You don’t necessarily need an activity tracker if you simply want to track your steps. If you have an iPhone, you can take advantage of the many free pedometer apps that count your steps by tracking your movement as you carry your device with you.
Best of all, many of these pedometer/step counter apps are free. Check out some of the best available in the list below.
You can also use your iPhone to count calories or even to track and manage weight loss if you have the right apps.
Visually Pleasing With Powerful Features: Pacer Pedometer & Step Tracker
Pacer is another top step counter app in the Health & Fitness category that combines breathtaking design with powerful features. It’s not just a step counting app—it’s also a maps app, a social app and a workout app, all in one. In addition to having a main tab where you can see your steps, time, distance and calories burned, you can also use it to find new routes to take, get motivation from the community and watch guided workout videos.
Beautiful and intuitive interface.
Access to photos, maps and data with ability to record your activities.
Ability to create plans and set daily goals.
Ability to track more info like blood pressure, activity and weight.
No customizable themes available.
Premium features are available only with a subscription upgrade.
Sleek, Simple and Automatic Step Counting: StepsApp Pedometer
StepsApp pedometer is a top app in the Health & Fitness category on iTunes, with over two million users and almost 45K ratings. The app features a sleek interface with a main tab that shows your steps, active calories burned, distance and time. You can even check out your long-term history by going back months or years in the past and view graphs to help you spot trends.
Visually appealing layout featuring animations and customizable colors.
Access to history going months and years back.
Wheelchair support for tracking wheelchair pushes.
Calories burned may not be accurate.
Main layout is very dark with no light version.
Get Motivated by Connecting With Your Friends: Stepz
Stepz is a pedometer app that strikes a nice balance between basic functionality and offering some extra fun stuff. Like all the other apps listed here, you get to see your steps, distance and calories burned for the day plus your step history and your progress. In addition, the app will notify you when you reach certain milestones, like walking the length of the London Underground. It also has a social tab where you can connect with friends and get a quick glance at their daily step count, weekly average and daily goal.
Claims to have high accuracy and saves battery life.
Fun and creative achievements can be unlocked.
Ability to connect with friends.
iOS widget and other features only available with premium upgrade.
All premium subscriptions are billed weekly.
Best for Your Battery: Pedometer & Step Counter
This app another that does away with all the extra features and gives you just the most important ones on a clean and intuitive interface that’s pleasing to look at. There are just four tabs: your daily stats, your progress report, your badges achieved and your timeline history. What’s particularly useful about this app is that you can go into your settings and adjust the motion sensor tracking in case you think the app is not counting enough steps (or counting too many).
Built for speed, simplicity and battery saving.
Ability to adjust for sensitivity to increase count accuracy.
Opportunity to earn badges for milestones achieved.
Need to tap start for it to begin counting steps.
Known to stop tracking sometimes if screen is locked.
Set Your Own Goals: Pedometer++
Pedometer++ is for those who love simple design, but want a little bit more customization for their step activities. You can see your weekly progress in a bar graph, which each bar color coded according to whether you hit your step goal, fell short, or surpassed it. The app also includes an Achievements tabs where you can set your own goals and participate in monthly challenges, streaks, lifetime miles and rewards.
Runs in the background without impacting battery life.
Extremely customizable themes and settings.
Opportunity to work toward achievements.
Steps seem to go missing sometimes.
Layout and design seem overly simplistic and dated.
Just the Basics, Plus Great Design: Steps - Activity Tracker
This app is a great app to get if you’re not interested in all the extra bells and whistles that some of the other apps on list offer — like challenges, maps, a community and so on. You get a simple automatic step counter with an easy to view history calendar, along with a daily step goal you can set and a few basic themes you can use to customize the appearance. For a simple app that offers just the most important information, it gets the job done in the most visually appealing and useful way.
Clean and uncluttered design with gorgeous animations.
Claims to work anywhere on your body with no need to push start or stop buttons.
Great calendar history viewer with animated summaries and trends.
Seven colored themes to choose from.
Not ideal if you want lots of customization and features.
Ads appear at the top of the app.
Calorie tracking is available with an upgrade to premium.
Just the Basics Plus GPS Tracking: Accupedo Pedometer
If you’re looking for a pedometer app with just the basics plus GPS tracking, Accupedo Pedometer might be the right choice for you. In addition to an easy to read daily stats tab, you can select the type of activity (walking, running or cycling) and see a map of your route. The chart tab shows you trends over days to years and there’s also a customizable sensitivity setting to adjust for motion sensing.
Charts are well designed to easily spot trends over short and long-term.
GPS map integration to view routes and related stats.
Motion sensor sensitivity adjustment setting.
Nice selection of color themes.
Not recommended to wear on loosely fitted clothes.
GPS tracking may quickly decrease battery life.
Follow One of Three Activity Plans: Runtastic Steps
Runtastic Steps is a simple yet powerful pedometer app from Adidas, designed to give you your daily stats at a glance, your progress and access to plans to help motivate you. Three free plans are available. The 30-Day Activity Boost plan encourages you to increase your daily step count each month, the Step It Up plan incorporates a mix of steps plus active minutes goals and the Walking for Weight Loss plan helps you burn more calories every day over a 12-week period.
Comprehensive progress reports dating months and years back.
Access to three free training plans.
Integrates with other Runtastic apps.
Pretty hard on battery life.
Very minimal selection of training plans.
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