Best group fitness challenge apps to compete with friends in 2026

Most fitness apps are built for one person looking at their own numbers. The ones worth using with a group of friends are the ones that add a shared leaderboard, low-friction comparison, and a reason to check in on each other every day.

Here's an honest shortlist for 2026. We've put ourselves on it — we'd be weird to leave MoveTogether off our own site — but the rest are genuinely good, and a few of them are apps MoveTogether reads data from rather than competes with.

1. MoveTogether — best for mixed-device friend groups

Built specifically for competing with friends who don't all wear the same thing. Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit, WHOOP, Oura, Strava, Polar, or just an iPhone all land on the same live leaderboard, with Percentage of Goals scoring to keep it fair when goals and devices differ. Move Leagues add a recurring weekly cohort that resets every Monday, and Coach Mo nudges whoever's slacking. iOS today; Android is on the waitlist for Q3 2026.

2. Apple Fitness (built-in) — best if everyone has an Apple Watch

If your whole group is on Apple Watch, Apple's built-in Activity competitions are free and frictionless. The catch is they're one-on-one only — there's no group leaderboard — and they don't work for anyone outside the Apple Watch ecosystem. We wrote a full guide on how to run an Apple Watch group competition if that's your blocker.

3. Stridekick — best for cross-tracker step challenges

Stridekick has been doing device-agnostic step challenges for years and supports a wide range of trackers, so groups on different wearables can compete on steps. If your group's whole interest is step counts and friendly streaks, it's a solid, established pick.

4. Strive — best for variety of challenge types

Strive leans into running multiple kinds of group challenges — steps, distance, active minutes, and more — for families, friends, and workplaces. Good if you want to rotate the metric you compete on rather than always racing the same number.

5. StepUp — best free, casual step competitions

StepUp keeps it simple and social: walking challenges with leaderboards and group chat, aimed at friends, family, and office groups. A low-commitment option if you just want to make daily steps a bit more fun.

How to pick

• Everyone's on Apple Watch and you want free: Apple's built-in competitions (accept the one-on-one limit).
• Mixed devices, real group leaderboard: MoveTogether.
• Steps-only, big groups: Stridekick or StepUp.
• You want to vary the metric: Strive.

If your friend group is split across devices — which most are — the device-agnostic option is the one that actually gets used, because nobody gets left off the board. That's the whole reason MoveTogether exists, and why many people run it alongside the tracker app they already love.

Third-party app names and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Positioning reflects each app's publicly stated focus as of mid-2026 and may change.

Stop reading. Start competing.

MoveTogether is free on the App Store. Bring whatever wearable you've got — or just your iPhone.