Choosing a jet lag app: what to check before you pay
The best jet lag app for you is the one that plans your actual flight: both time zones, the direction your body clock has to move, when to seek light and when to avoid it, and what to do before you leave. Check whether it starts before departure, adjusts when the trip goes off-plan, says where its numbers come from, and how it charges you. This page lists the questions, and is honest about where Jetlag Away fits.
Jet lag apps range from a page of general advice to a dated, hour-by-hour schedule built from your flight. They can look similar in an app store listing. The questions below are the ones that tell them apart. They apply to any app, including this one.
Does it plan your flight, or give you tips?
“Get some sunlight” and “avoid caffeine in the evening” are tips. A plan says which hours, on which days, in which time zone, for this particular flight. Ask whether the app reads both airports’ time zones, including daylight saving on your dates, and whether you enter times as they appear on your boarding pass or have to convert them yourself.
Does it tell you when to avoid light?
Light moves the body clock in both directions, depending only on when it falls relative to your body’s temperature low. An app that only tells you when to seek light is doing half the job, and the other half is where the classic mistake lives: bright morning sun on arrival that pushes you the wrong way. Light timing explains why.
Does it start before you fly?
The nights before departure are the cheapest place to do some of the shift, because at home you control your light. A plan that starts on landing has given that away. Check whether it moves your bedtime in the run-up, and by how much. Moving the schedule earlier faster than about an hour a night does not move the clock any faster.
Does it know which way to go?
For a large enough eastward trip, moving the clock later round the day can be as quick as moving it earlier, and runs with the clock rather than against it. Ask what the app does with a ten-hour eastward shift, and whether it tells you when it has chosen the long way round.
Does it know when not to bother?
On a two-day trip, adjusting fully can leave you halfway there when you fly home. A good plan asks when you are flying back, and can keep you on home time when the stay is short. Short trips covers the trade-off.
Does it adjust when the trip goes off-plan?
Flights are delayed and windows get missed. Ask whether you can edit the trip and have the plan rebuilt, and whether it asks how you are doing and changes the remaining days in response, without rewriting the days already past. When the plan meets the trip describes how Jetlag Away does it.
Can you see where its numbers come from?
Every jet lag plan rests on assumptions: how fast the clock moves each way, where your temperature low sits, how long to seek light. Ask whether the app publishes them and cites the research. If it cannot tell you why it says what it says, you cannot judge whether to trust it. Jetlag Away’s are in how a plan is built, with sources.
What does it say about melatonin?
Some jet lag approaches include melatonin, and some of the research behind them does too. If an app recommends a dose or a time to take it, ask who decided that, and whether it knows your health and your medication. Jetlag Away does not schedule melatonin at all and leaves that question to a pharmacist or doctor. Jet lag without melatonin explains why, and what a plan can do without it.
Will the reminders arrive on a plane?
Reminders that come from a server need a connection. Reminders scheduled on the phone itself do not. Ask which kind the app uses, and whether it tells you how many are actually scheduled.
What does it collect, and when?
A plan needs your flight and your sleep hours. Ask what else the app wants: your name, your location, your contacts. And ask whether analytics are on before you have agreed to them. What a jet lag app needs to know about you sets out Jetlag Away’s answers.
How does it charge you?
A subscription suits someone who flies every month. Someone with one trip a year may not want something that renews after they have landed. Check what happens when your trip ends. Jetlag Away offers both: Frequent Flyer, a monthly subscription that renews until you cancel it, and Single Trip, thirty days of full access for one payment that does not renew. Prices come from the App Store or Google Play in your own currency.
Can you try it properly first?
A demo plan for someone else’s flight tells you little. Check whether you can build a plan for your own trip before paying, and whether trying it needs an email address or a card. Jetlag Away’s 30-minute trial opens the whole app with neither.
Where Jetlag Away does not fit
Some of these questions have answers that may rule it out for you:
- You want melatonin built into the plan. It is not, by design.
- Your trip has several long legs through different time zones. The app plans one flight, origin to destination; connections are not modelled separately.
- You want the flight home planned too. The return flight is used to decide whether the stay is long enough to adjust for. The journey back is not planned.
- You are mainly worn out by the flight itself. The app addresses the body clock, not travel fatigue. A long flight due south needs no circadian plan at all; it needs a night’s sleep.
- You want a medical answer. It is a scheduling tool, not a medical device, and it does not diagnose anything.
If none of those apply, the plan, the reasoning and the sources are all on this site, and the trial lets you check them against your own flight.
Jetlag Away is a scheduling tool and not medical advice. If you have a sleep or circadian disorder, or any diagnosed condition affected by sleep, talk to a healthcare professional first — see the health disclaimer in our terms.
Last reviewed 10 October 2026. Published 10 October 2026.