Apple Watch and the Fitness app
Free with the watchGood: Workouts, rings, heart rate zones, cardio fitness. Reliable and simple.
The catch: No strain score, no recovery to size the day, no strength log with sets and reps.
No subscription
Fitness trackers without a subscription.
A fitness tracker should count your effort, not your card. Here is what tracks workouts, strain and progress without a membership, and what each leaves out.
Most watches track workouts fine without a plan. The membership creep is in the layer above: strain scores, readiness, coaching. Sixteen sits in that layer and charges once, using the watch or strap you already have.
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Garmin Connect
Free with a Garmin watchGood: The deepest free training analysis you can get: load, readiness, VO2 max, structured plans.
The catch: Strength is rep counting, not progression. Nutrition lives elsewhere.
Sixteen
$99 once, or $19.99 a monthGood: Daily strain from heart rate zones and lifted load, targets set by recovery, a strength log with progression, GPS activities, and movement that earns screen time.
The catch: iPhone only. Not a replacement for Garmin's training analysis.
How to judge any of them
Effort, not just distance
A tracker that scores time in heart rate zones treats a hard hour and an easy hour differently.
Does lifting count?
Heart rate under-reads strength work. Look for an app that adds muscular load from your sets.
Who sets tomorrow's target?
The best trackers size the day from how you recovered, not from a fixed goal.
Questions people ask
Are there any free fitness trackers?
Apple Health, Garmin Connect and Google Fit are free with their hardware. What costs money is either the wearable or the software that scores it. Sixteen is the second kind: $99 once, no wearable membership.
Can I use a WHOOP Band without a subscription?
Not with WHOOP's app. The strap keeps recording, and Sixteen reads a WHOOP 4.0 directly over Bluetooth with no membership, so a lapsed strap keeps scoring sleep, recovery and strain.
Do I need a subscription for a fitness tracker?
No. Apple Watch and Garmin watches work without one. Subscriptions appear when you want strain, readiness or coaching. Sixteen provides those for a one time price.
Does Sixteen track runs with GPS?
Yes. Runs, walks and rides get a GPS map, laps, pace and heart rate. Workouts recorded on Apple Watch flow in too.
SixteenPay once. Keep your data. Earn your scroll.
Sixteen is $99 once for lifetime access, or $19.99 a month. Connect the wearable you already own. No hardware to buy, no membership that expires.
iPhone (iOS 17 or later). Prices in USD.