CBT-I science

What's included in Somnera's $79.99 program

What the one payment covers, what the optional plan afterwards is, and what the program is not. Written plainly because the billing is where this category loses people.

September 1, 20265 min read

Last reviewed September 1, 2026

Three stacked panels of different widths, each with a short rule inside it.

$79.99 once for the six-week program, and a free assessment before it that costs nothing and requires no card.

That is the whole of the required spend. The rest of this page is what sits inside it, and the one optional thing that sits outside it — written out in full because billing is where this category loses people's trust. Read the reviews of almost any app in this space and the complaint is rarely about the material. It is about a charge somebody did not expect.

Before you pay: the assessment

The free assessment is the Insomnia Severity Index — a seven-item questionnaire scored out of 28, widely used in sleep research and recognizable to most clinicians.

You get a scored result and an explanation of what your band means. No card, no trial that converts, no partial result with the number held back until you buy something. If the answer is that your score is low and a structured program is not what you need, that is a useful thing to learn for free.

What the score actually measures is worth understanding before reading much into it — four of its seven items are about daytime impact and distress rather than hours slept.

What the $79.99 covers

The six-week program

All six weeks, every module. Weeks unlock in sequence as you complete the one before, because the order is not arbitrary — you cannot set a sleep window without a diary, and you cannot widen it without a week of data to widen it on.

Six weeks is the structure rather than a deadline. Most people take six to eight at their own pace, and there is no penalty for taking longer.

The core CBT-I components

Sleep restriction, stimulus control, and the cognitive work on the thinking that keeps people awake — the components clinical guidelines describe when they recommend multicomponent CBT-I. The full week-by-week curriculum is published, including the fact that week two is the unpleasant one.

The sleep diary and the adaptive plan

Nightly logging that takes under two minutes in the morning, and a plan calculated from it. Your sleep window is worked out from your own entries and recalculated as the weeks progress — it is not a fixed schedule handed to everybody.

Progress tracking

Sleep efficiency, total sleep and the trend across weeks, worked out for you so you never do the arithmetic. Charts, weekly averages, badges as you go, and a completion certificate at the end of week six.

What it does not cost extra

Nothing above is a separate purchase. There is no per-week charge, no module behind a second paywall, no "premium" tier holding back the part that works. One payment covers the program.

Take the free assessment to see:

✓Your Insomnia Severity Index (ISI) score
✓A personalized 6-week CBT-I plan, built by a sleep physician
✓How your sleep improves, night by night

Start free assessment

The optional plan after you finish

Once the program is complete, there is a $19.99 a month option to keep logging and retain access to the material.

Three things about it, stated plainly:

It is offered only after completion. Never at checkout, never bundled, never automatic.
Nothing in the program is withheld if you decline. You finish the six weeks either way.
It is not coaching. There is no therapist and no human check-in attached to it. It keeps the diary and the material available; that is what it is for.

Cancellation is in Settings, with access continuing to the end of the period you have paid for. There is a 14-day refund window on the original purchase.

We would rather put that here than have you find it later. The single most common complaint in this category is a charge that arrived after an introductory period nobody read carefully.

What is not included, and will not be

This part matters more than the feature list.

It is not therapy. There is no clinician on the other side of it. Somnera is educational and behavioral content plus a sleep diary, delivered in a browser, and using it creates no clinician-patient relationship with Dr. Ruiz or anyone else.

It is not a diagnosis. The assessment is a severity measure, not a diagnostic instrument. It cannot rule anything out and does not try to.

It does not measure sleep stages. No deep sleep percentage, no REM breakdown, no recovery score. It is a diary, not a laboratory, and any number of that kind would be invented.

It does not replace an appointment. Several things that look like insomnia are not, and a program addresses none of them. See a clinician rather than starting anything self-guided if you snore loudly, wake gasping or choking, or have been told you stop breathing; if your legs feel restless in the evening; if you fall asleep during the day when you would not expect to; if you work shifts; if you are pregnant; if you have a seizure or bipolar history; or if this began suddenly or alongside a new medication.

If you are unsure whether a program is reasonable in your case, that is a good question for an appointment — and the free assessment gives you a score to bring to it.

Why it is priced this way

Six to eight sessions with a behavioral sleep specialist typically runs $150 to $250 a session, and there are only a few hundred certified practitioners in the country. That is the gap a self-guided program exists to fill, and it gives up real things in the process — chiefly a person expecting you on Tuesday during the week it gets hard.

Paying once rather than monthly is a deliberate choice. A subscription during a six-week program creates an incentive to make the program longer, and that is the wrong incentive to have pointed at somebody's sleep.

The rest of this section covers how the routes compare and what to look for in any program, including this one.

Somnera is a self-guided education program built on CBT-I, founded and written by Dr. Camilo Ruiz, DO, FACOI, FAASM, a board-certified sleep physician. It is not a diagnosis and does not replace care from your own clinician. The assessment is free and gives you a real score regardless of what you do next.

Citations

Qaseem A, et al. Management of chronic insomnia disorder in adults: a clinical practice guideline from the American College of Physicians. Ann Intern Med. 2016;165(2):125–133. doi:10.7326/M15-2175
Edinger JD, et al. Behavioral and psychological treatments for chronic insomnia disorder in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. J Clin Sleep Med. 2021;17(2):255–262. doi:10.5664/jcsm.8986
Morin CM, Belleville G, Bélanger L, Ivers H. The Insomnia Severity Index: psychometric indicators to detect insomnia cases and evaluate treatment response. Sleep. 2011;34(5):601–608. doi:10.1093/sleep/34.5.601

Frequently asked questions

Neither. It is free and it comes before any payment. You get a scored result and what the band means whether or not you go any further, and no card is required to see it.

Yes. All six weeks, every module, the sleep diary, the charts and the completion certificate. There is no per-week charge and no module held behind a second payment.

Separate, optional, and only offered after you finish. It is never presented at checkout and nothing in the core program is withheld if you decline it. It keeps your logging and access going after the six weeks.

No. It is a self-guided education program, not a diagnostic tool and not telehealth. Using it creates no clinician-patient relationship, and symptoms like loud snoring, gasping awake or restless legs need a clinician rather than a program.

There is a 14-day refund window. Cancellation of the optional monthly plan is in Settings, with access continuing to the end of the paid period.