OSCAR Alternatives: Web-Based CPAP Analysis Tools for 2026

OSCAR has been the gold standard for CPAP data analysis for years. It's open source, detailed, and trusted by the PAP community. But it has real setup friction: you download it, install it, connect your SD card, and configure it. For users who are less technical, who use a Chromebook, or who just want to check their data without managing a desktop installation, that barrier matters.

The DreamMapper shutdown in January 2026 pushed a large group of Philips users into the market for the first time. Many had never needed a third-party analysis tool before. The good news: the free alternatives are now more capable than DreamMapper ever was.

OSCAR (Open Source CPAP Analysis Reporter) is the most detailed free CPAP analysis tool available. It gives you interactive access to your full flow waveform — you can zoom in to individual breaths, scroll through the night, and review events one by one.

What OSCAR does well:

• Interactive waveform viewer at full breath resolution — pan, zoom, and event marking
• Wide device support: ResMed, Philips, Fisher & Paykel, and several others
• Session overlays to compare nights side by side
• Detailed event logs: apneas, hypopnoeas, leak, and flow limitation flags
• Large, active community on ApneaBoard with years of tutorials and worked examples

Where OSCAR has limitations:

• Requires download and local installation — not available on Chromebooks or tablets
• No automated composite scoring: OSCAR shows data but does not compute a flow limitation score or breath shape index
• Steeper learning curve for users new to PAP data

OSCAR is the right tool when you want to see exactly what happened breath by breath on a specific night. If you're new to reading PAP data, our guide to CPAP data is a good place to start before opening OSCAR for the first time.

SleepHQ is a cloud-based platform designed primarily for ResMed users. Its main differentiator is convenience: if you use a ResMed machine with myAir enabled, SleepHQ can sync your data automatically without you ever touching an SD card.

What SleepHQ does well:

• Automatic sync from myAir — no SD card handling required
• Clean, accessible interface that is genuinely easy for new users
• Remote access: view your data on any device, share a link with your clinician
• Solid summary charts for nightly trends

Where SleepHQ has limitations:

• Cloud-hosted: your therapy data lives on SleepHQ's servers
• Primarily supports ResMed; limited coverage for other manufacturers
• myAir sync gives you what ResMed's app reports, not the full SD card dataset
• Some features sit behind a paid subscription

SleepHQ is the path of least resistance if you're on ResMed and want the simplest possible setup. The automatic sync removes friction for users who don't want to manage SD cards.

AirwayLab takes a different approach from both OSCAR and SleepHQ. It runs entirely in your browser — no download, no cloud account, no data upload. You drag your ResMed SD card files onto the upload page and your analysis runs locally, in your browser, without any data leaving your device.

What AirwayLab does well:

• No installation: works on any device with a modern browser, including Chromebooks
• Privacy-first: your data never leaves your browser for core analysis

Automated composite scoring from four analysis engines:

Where AirwayLab has limitations:

• ResMed SD card only — no myAir sync, no Philips or Fisher & Paykel support yet
• No interactive waveform viewer — for breath-by-breath review, OSCAR is the right tool
• Requires an SD card in the machine (AirSense 11 models without an SD card slot are not supported)

Many users run AirwayLab and OSCAR side by side: AirwayLab for the automated overnight scores, OSCAR when they want to drill into a specific night. See how AirwayLab compares to OSCAR in detail.

AirwayLab's core analysis is entirely local. Optional AI-powered insights require explicit consent before any data is sent.

If you were using DreamMapper with a Philips CPAP machine and lost access when the platform closed in January 2026, your path forward depends on your device.

The DreamMapper shutdown is a reminder of why open-source tools matter. OSCAR's GPL licence and AirwayLab's GPL-3.0 licence mean neither can be switched off by a company decision or sold to a new owner who changes course.

Framing OSCAR and AirwayLab as competitors misses what makes them most useful. They approach the same data differently, and many users get the most complete picture by using both.

OSCAR is built for manual waveform inspection — once you have data imported you can zoom into any window, examine individual breaths, and correlate events with timestamps across months of history.

AirwayLab runs automated scoring algorithms across every breath and surfaces composite metrics — FL Score, Glasgow Index, Regularity, Periodicity — that are harder to derive from manual inspection. It runs in your browser, so nothing needs to be installed.

A practical combined workflow:

Both tools process your data locally. Neither depends on a company's server staying online. That combination — complementary capabilities, shared privacy ethos, both GPL-licensed — is what makes them worth using alongside each other rather than treating the choice as binary.