By combining expert analysis with real-world feedback, we identified platforms that are both enjoyable and effective for achieving fitness goals. Or, if you’re looking to keep costs down, Nike Training Club is completely free, while Fiit offers access to all group classes without charge. But if these aren’t quite right for you, we’ve rounded up the best workout apps for a range of training styles and budgets to get you started. Future brings the luxury of working out with a personal trainer to your fingertips, literally.
FAQs About the Best Workout Apps for Beginners
But you’re not ready to spend $500+ a month to hire a personal trainer to work out with you every day. I started Body Muscle Matters to share my journey and passion for fitness. What began as a personal mission to build muscle and feel stronger has grown into a space where I share tips, workouts, and honest advice to help others do the same.
If you document it in the app, it’ll show you historical data about your physical activity progress, calorie intake and water intake. Since the focus is on building strength, SBTD has a section where you can input your weights and reps neatly. If you hit a personal best, the app suggests a new weight goal for that specific exercise. One of the things I don’t like about this app is how the exercises are listed for the day once you hit play. Unless you memorize the initial preview of the workout, you have to skip through different slides to know what exercise comes next.
But be sure your needs are being met before paying a pretty penny for a paid plan. If you’re a beginner, ensure that the app you choose will grow with you in your fitness journey by looking to see if they offer beginner, intermediate, and advanced classes. If you’re a seasoned athlete, make sure the app you choose has varying levels of intensity and enough to offer in the long run.
SERIOUS FITNESS
To earn 3 out of 5 stars, there may be some repetition and many similar workout formats/types, but it’s tolerable, and our testers could see themselves using this app for quite some time. For this category, we aren’t just looking at the plan itself, but how much instruction the app provides. To earn 3 out of 5 stars, we want to see both visual and audio cues, though there may not be much guidance about how hard to push yourself or when to increase the weight you’re using. This means if you’re an Android user, you’ll be unable to use Ladder’s programming, which is a major flaw in terms of accommodations. The Nike Training Club app received high scores for most categories, though it earned average rankings in a few select areas like equipment demands and progressive overload. Zwift scored highly in most categories, but as it’s more of a racing app than a platform that provides instruction, we only gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars for accountability and instruction.
Best Workout App for Men for Beginners: Aaptiv
Instruction can be simple, with a how-to video on performing exercises, or it can be a coach leading a streamed workout with cues throughout the video. Furthermore, you can use an app to connect with your own personal coach, who can keep you accountable and help you stay on track. With a variety of training types and workouts ranging from bodyweight exercises to using functional trainers, the app and its workouts can meet you where you’re at. For a beginner using Aaptiv, you can start from wherever you are, making it very accessible.
Best Workout Apps for Beginners to Jumpstart Your Fitness
An interesting feature is that you get to choose your expert trainer out of these matches, and you get a lot of options. To help you stay consistent with your action plan, your dedicated caliber coach, a certified trainer, will provide expert guidance and help you stay accountable while keeping you motivated. Your strengths, weaknesses, gym equipment availability, and other variables are considered when creating these plans. And for this, especially when training alone, following the right workouts is important to ensure you gain and maintain muscle mass over losing it. Strength training has many core benefits, like balance, coordination, and posture.
Pricing guide for monthly subscription
Top apps offer a wide variety of original workouts for all fitness levels, led by knowledgeable, motivating instructors who push you to challenge yourself while keeping things fun. CNET experts tested some of the most popular workout apps to see which ones actually offer great workouts. These are the apps that stood out for their usability, personalization and ability to help you stay consistent and reach your fitness goals in 2026. Some are completely free or offer a free trial, and some require a monthly subscription. Your choice will ultimately depend on whether you think investing in a paid app will actually help you get closer to your goals and what you’re comfortable spending.
Best Fitness Apps for Strength Workouts
Zwift releases a monthly calendar with classes and courses in each of its 11 virtual worlds, but you can also schedule races against friends by using the Zwift companion app (included in your monthly subscription). Zwift Companion also lets you send messages to your friends and join clubs based on your fitness level and preferences. He also docked a couple of points for progressive overload, giving Fitbod 3 out of 5 stars. In terms of cost, there’s the $15 monthly iFIT Train plan and the $39 monthly iFIT Pro plan.
- This is fine if that’s what you’re looking for, but many competitors, like Peloton, now offer a variety of workout modalities, and we wish Zwift would expand its offerings.
- The user interface, in general, is incredibly easy to use, earning iFIT a 5 out of 5 in this category.
- The Peloton experience is a little lacking in the accountability department if you go with the basic membership, our tester noted.
- In December 2025, we reviewed our list of the best weightlifting apps and made a few changes based on our latest testing.
- It also allows you to track your workout statistic and sync with your AppleWatch.
- The gap between “using an app” and “getting results from an app” often comes down to program quality, personalization, and instructor expertise, not price tag.
Six Pack in 30 Days
The next tier, at $19 a month, offers a group chat feature for group training, and the Premium option costs $200 or more each month, with access to a one-on-one coach. MapMyFitness is one of the best running apps we’ve tested, and you can get it for an affordable price of $5.99 per month for the premium version. It’s a little different than a strength training app that provides instruction and coaching, but the data it offers gives you fantastic insight into how you’re progressing over time.
Stop Believing These 10 Gym Myths (According to Science)
Here’s a breakdown of the cost per month for each of the personal training apps on our list. “Targeted plans, specific muscle focus, full-body—you name it, they got it,” says Savary. Upon sign up, you’re immediately given access to a large library of strength-based workouts as well as sessions for yoga, pilates, HIIT workouts, and mobility. Our tester appreciated how each live and on-demand class was led by certified trainers, giving the quality mad muscles app review of instruction a 5 out of 5.
Visualizing Progressive Overload
Caliber’s free tier delivers structured, video-guided strength programs at no cost — a feature combination that rivals paid apps charging $10–$15 per month. User consensus from r/PlanetFitnessMembers recommends Caliber specifically because it’s ad-free and tracks strength progress comprehensively at no cost. That consensus from real users, not sponsored reviews, is the most reliable signal a budget app can have. It features a super smart algorithm that acknowledges your personal goals, body composition, equipment availability, and many more variables to generate the best workout plan.
Now, as director of content at GGR, she brings her expertise in fitness to writing and editing honest reviews on everything you might need for your home gym. Shred also offers full-length studio classes in yoga, boxing, HIIT, and more. “It creates running workouts with interval variations based on the time I want to exercise—great for mixing up my routine.” The best free workout app depends on what you’re going to be using it for. Nike Training Club offers a variety of classes, whereas an app like Strava is ideal if you’d like to keep metrics on your outdoor adventures. A good place to start is by searching your App Store and seeing what free workout apps it has to offer.
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