REVIEW – I’ve tracked my steps, sleep and heart rate for years on Garmin watches, currently an Instinct 2 Solar. It hands me a stress score every day, and I take it seriously, mostly because a number on my wrist feels more authoritative than my own read on how the day went. The watch is not measuring stress though. It reads the gaps between my heartbeats and works backward from there, so what I am actually getting is a well-informed guess.
Cortisol is the hormone that guess is reaching for. Your adrenal glands release it on a daily rhythm, high in the morning to get you moving and tapering off toward bedtime, and it climbs when your body decides something is worth worrying about. Doctors read a flattened or shifted curve alongside poor sleep, burnout and a handful of medical conditions. Getting the real number used to mean an appointment and a needle.
The Hormometer from Eli Health is an easy way to access your cortisol levels at home. You soak a small pad with saliva, wait 20 minutes, and your phone’s camera reads the result, without a lab visit or a blood draw.
Note: The Hormometer was sent to me by Eli Health at no cost, arranged through their agency AIIR. They had no editorial input and did not see this review before it published.
Photos and video by Gregory Morley.
The Basics
Each Hormometer is a single-use test stick with a collection pad on one end. The pad goes in your mouth for 60 seconds while you work saliva onto it. Then you pull a tab until a blue dot shows. That pull wrings the saliva back out of the pad and drives it onto the testing chemicals inside the stick, which is what actually starts the reaction. From there it is 20 minutes of waiting.
Reading the result takes an iPhone. The Eli Health app uses the camera to read the test window and gives you a level in ng/mL, a 0 to 100 Cortisol Score, and a comparison against the healthy range for that time of day. There is no Android app yet, which is my biggest gripe with the whole product. Eli says one is coming, and for now you need iOS 15.5 or later.
What You Get
- Hormometer cortisol saliva tests (mine came as two boxes of four)
- Quick-start card
- Access to the Eli Health app
- A free onboarding call, and replacement of any test the app can’t read
By the Numbers
- Price: $79 a month for 8 tests ($9.88 per test)
- Other plans: 24 tests for $199 every three months, 48 tests for $349 every six months, or a one-time 8-test pack for $99, all sold out at the time of writing
- Sample type: Saliva
- Collection time: 60 seconds
- Processing time: 20 minutes
- Readout: Phone camera scan in the Eli Health app
- Results: Cortisol level in ng/mL, a 0 to 100 Cortisol Score, and a Stress Status after several tests
- Phone support: iPhone only, iOS 15.5 or later
- Reported accuracy: 97%, per Eli Health, against a laboratory reference method
- Regulatory: Wellness device, not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, prevent or manage any disease
Taking the Test
The prep rules for the test matter. No food, no drinks other than water, no smoking and no brushing your teeth for 30 minutes before, and no biotin for 24 hours. Eli recommends testing within the first hour after waking and again between 5 and 11 at night, to see your daily curve. I spaced my eight tests out over 30 days, all in the evening window.
Collection is the hard part. The pad has to be saturated, so you spend the full minute actively working saliva onto it with your tongue. I have a touchy gag reflex, and holding a stick in my mouth for 60 seconds while concentrating on drooling was more taxing than I expected. It was fine, and none of my tests failed or had to be redone. The tab also takes a firm pull, and the instructions are clear that you keep pulling until the blue dot shows completely.
My Results
Each result gives a cortisol level in ng/mL, the healthy range for that time of day, and a 0 to 100 Cortisol Score, so you can see right away whether a reading falls inside it. After several tests the app adds a Stress Status, one of five labels such as Balanced or Strained, and testing morning and evening builds out your daily curve. The history can also be exported as a PDF for handing to a doctor.
The readings were easy to follow, and the range comparison meant I never had to look up what a number was telling me. Eli is clear that this is a wellness reading and not a diagnosis.
What Could Be Better
The iPhone requirement bugs me because I carry a Pixel 9 Pro, so every test I took ran through my mom’s phone instead. No grown man wants to write that sentence in a review. The only way to buy it right now is the $79 monthly plan, since the one-time pack and the longer plans are sold out. At almost $10 a test, a year of it runs about $950. Collection also asks a lot of anyone with a sensitive gag reflex.
Watch the Review
Video review coming soon. The companion video is still in edit, and it will be embedded right here as soon as it goes up.
Quick Questions
Q: Do you need a lab or a blood draw?
A: No. You collect the saliva yourself and your phone reads the test in about 20 minutes.
Q: How accurate is it?
A: Eli Health reports 97% accuracy against a laboratory reference method.
Q: Does it work with Android?
A: Not yet. The app needs an iPhone running iOS 15.5 or later, and Eli says Android support is coming.
Q: Is this a medical diagnostic tool?
A: No. Eli Health sells it as a wellness device, not intended to diagnose, treat or manage any medical condition.
Final Thoughts
My watch can estimate stress, but only the Hormometer gives me a cortisol number. The process is fussier than a typical at-home test, and the phone support is narrow, but every test I took worked, and the app lays the results out clearly against a healthy range.
The mail-in alternative is Everlywell’s Cortisol and Stress Test at $99 for one kit, with physician-reviewed results in a few days. One month of Eli costs $20 less than one Everlywell kit and gets you eight readings in 20 minutes each. If I had a real health reason to track cortisol, I’d pay for it. Without one, I’d test about once a year.
Price: $79 a month for 8 tests (the $199 and $349 multi-month plans were sold out at the time of writing)
Where to buy: Eli Health
What I like: A real cortisol reading in ng/mL without a lab visit, results in 20 minutes, no failed tests, an app that plots each result against a healthy range
What I don’t: iPhone only, the monthly plan is the only option while the others are sold out, a full minute of saturating the pad is hard on a sensitive gag reflex
