Best Free Workout Apps of 2024: Complete Guide

It’s a good idea to crunch some data: What’s working? What’s not? And how can you tweak your struggle spots to send you on the right path for the second half of the year? 

Tracking your workouts is one of the first steps to staying consistent and making a plan that coincides with your lifestyle and goals. 

This guide to the best free workout apps will help you make your choice if you want to explore different workout tracker apps. 

We’ll take a look at the best free workout program apps to see how they compare against one another. 

Why Should I Use a Workout App? 

Because it’s free, obviously! 

But all jokes aside, free workout apps are gaining popularity due to several key factors making them appealing to a wide range of users.

1. Accessibility and Convenience

Anytime, Anywhere: For one, free workout apps allow you to access your workout routines and fitness plans from anywhere, at any time. If you’re far from a physical gym, this eliminates the need to leave your home to work out or plan your life around inconvenient class schedules. 

User-Friendly: Many of these apps are also designed to be user-friendly. The instructions and demonstrations are easy to follow, making fitness more accessible for beginners or people with busy lifestyles.

2. Cost-Effectiveness

Financial Barrier Free: No-cost apps let you access quality workout plans and fitness resources without needing expensive gym memberships or personal training fees. This helps spread the love of fitness, making it accessible to a broader audience.

3. Variety and Customization

Diverse Workouts: Oftentimes, these apps offer you a wide range of workout styles. If you’re a strength training, cardio, or yoga fan, among other things, many of these apps can provide a workout class to cater to your needs. 

Personalized Plans: You can also use apps that feature customizable plans tailored to individual fitness levels, goals, and preferences. Whether you want to develop 3D shoulders, straighten out sloped shoulders, turn skinny abs muscular or eradicate bad calf genetics, there’s a customization for your ideal workout. This makes users feel more appreciated and can enhance their engagement and satisfaction. Keep in mind that sometimes personal plans are offered as paid add-ons. 

4. Community and Motivation

Social Features: Free workout apps often include social features like community forums, challenges, or social media-style interfaces for photo sharing and the ability to celebrate progress with friends. 

Gamification: Gamification or gameplay elements are a part of some apps. Things like earning badges, receiving stars or completing challenges are some techniques that can help motivate you if you feel too lazy to workout and make fitness more engaging and fun.

5. Technical Integrations

Wearable Compatibility: The best free workout apps on the market can mostly sync with wearable fitness trackers and smartwatches, like your Apple Watch or Garmin. This lets you track your progress, monitor your heart rate, and integrate your workout data easily across different devices. 

Progress Tracking: As you get better, the best free workout apps should be able to keep up! Key apps often include features to track workouts, taking note of metrics like sets, reps and projected or real one-rep maxes. They let you set goals and monitor your progress over time, giving you tangible information on how you’re improving and whether you’re staying consistent.

6. Education

Instructional Videos: Free workout apps often give you instructional videos and tutorials, so you can learn proper form, technique, and language for the moves that you’re doing. This can be especially helpful for beginners as you build out a workout routine or refine a simple pull day workout or push day workout. 

Fitness Tips and Articles: Many apps also provide content on nutrition, recovery, stretching and fitness tips to paint a more holistic picture of your health and wellness.

7. Adaptability During Pandemic

At-Home Workouts: COVID-19 increased the demand for home workout solutions since gyms and fitness centers closed down. Free workout apps took off during this time and show no signs of slowing down! They give you a convenient way to stay active at home.

These benefits are just a few of the great things to be experienced from trying the best free workout apps. On top of this, you’ll, of course, see similar results that come with time in the gym if you’re working out consistently. 

The best free workout apps can help you with: 

• Muscle growth 
• Better athletic performance
• Functional fitness 
• Improved total body strength.

You can look forward to seeing these perks if you commit to staying consistent with an app that’s right for you. 

So, how do you pick the best free workout app? We’ll give you our list of top app choices shortly, but first, note what criteria we used to determine what makes a fitness app great. 

Evaluating Fitness Apps

We evaluated all the apps on our list according to a few main criteria: 

• Price: Although these apps are free for the bare-bones versions, each app offers premium or upgraded pricing, too. We compared the paid versions to determine the value for quality. 
• Ease of Use: For gym novices or others using a workout app for the first time, we looked at whether these apps seemed simple, approachable, and able to fulfil the goals they claimed to strive for. 
• Workout Variety: Most of these apps primarily target gym enthusiasts in the weightlifting space. That being said, we analyzed whether they offered equipment variations, at-home options, and a wide range of workouts across different styles for unique fitness goals. 
• Long-Term Use: This category determines whether a user would be likely to commit to a program or subscription long-term based on the overall value provided by the app.

If you’re stuck between several options, it’s helpful to use these categories as a starting point for what to look at when choosing an app. 

Feel free to add a few categories of your own. For example, if you prefer boot camp-style or fitness class-based workouts (yoga, cycling, Pilates, etc.), you’re probably on the lookout for an app that provides workout classes. 

On the other hand, if weightlifting is your exercise of choice, you’ll want to look at platforms that let you track your weights used and one-rep maxes as you progress. 

Things like social sharing capabilities, subscription types (monthly, weekly, etc.), and at-home or on-the-go workouts, among other things, are all key points you may consider when choosing the best free workout app for you. 

Now that you have a few key metrics in mind to make your decision easier for you keep scrolling to see our roundup of the best free workout apps of 2024. 

Best Free Workout Apps 2024

Now, on to the good part. 

Here are this year’s best free workout apps: 

1. Flex Fitness App 

• Price: Flex is among the cheapest options on our list. Free of cost and only $9.99 monthly to upgrade to a premium subscription. 
• Ease of Use: Flex’s simple user interface and capabilities, like auto progression and plate tracking, provide a seamless experience in monitoring your progress as you improve your hypertrophy and muscle strength levels. The app is simple to use and gives you a comprehensive yet no-nonsense approach to fitness. Most of the functions are exactly where you’d expect them to be located, so you have more mental space to focus on your workouts and less struggle with the technology. The social sharing features are simple, too, and operate much like an Instagram timeline for photo sharing and interactive opportunities with other users. 
• Workout Variety: Flex provides a comprehensive workout with a range of workouts for at-home, in-gym or limited equipment scenarios. 
• Long-Term Use: The app has fantastic progression and exercise prescription capabilities. The weight plate tracking feature allows users to reference which weights they used in previous workouts to ensure constant improvement for progressive overload. 

2. Fitbod 

• Price: Fitbod comes in at $12.99 for a paid monthly subscription. 
• Ease of Use: Fitbod has a clean design interface and is very customizable based on which muscle groups you’re looking to work. That being said, for total newbies who want a workout experience that is more doing and less thinking, the customization will require you to do a fair bit of tweaking to tailor your workout specifically to your current fitness level and goals. 
• Workout Variety: This app is very superset-dominant compared to other programs. Although you can build your own custom sets, generally, this style is offered a lot more than other workout types. 
• Long-Term Use: Used long-term, Fitbod has capabilities to let you see which muscles are “fresh” to work. This lets you work different muscles day over day so you avoid burnout over time.  

3. Jefit

• Price: For Jefit’s recommended Elite Monthly Plan, the app costs $12.99 per month. 
• Ease of Use: Despite its affordable price, where Jefit struggles is in the user experience for its free version. If you don’t opt into the paid premium plan, Jefit is cluttered with ads which make the user experience feel clunky and less immersive. 
• Workout Variety: The workout variety is comprehensive in weightlifting exercises, but Jefit does not provide as many cardio workout options as its competitors. 
• Long-Term Use: Based on overall value, Jefit doesn’t provide as many unique personalized options as other listed programs that would inspire continued use. If you’re planning for longevity and want a fitness app that grows with you, it may be advisable to try another app on this list that provides clearer guidelines for how long-term use will align with your fitness goals. 

4. Hevy

• Price: $2.99/month, $23.99/year, $74.99/ Lifetime Access
• Ease of Use: Hevy is generally well-designed. However, its notification system is lacking, and the app could use better reminders for its users to input their data and stick with their workouts. 
• Workout Variety: The workouts are simple yet comprehensive. 
• Long-Term Use: The lifetime access option on the Hevy app makes it an affordable option for longer-term use. 

Best Overall Free Workout App

Taking a look at all the criteria for evaluation, the Flex app takes the cake! 

Flex shines among other fitness apps for its: 

• Simplicity of use 
• Adaptability 
• Low price 
• Positive user feedback
• Long-term use.

User feedback has been highly positive for this app as well. Check out a few testimonials from users who have touted the benefits of this simple free workout app: 

Testimonial: Best Workout App for Intermediate and Advanced Training

“I’ve been weight training for about 15 years, and one of the biggest keys to success in the gym is consistency in workout. Flex is built exactly for this. It allows you to build your own workouts in a simple, easy-to-use format. Try it out for free, but if you have an Apple Watch, you’ll definitely want to pay for it; logging on to the watch has changed my ability to stay focused and keep my phone away while working out. Overall, it is an amazing app if you want a highly customizable, simple interface logging app that doesn't push a specific training style or set of workouts.”

Testimonial: Perfect (Almost)

Let me start by saying this is the best free app, period. There is no free app that can beat this. I’ve tried every other one I could find, and this is by far the best. I recently used the referral feature to get a lifetime premium. The suggested workouts are nice if you don’t know exactly how to work out. 

Big Picture

Workout apps are here to stay. 

In 2024, as people increasingly have hybrid or inconsistent working hours and your workout schedules need to be flexible, using a simple app to get your exercise in can be the perfect alternative to a pre-scheduled class. 

We looked at the best free workout apps on the market in 2024, breaking them down by: 

• Price 
• Ease of use
• Workout Variety 
• Long-Term Commitment 

Across these categories, Flex was the standout option that provided the most value for the most users at the least cost. 

You can download the Flex Fitness app on app store for free to get the app for your smartphone. 

References

Kraemer, W. J., & Ratamess, N. A. (2004). Fundamentals of resistance training: progression and exercise prescription. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 36(4), 674–688. https://doi.org/10.1249/01.mss.0000121945.36635.61

Plotkin, D., Coleman, M., Van Every, D., Maldonado, J., Oberlin, D., Israetel, M., Feather, J., Alto, A., Vigotsky, A. D., & Schoenfeld, B. J. (2022). Progressive overload without progressing load? The effects of load or repetition progression on muscular adaptations. PeerJ, 10, e14142. https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.14142

Reggiani, C., & Schiaffino, S. (2020). Muscle hypertrophy and muscle strength: dependent or independent variables? A provocative review. European journal of translational myology, 30(3), 9311. https://doi.org/10.4081/ejtm.2020.9311