By the Rise team · Updated 30 October 2026.
No study has tested pay-to-snooze alarms, so there is no direct proof that a snooze price works. The idea borrows two older ones: commitment devices, and loss aversion. Kahneman and Tversky wrote that "losses loom larger than gains". Trials that put money at stake, including deposit contracts for quitting smoking, measured those other choices. They did not test an alarm.
In short
Bryan, Karlan and Nelson describe a commitment device as an arrangement you enter in advance, to help you follow a plan for later behaviour that would otherwise be difficult. They reviewed the evidence in the Annual Review of Economics in 2010. That review covers demand for commitment and whether commitment is effective, and it covers informal arrangements and formal ones.
They call a commitment with a real economic penalty for failure, or a reward for success, a hard commitment. They call a device with primarily psychological consequences a soft commitment. They say that split is not perfectly binary: some hard commitments also have a psychological cost, and most soft commitments also have some economic cost.
Everyday versions are common examples, not findings from that review. Leaving your phone in another room, paying for a class up front, and putting the alarm across the room are three of them. That last one is in how to wake up on the first alarm.
Why you keep snoozing is about the morning decision. A snooze price is set the night before, while you are awake. Changing the plan then costs tokens. That is a description of the feature, not a result from the 2010 review.
Loss aversion is the other idea people cite for a price on snooze. Kahneman and Tversky, writing in Econometrica in 1979, put it this way: "losses loom larger than gains". This page uses that phrase and gives no figure for how much heavier a loss feels. The 1979 paper is the origin of the phrase. It is not a study of sleep, alarms, or snoozing.
An alarm price is an illustration of the idea, not a result from that paper. The tokens are something you would give up. The extra minutes are a gain you would skip.
No study has tested pay-to-snooze alarms, Rise or any other. The four studies below come from related settings. They are reasons the idea is plausible. They are not proof that a snooze price works.
A deposit contract for quitting smoking. Giné, Karlan and Zinman, in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics in 2010, studied a savings account called CARES. Smokers could deposit funds for six months, then take a urine test for nicotine and cotinine. If they passed, their money was returned. Otherwise, their money was forfeited to charity. 11% of smokers offered the contract took it up. Smokers randomly offered it were 3 percentage points more likely to pass the 6-month test than the control group, and the effect persisted in surprise tests at 12 months.
Four incentive programmes for quitting smoking. Halpern and colleagues, in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2015, reported a trial of four financial-incentive programmes for smoking cessation, with 2,538 participants. Of those assigned to reward-based programmes, 90.0% accepted, compared with 13.7% of those assigned to deposit-based programmes. Reward-based programmes were associated with higher rates of sustained abstinence through 6 months: 15.7% versus 10.2%. The authors say the reward-based programmes were much more commonly accepted, leading to those higher rates. Among people who would accept either type, the abstinence rate at 6 months was an estimated 13.2 percentage points higher for the deposit-based programmes.
Loss contracts in effort experiments. Imas, Sadoff and Samek, in Management Science in 2017, ran a series of lab experiments on effort tasks, not on sleep. People worked harder under loss contracts, an up-front payment they could lose, than under equivalent gain contracts. Surprisingly, people preferred the loss contracts. The authors find suggestive evidence that people select into them as a commitment device to improve performance.
Paying students to sleep longer. Avery, Giuntella and Jiao wrote "Incentives to Sleep: An Experimental Analysis of Sleep Choices" as a working paper in 2018. It is a working paper. 246 students at Oxford and Pittsburgh had usable Fitbit sleep data across 8 weeks. In treatment weeks they set a bedtime target and a sleep-duration target. One contract rewarded each night both targets were met. The other added a punishment for each miss. The authors report that the incentives made participants sleep longer and better, and they report evidence of demand for commitment. They say the size and frequency of the incentives were crucial to sustaining that behaviour after the intervention. The payments are for sleeping. They are not a penalty for snoozing.
None of this research is about alarms or snoozing. No study has tested pay-to-snooze alarms, Rise or any other. A price on the button is an idea borrowed from nearby settings. It is not a result measured on an alarm.
In the Halpern trial, 13.7% of people assigned to a deposit-based programme accepted it, against 90.0% of people assigned to a reward-based programme. Acceptance in that trial is not a finding that a person who accepts will stick with the plan.
The effects were measured in specific groups: smokers offered a deposit, participants in that incentive trial, people doing effort tasks in a lab, and students paid to sleep. A finding in one of those groups does not automatically describe your bedroom.
A price does not help on a morning you do not hear the alarm. If the sound never wakes you, see why you sleep through your alarm. Snoozing itself isn't necessarily harmful. What the health studies found is on is snoozing bad for you.
These are suggestions, not findings. The studies above did not test them on an alarm.
Set the price the night before, while you are awake.
Pick a price you would notice. In the Halpern trial, deposit-based programmes were accepted far less often than reward-based ones. That trial did not test an alarm, and it did not find that accepting a programme means a person quits.
Turn it off for days you do not need it, such as a planned lie-in or a day off.
Pair it with a fixed wake time. A charge does not stand in for enough sleep, or for getting up at the same time. For that side of the morning, see how to stop oversleeping and how to stop hitting snooze.
Rise is an Android alarm app with optional Pay to Snooze. iOS is coming soon. The studies above did not test Rise. This section describes the feature. It does not claim the app has been shown to work.
You set a snooze price per alarm, in tokens. There is no minimum and no maximum. The price is locked once the alarm rings. Pay to Snooze can be switched off per alarm. At zero balance, snooze falls back to free.
Snooze length is adjustable. The default is 9 minutes.
Tokens are bought in the app, in packs, through Google Play: 10 for £0.89, 50 for £3.49, and 200 for £8.99. No card is charged automatically. Tokens don't expire. The money goes to Rise, not to charity. Referrals give the referrer 10 tokens. It is an ordinary in-app purchase. That differs from the Giné, Karlan and Zinman contract above, where money from a failed urine test was forfeited to charity.
How Pay to Snooze works. Who receives the money in other apps is on pay-to-snooze apps.
Get Rise on Google PlayNo study has tested pay-to-snooze alarms, so there is no direct proof. Commitment-device research, and trials of money at stake for quitting smoking, measured other behaviour. They make a snooze price an open question. They are not proof that paying to snooze works.
Bryan, Karlan and Nelson describe a commitment device as an arrangement you enter in advance, to help you follow a plan that would otherwise be difficult. Putting the alarm across the room is a common example. It is not a finding from their 2010 review.
Kahneman and Tversky wrote that "losses loom larger than gains". This page uses that phrase and gives no figure for how much heavier a loss feels. An alarm price is an illustration of the idea, not a result from the 1979 paper, which did not study sleep or alarms.
No study has tested an alarm that charges you. In the Halpern trial, 13.7% of people assigned to a deposit-based programme accepted it, and 90.0% of people assigned to a reward-based programme accepted that. In Rise, tokens are bought in packs, no card is charged automatically, and snooze is free at zero balance.
Tokens are bought in the app through Google Play. The money goes to Rise, not to charity. In the Giné, Karlan and Zinman contract, money from a failed urine test was forfeited to charity. Tokens don't expire, and no card is charged automatically.
This page is general information, not medical advice.
Checked 30 October 2026.