Home Sleep Apnoea Test vs Sleep Clinic

If a partner has flagged your snoring, or you wake up tired most days, you may be weighing how to get a home sleep apnoea test. There are two main routes in the UK, and a phone app sits before both of them, not in place of them. Here is how each one works.

What is a home sleep apnoea test?

A home sleep apnoea test, sometimes called home respiratory polygraphy, is a small kit you take home from a clinic. You wear it for one night in your own bed. It usually records airflow at the nose, breathing effort, snoring sound, heart rate and blood oxygen.

NICE recommends this as the first-line investigation for suspected obstructive sleep apnoea, using a device with four or more channels. A sleep specialist reads the results. The test counts how many times your breathing pauses or shallows per hour, the apnoea-hypopnoea index, or AHI.

How does a sleep clinic study differ?

A full clinic study, called polysomnography, is done overnight in a sleep centre. It records everything the home kit does, plus brain activity (EEG), eye movement and muscle tone. That extra detail maps your sleep stages precisely.

NICE reserves in-lab polysomnography for cases where the home test is inconclusive or the picture is complex. For most people, the home test answers the question.

	Home test	Clinic study
Where	Your own bed	Sleep centre
Measures	Breathing, oxygen, snoring	The above plus brain, eye and muscle activity
NICE role	First line	Inconclusive or complex cases
Result	AHI, graded by a clinician	AHI plus full sleep staging

The NHS grades severity by AHI: mild is 5 to 14 events per hour, moderate is 15 to 30, and severe is over 30. Only a clinical study can produce that number.

Can a phone app test me for sleep apnoea?

No. A phone app is a pre-GP tracker, not a test. It cannot measure blood oxygen, breathing pauses or AHI, so it cannot diagnose or rule out sleep apnoea. Around 1.5 million UK adults are thought to have the condition, and most are undiagnosed, so the goal of an app is to help you notice patterns worth raising, not to give you a verdict.

What an app can do is record and score your snoring over several nights. Kip runs entirely on your iPhone, with no cloud upload, and shows whether your snoring is loud, frequent or getting worse. That trend is useful evidence to bring to a GP. If you want a structured note to hand over, a snoring diary for your GP helps, and learning how to track snoring makes those nights consistent.

See your GP if your snoring affects daily life, or if anyone has noticed you gasp, choke or stop breathing in your sleep. The symptoms of sleep apnoea page covers the red flags worth mentioning.

Sources

• NICE NG202: Obstructive sleep apnoea/hypopnoea syndrome
• NHS: Sleep apnoea
• Benjafield et al, global prevalence of OSA, Lancet Respiratory Medicine

FAQ

Is a home sleep apnoea test as accurate as a clinic study?

For most people with suspected obstructive sleep apnoea, a home test is accurate enough, which is why NICE recommends it first. If the result is unclear, or your case is more complex, a clinician may then arrange a full in-lab study. The clinic study adds brain and muscle measurements that the home kit does not capture.

Can I get a home sleep apnoea test on the NHS?

Yes. If your GP thinks sleep apnoea is likely, they can refer you to a sleep clinic, which often issues a home testing kit first. You take it home, wear it for a night, and return it for a specialist to read. A GP referral is the usual starting point.

Should I track my snoring before seeing the GP?

It can help. A few nights of recorded snoring loudness and frequency give your GP something concrete, rather than a vague “I think I snore”. An app cannot diagnose anything, but a clear trend, alongside a note of any tiredness or witnessed pauses, makes the conversation faster and more useful.