On pillows and snoring, there is one randomized crossover trial: in 22 snorers without sleep apnea, a pillow that changes head position lowered the snoring index in the sleep lab (p = 0.03) and the snoring that partners rated at home (p < 0.001), with no worse breathing. The other pillow studies are small and uncontrolled and were done in people with sleep apnea, where a pillow is no substitute for treatment. The reason pillows can work is position: in 72 patients, snorers without apnea snored less on their side than on their back. No trial has compared pillow brands, so a few nights with a recording is the fair test.
Pillows and snoring: the listings tend to make the same claim, that the right shape opens the airway. The question is what happens when a pillow meets a sleep lab.
The answer fits in one paragraph, and the rest of this page shows how little sits under it. One randomized trial in snorers, three small apnea studies, a body-position study that explains why a pillow can matter at all, and a way to test your own pillow with a recording.
What do trials say about pillows and snoring?
The one randomized test was registered in the German clinical trials register. Twenty-two adults who snored, with a body mass index of 30 or less, a sleep partner, and sleep apnea ruled out by a sleep study or a breathing recording, took part in a crossover design: four weeks at home with an anti-snoring pillow that changes head position, active and not active, followed by two nights of polysomnography in the lab. Two potential participants dropped out. On the active pillow the snoring index fell significantly in the lab (p = 0.03) without any deterioration in the other breathing parameters, and bed partners rated snoring lower with the pillow (p < 0.001). Acceptance of the pillow was 100%. The authors concluded that a pillow which changes head position can reduce both subjective and objective snoring.
Cazan D, Mehrmann U, Wenzel A, Maurer JT. The effect on snoring of using a pillow to change the head position. Sleep Breath 2017. PMID 28127672
That is a good design with a small sample: 22 people, one pillow, short follow-up. It says a position-changing pillow can lower snoring in this kind of snorer (lean, partnered, no apnea). It does not say any pillow with the word "snoring" on the box will, and it did not compare shapes or brands.
Why position is the lever
A pillow can only help through where it puts your head and body. The cleanest evidence is about body position, not pillow design. In 72 patients with habitual snoring who had an overnight sleep study, those without sleep apnea snored significantly less in time (p = 0.0004) and in intensity (p = 0.0003) on their side than on their back. In deeper non-REM sleep snoring rose, and in REM sleep it fell. Patients with sleep apnea behaved differently: those with a higher apnea index on the back often did not snore less on the side.
Nakano H, Ikeda T, Hayashi M, Ohshima E, Onizuka A. Effects of body position on snoring in apneic and nonapneic snorers. Sleep 2003. PMID 12683476
That is the logic of a snoring pillow. If it keeps you on your side, or turns your head so that the airway is less likely to narrow, the sound may drop. If you sleep on your side anyway, a different pillow may change little. The page on best sleeping positions covers the position question in full, and adjustable beds and snoring covers raising the head end.
Some pillows work by turning or tilting the head, others by raising it, and others only make the side position more comfortable. The trials above did not separate these mechanisms: the German trial tested one head-position design, and the apnea studies used pillows that also shaped the whole sleeping posture. When a product page says that its shape "opens the airway", the claim has not been tested for that shape unless a trial named the product.
Pillow snoring sleep apnea: what the apnea studies add
The remaining pillow studies were done in people with sleep apnea, usually for one night, and none had a control group. They show that position pillows can move apnea numbers on a given night. They do not show treatment.
In 22 patients with polysomnography-proven sleep apnea (11 mild, 8 moderate, 3 severe), a second sleep study with a triangular side-sleeping pillow cut the respiratory disturbance index from an average of 17 events an hour to fewer than 5, and snoring was decreased or eliminated (p = 0.017). A smart pillow tested for a single night in 30 patients improved the snore number (p = 0.018), the snore index (p = 0.013) and the apnea-hypopnea index (p = 0.002) in the 23 with mild to moderate apnea, and made no significant difference in those with severe apnea.
Zuberi NA, Rekab K, Nguyen HV. Sleep apnea avoidance pillow effects on obstructive sleep apnea syndrome and snoring. Sleep Breath 2004. PMID 15611895
Chung TT, Lee MT, Ku MC, Yang KC, Wei CY. Efficacy of a Smart Antisnore Pillow in Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome. Behav Neurol 2021. PMID 33510821
A third study followed people for longer. Twenty-eight patients with positional sleep apnea slept with a positioning pillow, and sleep studies after one night and after one month showed significantly less time on the back, less sleep fragmentation and lower apnea-hypopnea and desaturation indices, with better scores on sleepiness (ESS), sleep quality (PSQI) and functional outcomes (FOSQ). Compliance and satisfaction stayed high at one and six months. It was a prospective cohort without a control group, so natural variation and expectation are unaccounted for.
Newell J, Mairesse O, Neu D. Can positional therapy be simple, effective and well tolerated all together? A prospective study on treatment response and compliance in positional sleep apnea with a positioning pillow. Sleep Breath 2018. PMID 29516264
If the snoring comes with gasps, silences a partner has noticed or exhausting days, see a doctor before relying on a pillow. A pillow can quiet the sound and leave the cause in place.
For people with diagnosed positional sleep apnea, the position question is a medical one with its own page: best position to sleep in for sleep apnea.
Is there a best anti snoring pillow, or a best pillow for snoring side sleepers?
The limit of this literature is the brand question. A search for the best anti snoring pillow, or for the best pillow for snoring side sleepers, leads to rankings made by reviewers, and the trials above do not support a ranking: each tested one design, and none compared designs head to head.
What can be said comes from a neighboring field. A systematic review of pillow designs for neck pain, covering 35 articles, among them 9 high-quality studies with 555 participants, found that rubber and spring pillows reduced neck pain and waking symptoms and raised satisfaction, that pillow design did not change sleep quality, and that cervical alignment in side-lying seemed to depend on pillow shape and height rather than on rubber against feather. That is about necks, not snoring, but it suggests that if height matters for your spine, it is worth keeping in mind as a variable rather than something solved by a label.
Chun-Yiu JP, Man-Ha ST, Chak-Lun AF. The effects of pillow designs on neck pain, waking symptoms, neck disability, sleep quality and spinal alignment in adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clin Biomech (Bristol) 2021. PMID 33895703
When a pillow is the wrong tool
Three limits show up in the studies. First, the randomized trial enrolled lean snorers (body mass index of 30 or less) who had a partner, so its result may not carry over to heavier snorers. Second, the smart pillow did nothing measurable in the severe sleep apnea group, so a pillow is not a rescue for severe cases. Third, position only helps if your snoring depends on position. In the 72-patient study, snorers with sleep apnea did not follow the pattern, and some snored more on the side.
A rough self-check is to notice whether your partner says the snoring is worse when you lie on your back and eases when you roll over. If it sounds the same on both sides, a position pillow has little to work with, and the better question is what is narrowing the airway in the first place. What causes snoring? goes through the list.
What a recording shows before and after
A pillow test is only as good as the way you measure it, and memory is a poor instrument. A recording gives you three things to compare. The first is how much of the night had snoring at all. The second is how loud it was, which you can judge by playing a few clips from each condition back to back. The third is when it happened: snoring that bunches up in the first hours, when you are often still on your back, tells a different story from snoring that is spread evenly across the night.
Look for patterns across nights rather than in one. A single quiet night after a pillow switch can be luck, because snoring changes with alcohol, a cold, how tired you were and what you ate. Three similar nights on each pillow tell you more than ten scattered ones. Possible breathing pauses are a separate signal: if a recording marks pauses before and after the switch, the pillow has not solved them, and the next step is a conversation with a doctor.
Test a pillow with a recording
You do not need a sleep lab to learn whether a pillow changes your snoring, only a fair comparison.
- Record three nights on your current pillow first, to see how variable your snoring is. If it jumps around a lot, you need more nights, because a small change will be lost.
- Switch to the new pillow for three nights. Keep alcohol, bedtime, room temperature and sleeping side as similar as you can.
- Write down in the morning how you slept and how your neck feels. A pillow that hurts will cost sleep, and sleep is the point.
- Compare how much of each night had snoring, and how loud the clips are. A change smaller than the spread in your first three nights is noise.
- If the pillow is better, go back to the old one for two nights. If the snoring returns, you have your answer.
Six or eight nights is still short and does not remove expectation, but it separates a pillow that changes your nights from one that only feels new. If you share a bed, ask your partner to describe the nights before you show them the numbers.
Where SleepTrace fits
SleepTrace listens through the phone's microphone and recognizes snoring, talking and coughing, saving short clips of those moments (the free plan plays back 3 clips a month, Premium has no limit). It shows when snoring happened and how much of the night it covered, so the before-and-after comparison above becomes a look at two timelines. Possible breathing pauses are marked with a timestamp, without a clip, and the sleep apnea indicator is a screening estimate and not a diagnosis. Sleep phases are estimated from sound.
Run it on either phone type: leave the app open, plug the phone in and let the screen dim. It cannot see your sleeping position, whether your head stayed on the pillow or whether you breathed through your mouth, so it can tell you that a night was quieter but not why. For phone-based tools in general, see Snore recorder apps.
Frequently asked questions
One design has randomized evidence. In a crossover trial of 22 snorers without sleep apnea (two dropped out), a pillow that changes head position reduced the snoring index in the sleep lab (p = 0.03) without worsening other breathing measures, and partners at home rated snoring lower (p < 0.001). It is one trial of one pillow, and nothing here covers the dozens of other designs on the market.
The trials cannot say. No study compared pillow brands or shapes against each other for snoring, and the one randomized trial tested a single position-changing design. What the evidence supports is the principle, which is keeping the snorer off the back.
Also not testable from the published trials. In a review of pillow designs for neck pain, cervical alignment in side-lying depended mostly on the shape and height of the pillow rather than on rubber against feather. For snoring, a side sleeper's main task is to stay on the side, and a pillow that makes the back position less comfortable may help with that.
In small uncontrolled studies, yes in some people: an inclined pillow lowered the respiratory disturbance index from about 17 to under 5 events an hour in 22 patients on one night, and a positioning pillow reduced the apnea-hypopnea index in 28 patients with positional apnea. These are not randomized trials, and a pillow is not a replacement for a diagnosis and treatment.
Not shown. The trials cited here changed head and body position, and none isolated pillow height. Raising the head of the bed is a separate idea, covered in our article on adjustable beds.
SleepTrace is a wellness app, not a medical device. This article is general information, not medical advice. If your symptoms are frequent, severe or worrying, please talk to a doctor.
Pillows can help snorers whose noise depends on head position, and the trials are small. To see if it works for you, record a few nights before and a few after: SleepTrace shows how often you snored and keeps clips to play back. It does not detect head position, and snoring with possible breathing pauses needs a doctor, not a pillow.
Hear your own night. SleepTrace turns a night of audio into your sleep phases, the sounds you made, and how it all trends. Works without a wearable, better with one. Your phone on the nightstand is enough to start. Get it for iPhone or Android →