you log a year in one and move to another, you start at zero.

The partial escape hatch is Apple Health. Apps that write to Health leave your intake in a place that survives the app being deleted, so the habit data isn’t wholly locked to one developer. Check for Health sync before you commit a year to anything, because it’s the only portability any of these offer.

FAQ

Which water reminder app has the strongest App Store signal? Waterllama, on the numbers: 4.9 stars across 158,650 ratings as of 11 August 2026. That’s the highest rating and the largest rating count on this list. It’s a popularity signal, not proof it suits you.

Do water reminder apps actually make you drink more? I’m not going to give you a percentage, because the ones that circulate on blogs don’t trace back to a study. What’s defensible: a reminder is a prompt, and prompts help with things you forget rather than things you’re avoiding. If the reason you don’t drink water is that it never crosses your mind, an app addresses that directly. If you’re actively avoiding it, an app is the wrong tool.

Is it worth paying for one? All seven are free to download, so try the free tier for a fortnight first. If you’re still opening it after two weeks, decide then. If you’re not, no subscription was going to fix that.

Is WaterMinder still a one-time purchase? No. The current App Store listing is free to download with paid tiers on top.

Which has the best Apple Watch app? WaterMinder and Waterllama both ship Watch apps. Check the current listing for what each Watch app can do without the phone, since that’s the detail that actually matters and it changes between versions.

Can Apple Health do this on its own? You can log water manually in Health, and it will store and chart it. What Health won’t do is remind you. That’s the entire reason these apps exist.

Related reads:

Disclosure: WaterDrop is mine

I build iOS apps, and WaterDrop is one of them.

I’ve kept it out of the comparison table, out of every ranked section and out of the FAQ answers above, because scoring my own product against apps I compete with isn’t a fair test. It’s a water reminder app, so it belongs to the same category as everything on this page. It is new and has very few App Store ratings so far, so there is not much of a crowd verdict to lean on either. Try it and judge for yourself.

Sources

This article is general information, not medical advice. Talk to a qualified professional about anything affecting your health.

— Dolce