Every running app calls itself free. The useful question is what the free version holds back — and in 2026 the answers range from "nothing at all" to "a seven-day trial". Twelve apps, with the withholding written out for each.
12 apps · vendor sources only · no affiliate links
Most "best free apps" lists rank apps that are free for a fortnight. These three stay free.
Nike Run Club. It has no paid tier, no in-app purchases of any kind, and nothing held back — GPS, coached runs, training plans and friend challenges are all simply free. Nothing else in this list can say that.
Nike Run ClubApple's own Fitness and Workout apps, before you install anything. They record heart rate continuously and for three minutes afterwards, they cost nothing, and every other app reads from the same data anyway.
Apple FitnessThe NHS Couch to 5K app. Genuinely, completely free with nothing paywalled, which makes it unusual in a category where the popular Couch to 5K apps put Apple Watch support behind a purchase.
NHS Couch to 5KRunMatch, which is ours. Free to download, free to race friends, and we take 0% of the pot.
RunMatchChecked 17 September 2026 against vendor pricing pages, vendor help centres and live App Store in-app-purchase listings. Two prices are missing on purpose: Pacer runs six live price SKUs with no resolvable current figure, and adidas Running no longer publishes a price we can cite — so it isn't in the table. Corrections welcome.
RunMatch is free to download and free to race your friends, we take 0% of the pot, and the only fee is 3% when you withdraw winnings. Pro is $9.99 a month and unlocks exactly one thing: public matches against strangers. It requires an iPhone and an Apple Watch, and a run submitted without Apple Watch heart-rate data is rejected.
That is the entire commercial model, stated plainly because we are on our own list and it would be ridiculous to be vague about it. If you race only people you know — which is what most people want — you will never pay us anything except the 3% on money you have won.
The Apple Watch requirement is the real limitation, and it disqualifies more people than the price does. There is no Android app, no Garmin or Fitbit support, and no workaround.
Apple's Workout app, if you have a watch. It is the source every other app reads from, it records heart rate continuously and for three minutes after you stop to calculate recovery rate, and it costs nothing forever. For simply recording a run, nothing on this list beats it.
Nike Run Club, if you don't. Free GPS tracking with no paid tier lurking behind it, and it is fully standalone on Apple Watch — you can set it up on the watch without an iPhone in the room.
Garmin Connect, if you own a Garmin. Worth knowing because the 2026 launch of Connect+ worried a lot of people: Garmin stated twice in the announcement that all existing features and data in Garmin Connect remain free. Connect+ adds new things — AI insights, extra badges — it does not paywall your history.
Strava, if the feed is the point. The free tier still records and still posts. What it no longer does is most of the analysis, and it stopped doing group challenges in 2024.
This is the category with the sharpest gap between what looks free and what is free.
The NHS Couch to 5K app is completely free — publicly funded, no ads mentioned, nothing paywalled, the full nine-week programme with a choice of coaches. It is one of the few genuinely unencumbered fitness apps in existence and it is available well outside the UK.
The popular third-party Couch to 5K apps are not the same thing. The widely-installed Zen Labs version is ad-supported, and its in-app purchases include the full programme, distance, calorie tracking, dark mode and — the one that catches people — Apple Watch integration. None of that is dishonest, but "free Couch to 5K app" and "the free NHS one" are different products and search results do not distinguish them.
If you would rather not install anything, our 8-week 5K training plan and couch to 10K plan are free to read and print, with every session written out and no email required.
Adaptive, race-specific training plans are the single most consistently paywalled feature in running. Runna is the clearest case: $19.99 a month with no standing free tier beyond a seven-day trial. Runkeeper puts race plans behind Go at $9.99. Strava's plans are subscriber-only. MapMyRun's adaptive plans need MVP.
What is actually free: Nike Run Club's coached plans, which are well structured and genuinely free, and Garmin Coach if you have a Garmin.
The other honest answer is that a written plan does not need an app at all. A 12-week half marathon build is a table; the app is a convenience, and paying $120 a year for one is a decision worth making deliberately rather than by default. Ours are free, printable and linked at the bottom of this page.
This got materially worse in 2026, and it is the clearest example of a free tier shrinking.
Strava put group challenges behind the subscription, and not only for the organiser — every athlete joining needs a subscription or an active free trial too. A challenge for six friends now needs six subscriptions. Invites are also capped at 199 people, and invitees have to already follow you.
Nike Run Club is the free answer: create a distance challenge, share it, and nobody hits a paywall. There is a friends-only leaderboard filter, which is the feature that actually makes a challenge readable.
If you want the full comparison — including which apps can tell whether the miles were real — we have a nine-app breakdown of challenge apps.
A separate category, and worth being blunt about because the numbers are small.
Walking-reward apps pay somewhere between 24 cents and three dollars a month for 10,000 steps a day. Sweatcoin, the biggest of them, cannot be cashed out to a bank or PayPal at all — that is from its own help centre. We put real figures on the whole category in apps that pay you to walk.
Stakes apps work the other way: your money goes in, and you get it back plus a share if you hit your goal. StepBet keeps 15% of the gross pot in non-member games. RunMatch takes 0% of the pot and charges 3% on withdrawal.
The pattern worth noticing is that no app pays you meaningfully for exercise you were already doing. The ones paying real money are redistributing it from other users, and they are free precisely because they are not the ones paying.
Worth tracking, because a free tier is a promise nobody has made.
Strava is the headline. Group challenges moved behind the subscription and the free tier now shows only top-10 segment results, with the route builder, Fitness & Freshness, heart-rate analysis, matched activities and Beacon all subscriber-only. Prices are $11.99 monthly, $79.99 annually.
Garmin introduced Connect+ at $6.99 a month and was careful about it — the launch release says twice that existing features and data stay free, which is the right way to add a tier.
MapMyRun changed hands and now runs several price SKUs at once, between roughly $7.99 and $9.99 a month, with an ad-supported free tier. It is no longer an Under Armour product.
Runna never had a free tier and still doesn't; the seven-day trial is the whole of it.
| If you... | Install | Why |
|---|---|---|
| own an Apple Watch | Apple Workout, then decide | It is already there, it is the data source, it costs nothing. |
| want one free app, forever | Nike Run Club | No paid tier exists. Nothing is held back. |
| have never run | NHS Couch to 5K | Free with nothing paywalled, unlike the lookalikes. |
| want the social feed | Strava, and budget for it | The free tier still posts; most of the rest is paid now. |
| want challenges with friends | Nike Run Club | Strava now charges every participant, not just the organiser. |
| want money on the result | RunMatch | Free to race friends, 0% of the pot. Needs an iPhone and an Apple Watch. |
The only fee is 3% when you withdraw money you have won. Pro is optional and buys one thing.
iPhone + Apple Watch required · 18+ · payouts via Stripe