The Best Fitness Tracking Apps for Every Type of Exercise

If you peruse the health and fitness category on Google Play or the iTunes App Store, you'll see thousands of activity trackers that automatically track your location, steps, runs, cycling, and more. It's a bit overwhelming, so here are a few of our favorites in a number of different categories.

People like to track their activity and exercise for any number of reasons. That data can be a great motivator, but it's also just handy to see how much you're moving so you can hit your exercise targets every day and not damage your body too much. The trick is finding a way to track everything in your life without losing your mind. To that end, we wanted to see which apps don't require much manual input on your part (which rules out a lot of strength-training and other similar apps). Here are the best we've found that do just that.

If You Just Want to Track Your Daily Steps

The Best Fitness Tracking Apps for Every Type of Exercise


Our favorite pedometer is Runtastic Pedometer for both Android and the iPhone. It keeps track of all your daily steps, compiles that data into pretty graphs, and still manages to keep things simple. That said, for iPhone 5s owners, we like Pedometer++. Since it uses the iPhone motion sensor, it barely uses any of your battery life and it shows your daily step count right from the app's badge on the home screen.

If You Want to Track Your Runs

The Best Fitness Tracking Apps for Every Type of Exercise

You have a ton of options for different apps to track your runs, but your favorite (and ours) is Runkeeper. The reason is pretty simple: it's free, it tracks your GPS, allows you to create workouts, create routes, make your own music mixes, and just about anything else you'd want from a running app. Importantly, it's also cross-platform, so if you jump ship from iPhone to Android (or vice versa), you can keep all the data you collect over the years.

What's nice about Runkeeper is that it does everything it needs to do without a lot of effort from you. If you want, you can simply turn the app on and then go for a run. But if you'd rather dig in and personalize things, Runkeeper allows you to do that. It also supports a ton of third-party accessories if you decide your smartphone isn't enough.

If You Want to Track Your Cycling

The Best Fitness Tracking Apps for Every Type of Exercise

Like tracking your runs, tracking your cycling is all about a solid GPS app that doesn't kill your battery. For that, we like Strava. Strava works on both Android and the iPhone, as well as a few different GPS devices. It's also super simple, so it's easy to use right away. Just launch the app, and you'll start tracking your location. From there, you can go on a bike trip and Strava will log that data. When you're done, you can look at where you've been, your average speed, and plenty more.

What sets Strava apart from the rest of the options out there is the community. With Strava, you can set up a network of friends and challenge each of them to races. You'll also find a ton of different public challenges with various routes, inclines, and more.

If You Want to Track Your Sleep

The Best Fitness Tracking Apps for Every Type of Exercise

Sleep isn't exactly exercise, but it's just as important to keeping yourself healthy. You have a surprising amount of choices for technology that tracks your sleep patterns, but only a couple of apps actually work very well.

Your best option for both Android and iPhone is Sleepbot. All you need to do is launch Sleepbot, place it on your bed, and fall asleep. In the morning, you'll be treated with all kinds of data about your sleep habits, including your movement, a recording of any sounds you made (or that happened in the room), your sleep time, and more. You can then rate your sleep and add notes so that data actually means something to you. With all that data, you can then go on to use those graphs to figure out how to improve your sleep. iPhone users may also want to check out Sleep Cycle, but it's not quite as feature-rich as Sleepbot.

If You Want to Track Everything You Can

The Best Fitness Tracking Apps for Every Type of Exercise

Tracking your walking, cycling, and running is all great when you remember to actually do it, but if you're just interested in collecting a bunch of that data, you'll want something that tracks your activity in the background without you having to do a thing. For that, we like Moves.

Moves works in the background on your Android or your iPhone. It's always on, and tracks your steps as well as if you run or ride a bicycle anywhere. It automatically differentiates between a car ride or a bike ride, so you don't have to do anything to make Moves work. It also tracks your location everywhere, so you can look back and see where you went, how you got there, and how long it took. Basically, Moves tracks everything. The downside is that Moves doesn't give you a lot of data. So, while it tracks everything you do, you can't see things like speed, heart rate, or other similar minute details that you'd find in a specialized app. That said, you can grab your data from Moves and import it elsewhere pretty easily.

If Moves isn't exactly what you're looking for, the iPhone 5s-only app Nike+Move is similar, but also tracks your general movements throughout the day. Nike+Move also has a social element to it that pits you against your friends to chalk up the most activity, so if you're the competitive type, it's definitely worth a look. Likewise, ARGUS is an iPhone app that tracks motion, fitness, and sleep all in one app, but subsequently doesn't have a ton of information outside a few simple graphs.

If You Need a Little Push to Get Outside and Move

Let's be honest, not everyone loves the idea of exercising every day. If you need a push to start tracking your activity, you have a ton of different options depending on what you're looking for.



Activity trackers have gotten better over time, and while they'll still drain your battery a bit on older devices, they're much better at conservation than they used to be. If you don't have the cash to drop on something like a Fitbit Force (which is Wirecutter's pick for best fitness tracker), your smartphone can gather a lot of similar data.

Photos by Edel, VoodooDot, risteski goce, Vectomart.