Fertility apps which tell women when they are safe to have unprotected sex may be as good at preventing pregnancy as taking the pill, a new study suggests.
The first large, high-quality investigation of its kind found women who relied on an app which gives a green or red light depending on the day were at no worse risk of an unplanned pregnancy than those using some traditional forms of contraception.
More than 700 participants entered details of their period history into the Dot app, whose algorithm then predicted the pregnancy risk for each day of the menstrual cycle.
Over one year of use, the app had a failure rate of between one and five per cent, roughly equivalent to that of the pill and other methods.
These comprised 24 pregnancies from women who used the app incorrectly, such as by having unprotected sex on a day of high fertility, but only one pregnancy form a women who used the app correctly.