Fitbit (owned by Google) is a great Apple Fitness alternative if you don’t have an iPhone or Apple Watch (though you can use it if you do, too). In addition to activity tracking, the app offers sleep, food, water, menstrual cycle, glucose, and weight tracking—which are great features if you’re trying to be healthier overall. Like Apple Fitness, it has badges for achievements, which I loved since I don’t want to compete against anyone except myself. It also offers daily readiness scores if you use it with a Fitbit wearable.
The Best Workout Apps for 2026
When it comes to calorie and nutrition tracking, accuracy matters. Christina is a health commerce staff writer at Fortune with more than a decade of experience crafting engaging content for digital platforms. To join Apple Fitness Plus, you can try it out for free for up to three months and then have the option to pay month-to-month, $10 or $80 for the year. If you’re on a family plan, you can share access to Apple Fitness Plus with up to five family members.
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Just keep in mind that although the instructors provide modifications, true beginners may find most of these workouts too challenging. You can also search by muscle group, workout focus, and equipment to find a class. Our Retro Fitness App helps you along your fitness journey on your own time, wherever you are.
For those who like to break a sweat at home , this list of the best fitness apps are your friend. Not only will each one help you stay in shape by way of targeted exercises and extended plans, but many will do so free of charge. Load up your smartphone or strap on your Fitbit Rebel and get to work. Workout apps can be especially appealing for beginners because they provide both convenience and guidance.
We chose TR(AI)NER by Element 26 as the best workout app for weightlifting because of its comprehensiveness. Yes, with newer workout apps, such as Future, you can get connected to a personal trainer through an app. It will cost more compared with other apps but will be cheaper than a standard personal training session at the gym. SmartWOD is the best CrossFit workout app, featuring tools for timing and generating high-intensity workouts.
Best Free Workout Apps: Get Started on the Road to Fitness
If you’re an outdoors person, especially runs and rides, Strava is the perfect app for you. Use our quick round-up below to immediately find an app that fits your needs – and you can read more about it by jumping to our full write-ups and explanations using the links. While deciding which fitness app to sign up for, experts recommend thinking through the following factors, all of which I took into consideration while creating our list of favorites. You might have memories of jumping rope with your friends at school.
Are There Any Downsides to Workout Apps?
The process begins with a comprehensive consultation where you discuss goals, experience, lifestyle, and available equipment. Your coach then creates a completely personalized program, not a template modified slightly for you. AI-powered virtual trainer providing customized workouts with real-time adaptive coaching and comprehensive progress tracking. We selected StretchIt as the best fitness app for stretching because we found the content to be effective, enjoyable to follow and simple to track progress.
The app’s database contains more than 6 million foods, so you can log just about everything you put in your body, from fast food to homemade vegan lasagna, thanks to a nifty recipe calculator. Tracking your lifts can be the perfect encouragement to keep on keepin’ on. If you’ve wanted to try running but never known where to start, Couch to 5K should be the next app you download. All you need is 30 to 40 minutes a day, 3 times a week, for 8 weeks. This study was interesting (and very positive), but because was a cross-sectional study, we can’t draw conclusions about causality.
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- Obé Fitness is designed for beginners, pros, and anyone who tends to stray from the typical exercises you’d do in a gym.
- If you’re traveling or stuck at home, and even if your gym is closed, you can pull out your phone and get a great workout done wherever you are.
- Whether your goal is to lose weight, build strength, perform at your peak or improve your overall health, keeping an accurate food journal of what you eat and drink is essential.
- A seamless, intuitive interface was another key factor, making it easy to navigate classes, track progress, and stay engaged.
- Down Dog is changing that by offering a brand new yoga practice every time you come to your trusty yoga mat.
- It took until 2019, but you can finally buy a mirror that can help you work out!
Creating and following a fitness plan yourself, or with the help of a coach, will ensure you are getting the most out of your time and money. This AI-powered is strava premium worth it strength training app curates workouts for you based on your initial fitness levels and daily readiness. The more you log your data, the more your algorithm learns in an effort to keep you progressing through PRs.
How can you make workout apps most effective?
You get three free programs upfront and, if you like the experience, the subscription is priced at a modest $14.99 per month. You can get it on the brand’s website or on either the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. You’ll also want to figure out whether the app’s classes require you to have certain pieces of equipment on hand, like dumbbells or a yoga mat. Make sure you either have these items, or you have the budget to purchase them. I recommend it to anyone who prefers yoga as their main form of exercise. The instruction was an area our tester emphasized, rating it a 4 out of 5.
Sign up today to get 7 days absolutely for free, on iPhone, iPad, Android or on our website to improve flexibility, aid recovery, reduce pain, and enhance range of motion with our mobility app. Joining Lasta isn’t just about exercising and becoming part of a community. This app brings together fitness newbies and veterans in a supportive online space where everyone cheers for each other. If you’re thinking about working out but need help figuring out where to start, try yoga. According to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, yoga is a low-impact and safe form of physical activity.
Is there any fitness app without a subscription?
You can work out with celebrity coaches and even invite your friends to work out with you. Simply log the foods you eat using one of our easy food tracking tools, and we’ll show you a complete nutritional breakdown for each food, meal, day, and even week. Any way you want to look at your data, you’ll gain a better understanding of your personal nutrition so you can make smart choices that align with your weight, health, and fitness goals. Alix Turoff, RD, a New York City–based registered dietitian and National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM)–certified personal trainer, loves that you can also swap out exercises and modify workouts. “This is great if you have an injury or just aren’t feeling a specific exercise that day,” she says. Exercise apps are abundant, and narrowing down the list can seem daunting.
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If you already work with a trainer, it is worth asking whether they use an app to program and track your workouts, allowing you to combine professional expertise with the convenience of digital tools. The nutrition features complement the training programs, with meal planning tools, macro tracking, and the ability to share recipes. This holistic approach enables trainers to provide complete lifestyle coaching rather than just workout programming. Trainers can create comprehensive workout plans with video demonstrations, rest timers, and progression tracking. The workout builder is intuitive yet detailed, allowing for complete customization based on each client’s needs, equipment access, and goals.
And, if you’re a beginner, no worries— a variety of levels, intensities, and class lengths are offered. Aside from yoga, guided meditation and breathwork classes are also available in the app to get you super chill before or after executing child’s pose. We offer personal training, small group strength & conditioning sessions and team workouts to help you get real with your goals. Most of our personal training programs are heart rate monitored for safe and powerful sessions. The app uses algorithms to provide customized coaching programs for various goals, with workouts including trainer-led videos and detailed exercise tutorials. After completing exercises, you rate difficulty, allowing the AI to adjust subsequent workouts for optimal challenge.
How to choose the workout app for you
As with most things in the age of the internet, you can find super niche fitness programs that give you exactly what you’re looking for in a home workout. That said, it touches on women’s health topics in many of its curated programs, like syncing workouts to your menstrual cycle and aging. If you’re someone who is new to exercising or has a specific goal in mind, you can take Obé’s quiz, and based on your answers, the app creates a personalized fitness plan for you that refreshes as you go.