Now available to Oura Members, Sleep Debt shows how much sleep your body may be missing, based on your personal sleep need over the past two weeks. It can help you recognize when your body might need more rest and how small, consistent changes can support your recovery.
What Is Sleep Debt?
Sleep Debt shows how much sleep you’ve missed over the past two weeks, based on your personal sleep need estimation. You’ll see your Sleep Need as hours and minutes under Sleep Health.
Sleep Debt is calculated by looking at your total sleep each day (including both long and short sleep sessions) and comparing it to your personal sleep need estimation. It’s calculated over the past two weeks, giving more weight to the most recent days.
If your Sleep Debt stays high for a few days, it may be a sign your body hasn’t fully recovered. Keeping an eye on this number can help you know when to prioritize rest.
How to Find Your Sleep Debt
To calculate Sleep Debt, Oura needs at least five nights of sleep data within the past 14 days.
You can find the Sleep Debt feature in a few places in the Oura App:
- Tap on My Health tab > Select the Sleep Health Hub > Scroll down and select Sleep Debt (under „Related metrics”)
- Tap the Sleep shortcut at the top of the Today tab
- Tap the Sleep card in the Vitals tab
Understanding Your Sleep Debt Rating
Sleep Debt is measured in hours and minutes and grouped into four categories:
- None (0 hours): You’ve met your sleep need consistently, which has kept you free of sleep debt. Nice work—your body and mind will thank you for it
- Low (<2 hours): You’re mostly meeting your sleep need, though there have been a few days when your total sleep has been a bit low. While low sleep debt might not have a big impact right away, staying consistent can help your body recharge more fully
- Moderate (2–5 hours): You’ve built up a moderate amount of sleep debt recently, likely from getting a bit less sleep than usual. Returning to a more consistent sleep pattern—whatever that looks like for you—can help you feel more recharged
- High (>5 hours): Your sleep debt is high right now, which can make it harder to feel your best. If you’re able to, try to make more room for sleep in the days ahead—giving your body time to recover can really make a difference
How Much Sleep Do You Need?
While most adults need around 7 to 9 hours of sleep, the ideal amount varies from person to person. Factors like age, chronotype, activity level, and recovery needs all play a role.
Your body may need more sleep on some days, especially after physical exertion, stress, or disrupted sleep. Other times, feeling alert and well-rested might take less.
Your daily sleep need is based on your typical sleep patterns over the past 90 days. It filters out unusually short or long nights to estimate a balanced, personalized baseline. You’ll see this as a specific number of hours and minutes under Sleep Health.
RELATED: How Your Sleep Needs Change Throughout Your Life
What Are the Consequences of Sleep Debt?
As the hours of lost sleep multiply, so do the impacts on your health and well-being. Studies show that chronic short sleep duration can result in daytime sleepiness and tank your performance at work. Plus, you might be grouchier: In a study from 2020, people who had five days of sleep debt saw pleasant pictures in a more negative light.
Short nightly sleep can upset the balance of hormones that control your appetite, making you hungrier. And it can even make you sick: When you sleep 6 or fewer hours per night, your immune system is weakened, so you’re more likely to catch a cold than someone who’s well rested.
The long-term consequences are even worse: Without proper sleep quantity, your risk of cardiovascular disease and events like stroke and heart attack increases. Risks of diabetes and obesity also rise, as does the risk of early death.
5 Ways to Offset Sleep Debt
Trying to catch up on a sleep debt you’ve been building for months in one weekend is like cramming for an exam or crash dieting: You might see some results, but you’re better off creating new, healthy habits. Instead, turn to these strategies to establish a healthier sleep routine.
1. Take a (quick) nap.
If you’ve accumulated an hour or two of sleep debt the night before, a brief nap can help pay it off (if you can swing it). Even a 10-minute nap can result in immediate improvements in cognitive performance and reduce fatigue, while 20-minute naps have been shown to improve physical endurance and reduce perceived exertion.
READ MORE: How Long Should You Nap?
2. Maintain a consistent sleep schedule.
Do your best to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day—yes, even on weekends. This can help keep your circadian rhythm in check, so you’re able to fall asleep and wake up more easily.
LEARN MORE: Circadian Rhythms and Your Bedtime
3. Use Oura Tags.
With Oura Tags, you can make notes of your meals and other behaviors, such as workouts, hard days at work, or having a cold, to see how they correlate to sleep.
You might notice that on days when you have caffeine after a certain time, your sleep suffers. Or when you eat later, you don’t feel as rested. All this information will help you improve your rest each night so that you can get out of the sleep debt cycle.
4. Sleep in a super-dark environment.
Blue light (the kind produced by your phone screen) is the same color as daylight, and it messes with your brain’s sleep signals. Instead of increasing the amount of melatonin being produced in your brain, which tells your body to go to sleep, blue light suppresses the release of this hormone. When you don’t have enough melatonin, you won’t be able to sleep.
READ MORE: Everything You Need to Know About Melatonin
5. Wake up earlier, instead of staying up later.
If you must cut into your sleep time to do extra work (or squeeze in “me” time), trade late nights for early mornings. Doing so will allow you to go through all the important stages of sleep, and make it easier to fall asleep the next night, too, since you’re likely to be tired and ready for a restful night’s sleep.
RELATED: 8 Ways to Get More Deep Sleep