How to Read Your ResMed myAir Score (and What It Hides)

If you use a ResMed AirSense or AirCurve, the myAir app greets you each morning with a single number from 0 to 100. It feels like a report card — and for staying motivated, it is a useful one. But that score answers only one question well ("did you use the machine?") while quietly hiding the data that actually explains how your night went.

This guide breaks down what the myAir score measures, why you can earn a perfect 100 on a night that was far from perfect, and how to see the leak, flow-limitation, and event-type detail myAir leaves out.

What the myAir score measures

myAir is ResMed's free companion app, and it works only with ResMed machines (the AirSense 10/11 and AirCurve lines). Each morning your device uploads a summary of the previous night over its built-in cellular or Wi-Fi connection, and myAir converts that summary into a 0-100 "sleep score."

The score is a wellness and adherence tool first. It is designed to keep you coming back and to nudge you toward consistent use — not to give you the granular, clinical picture a sleep technician would read. ResMed has never published the exact formula behind the number, so any precise breakdown is reverse-engineered from the four categories the app itself displays.

The weighting — usage, events/hour, mask seal, mask on/off

myAir builds the score from four components, and they are not weighted equally. Usage dominates.

The headline takeaway: roughly 70 of the 100 points come from usage alone. Sleep long enough with the mask on and you bank the large majority of the score before therapy quality is even considered. The remaining points split across your AHI (the Apnea-Hypopnea Index — the number of apneas and hypopneas your machine flags per hour), your mask seal, and how often you took the mask off.

Because the exact split is proprietary, treat these figures as well-established estimates, not ResMed's official math. The direction, though, is not in doubt: myAir rewards showing up far more than it reflects how well you breathed.

Why you can score 100 at AHI 4.9

Here is the fact that surprises most users: you can earn a perfect 100 with an AHI as high as 4.9 events per hour.

That is not a glitch — it follows directly from the weighting. A residual AHI below 5 events per hour is the widely used benchmark for effective CPAP therapy. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) defines an "optimal" PAP titration as reducing the AHI to fewer than 5, and below 5 is also the normal, non-apneic range. So myAir treats anything under 5 as "good enough" and awards the full events-per-hour allotment, while usage carries the rest.

The catch is that AHI 0.5 and AHI 4.9 both score the same in myAir, even though they can feel very different and may point to very different therapy issues. Some clinicians aim lower than 5 for fuller symptom control when it's comfortably achievable, but there is no formal guideline establishing "below 1" or "below 2" as a recognized target — those goals are individualized and set with your provider. For more on what the number actually means, see What Is a Good AHI on CPAP.

It's also worth knowing that a device-reported AHI is an estimate. Your machine has no EEG and can't see brain arousals, so it counts events by airflow patterns alone — which is why machine-reported AHI differs from a lab-scored AHI. A single great or terrible number is mostly noise, too; trends over weeks are what matter.

What myAir doesn't show

A high score can hide real problems because myAir simply doesn't display the data needed to spot them. Specifically, myAir shows no event-type breakdown, no pressure or leak charts, and no flow-limitation data. Here's why each gap matters.

• No event-type breakdown. myAir lumps everything into one AHI number. It won't tell you whether your events are obstructive (airway collapsing — what CPAP is built to fix) or central/clear-airway (your breathing drive briefly pausing). That distinction is clinically important: CPAP reliably splints the airway open for obstructive events but does not directly correct the unstable breathing drive behind central ones. A rising share of central events can signal treatment-emergent central sleep apnea (TECSA), which often resolves on its own within weeks to a few months on continued CPAP (spontaneous resolution is reported around 60–80%) — but persistent cases warrant clinician evaluation. Crucially, you should never raise your own pressure to chase central events; higher pressure doesn't fix them and can sometimes provoke them. See CPAP Event Types Decoded for the full picture.

• No leak detail. myAir's "mask seal" smiley is a simplified verdict, not a number you can interrogate. That's a problem because a large leak can invalidate or under-report your AHI — when air escapes, the machine can miss events, so a leaky night can look artificially calm. ResMed flags excess leak above 24 L/min at the 95th percentile (note: ResMed reports excess leak, while Philips reports total leak — different baselines). myAir won't show you that threshold or your trend toward it. See CPAP Leak Rate.

• No flow-limitation data. Flow limitation is subtle airway narrowing that doesn't fully close — so it never gets counted as an apnea or hypopnea, and never touches your AHI. It can still leave you tired with a "perfect" score, and it's central to conditions like UARS. myAir is blind to it entirely.

• No pressure charts. You can't see your delivered pressure or your 95th-percentile pressure to confirm your machine is responding the way it should overnight.

This is why a "still tired despite great numbers" night is so common — and why the myAir/DreamMapper class of apps isn't enough on its own.

Getting the data myAir omits

The good news: your ResMed machine already records far more than myAir displays. The full detail — event types, leak curves, pressure, and flow limitation — lives on the SD card inside the device. Pull the card and you can read what the app withholds. (Here's what's actually on the AirSense 11 card and how to download it.)

Once you have that data, you need something to interpret it:

• OSCAR is the free desktop standard. It reads ResMed SD cards in depth, but it does no auto-scoring, runs only on desktop (no Chromebook), and has a learning curve. (OSCAR guide.)
• SomniCharts is the cloud alternative. The shorthand is simple: myAir tells you if you used your machine; SomniCharts tells you why your night went the way it did. You upload your SD-card data and it surfaces the leak, flow-limitation, and event-type detail myAir omits — automatically, in plain language, with the multi-week trends that single nights can't show. SomniCharts imports ResMed, Philips Respironics (including the encrypted DreamStation 2), and Löwenstein prisma data, so it also works beyond the ResMed ecosystem if you ever switch brands.

None of this is about second-guessing your prescription. The goal is to walk into your next appointment with the full story — leak trends, event types, flow limitation — so you can have an informed, specific conversation with your sleep clinician instead of pointing at a green smiley.

FAQ

Is a myAir score of 70 good? A 70 generally means you used the machine for a solid stretch but lost points somewhere — often shorter usage that night, or a few points off for AHI or mask seal. Because usage drives roughly 70 of the 100 points, a 70 usually reflects use duration more than therapy quality. To know what actually happened, you need the underlying leak and event-type data, which myAir doesn't show.

Can my AHI be high even with a perfect myAir score? Yes — you can score 100 with an AHI up to 4.9 events per hour. And if a large mask leak was present, your true AHI may have been under-reported, because leaks can cause the machine to miss events.

Does myAir show central apneas separately from obstructive ones? No. myAir reports a single combined AHI with no breakdown by event type. To distinguish obstructive from central (clear-airway) events, you need to read the SD-card data in a tool like OSCAR or SomniCharts.

Does myAir work with non-ResMed machines? No. myAir is ResMed-only. Philips and Löwenstein users need a different tool to read their data; a multi-vendor cloud analyzer like SomniCharts covers all three brands from one place.

For the bigger map of every tool and which machine each one reads, see CPAP Data Tools & Apps.