Wearable Fitness: The Best Budget Fitness Trackers of 2023

Maintaining healthy habits and fitness routines can be challenging – but it doesn’t have to be with the help of a fitness tracker. These devices are often worn on your wrist, designed to measure key physical metrics, like heart rate, step count and calories burned. The purpose of tracking these metrics is to help you, the user, be more informed about your behaviors and health habits to ultimately help you reach your fitness goals. The best budget fitness trackers help you access this valuable information, without spending an arm and a leg.

Each smartwatch will offer different insights and functionalities, with some geared towards cardiovascular activities like running and biking, and others designed to measure overall health and wellness. Ready to become the best version of yourself that you can be? Below are our experts’ top picks for the best budget fitness trackers available right now.

Each product we feature has been independently selected and reviewed by the Mattress Advisor editorial team. If you make a purchase using the links included, we may earn a commission.

Our Picks for the Best Budget Fitness Tracker:

Best Cheap Fitness Tracker Overall – Garmin vívosmart 4 

Best Cheap Fitness Tracker for all Activities – Fitbit Inspire 2

Best Fitness Tracker Under $50 – Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6

Best Cheap Fitness Tracker with GPS – Huawei Band 6 Pro

Best Fitness Tracker with Alexa – Amazfit Band 5

Best Subscription Budget Fitness Tracker – Amazon Halo Band

If you are looking to advance your knowledge of your fitness and sleep health, the Garmin vívosmart 4 may be exactly what you need. This sleek, advanced piece of technology is considered the best fitness tracker because it is much more than the average watch. This device allows users to monitor heart rate, assess blood-oxygen levels, and track sleep cycles and stress levels. An added perk is its reduced cost – its starting price of $87.99 is on the more affordable end of the spectrum for a fitness watch of its caliber. 

The Garmin vívosmart 4  has a sleek look, slim fit and easy-to-see screen with Bluetooth and phone syncing capabilities. This tracker synthesizes the data it has found on your heart rate, stress levels and sleep quality and analyzes your body’s energy levels to help you to optimize your daily activity. With such a high-tech piece of technology on your wrist, you can stay informed about your body’s physical status at any moment of the day or night.

If you’re looking for a do-it-all tracker that syncs with over 20 different activities, the Fitbit Inspire 2 is a prime candidate. From swimming, yoga, soccer and cycling the Fitbit Inspire 2 tracks all your exercise to keep you motivated and active. The Inspire 2 monitors your daily heart rate, calories burned and distance traveled so you can constantly be informed about your fitness progress. It also comes with capabilities to track menstrual cycle, stress levels and sleep quality to help you keep an eye on your overall health and wellness. Each day, your Fitbit Inspire 2 will show you a “readiness score” which reflects your energy levels and determines if your body needs activity or rest at that given moment. 

The Inspire 2 comes with one year of Fitbit premium membership, so you will have access to even more resources, health data and feedback customized to your needs. The watch’s smartphone compatibility connects the device to your phone and receives calls, messages, reminders and updates right to your wrist. Another helpful perk is that you will never have to worry about losing this gadget –– its built-in Tile-technology helps make your watch findable in a matter of minutes.

Looking for a low cost activity tracker with high-tech capabilities? We’ve found just the one for you. The Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6 contains a lot of the same features as higher-cost watches, but at a fraction of the price – it’s shockingly only $49.99! With 30 fitness modes available to you at the touch of a button, it is almost as if a personal trainer lives on your wrist. From boxing and basketball to core training and pilates, this watch will keep you focused on your fitness goals every single day. 

The Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 6’s technology tracks your heart rate, blood-oxygen saturation, sleep breathing quality, stress levels, and female health such as ovulation and menstrual cycles. It also provides breathing exercises to lower stress and deescalate heart rate after a workout. Its “personal activity intelligence” feature analyzes all of your health data (height, weight, heart rate, activity levels) and provides tips on how to improve your overall health and wellbeing. The Xiaomi Mi Band also possesses smartphone compatibility with call and text notifications, calendar alerts, reminders, and weather forecasting.

If you’re looking for an affordable watch with the features of a more expensive device, the HUAWEI Band 6 Pro can step up to the plate. This fitness band combines health tacking with convenient navigational abilities, which can be a rare feature for a budget fitness device to have. This sleek, simple watch has easy-to-use, reliable interface and high-tech metrics for monitoring your fitness. Its GPS system alone sets it apart from other watches, as it is rather unusual to find a device as inexpensive as this one with its own internal GPS. Other great features include real-time heart rate tracking, step and calorie count, blood oxygen tracking, sleep quality measuring and menstrual cycle mapping. It also offers stress-relieving suggestions when it notices that you may be experiencing anxiety or distress. 

With its 96 exercise modes to choose from, this device can become a replacement for your personal trainer, as it will continually help to push you out of your comfort zone to reach your fitness potential. The HUAWEI Band 6 Pro acts as an extension of your mobile phone by sending you text messaging and call notifications, calendar reminders, and weather updates. You can even take a photo with your watch and select your music of choice with one click of a button.

We could all use a personal assistant, and the Amazfit Band 5 packs in features like Alexa compatibility and fitness programming to give you just that. Its heart rate sensor, blood oxygen monitoring, stress-relieving exercises and sleep care assist features all help you reach the next level of your health. But instead of paying top-dollar for a PA or personal trainer, this device comes in under $50. The Band 5 keeps you organized with its calendar updates, reminders, weather alerts, email, text and call notifications all synced right to your smartphone. With a 15–25 day battery life, this wearable is a convenient and reliable tracker to have on hand. The Amazfit Band 5 comes in three trendy colors (black, orange and olive green) with a customizable watch face.  

As for its fitness tracking, its 11 different workout modes include rowing, cycling, running and swimming, providing guidance and support along the way. The band comes with swim tracking technology and can be used in water up to 5 ATM. It will also track your heart rate changes, SPO2 levels, distance covered, and calories burned to enlighten you about your body’s energy levels. Since you have more goals aside from working out, the Band 5 builds in menstrual cycle tracking, sleep quality monitoring and de-stressing exercises to help you maintain whole-body wellness.

Personal training apps and class memberships are helpful, but can get expensive. The Amazon Halo Band not only tracks fitness metrics, but offers a subscription to countless programs and classes. This unique screenless device comes with a Halo subscription to track your progress, which is free for the first 6 months and then is $3.99 each month after that. While it is a pricier commitment, the Halo subscription offers extensive and diverse fitness metrics and data. It includes on-demand instructional videos from Orange Theory, Adaptiv, SWEAT and meditation classes from Headspace. The Amazon Halo Band allows you to personalize your fitness experience further with the personalized movement program, which will lend you tailored insights to your specific workout habits, patterns and needs. Users can easily track their heart rate, blood oxygen levels, body composition, sleep quality, activity and energy levels, stress levels and nutrition. It even has a unique ability to analyze your tone of voice to lend insight into how you speak to those around you. 

The Halo subscription offers privacy protection of your personal health data and the ability to connect Alexa to your device. While it is one of our costlier options on the list, the Amazon Halo Band still only rings up under $100.

Now that you’ve read about our top picks for inexpensive fitness trackers, we want to help you narrow down your selection further to find the best choice for you. There are a lot of factors to think about when it comes to purchasing a new piece of technology, and it may not just be accessing information like heart rate and steps taken in a day. Fitness trackers often function outside the realm of physical health, acting as personal assistants or health coaches while offering insight into your sleep quality, stress levels, nutrition habits and menstrual cycle. Many also sync to your smartphone and help keep you organized by sending you important notifications and reminders throughout the day.

Remember that there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to fitness trackers, as each will offer different features, programming and styles to consider.

Fitness Goals

Ask yourself: Which device is going to help me achieve my fitness goals the best? The answer to this question is going to be different for everyone. Maybe one of your goals is to try new workouts to push your body and mind rather than sticking to your same routine. In this case, the HUAWEI Band 6 Pro or the Fitbit Inspire 2 could be your best options, as they both accommodate dozens of workout styles. Alternatively, one of your goals may center around swimming, so  look into a device that performs efficiently in the water. All the devices in this guide are designed to give you the tools to reach your goals.

Budget

While all of our devices on this list are budget-friendly, there are some that are more affordable than others. It’s up to you to decide how important price is in your purchasing decision. Narrowing down which features are absolutely necessary is a great starting point, as you can eliminate options based on the criteria you’ve selected. Usually the more tech features or programming involved, the price also increases –– but the good news is, all of the budget trackers have an affordable price tag. 

Built-in Features

One of the most important factors to consider when purchasing a new piece of technology is the device’s built-in features. Our selected fitness trackers all function as heart rate monitors, sleep trackers, are smartphone compatible and water resistant up to a certain pressure or meter limit. But not all of them offer GPS, blood oxygen monitoring capability, menstrual cycle tracking features or nutrition guidance. Determining which elements you care about the most is an important part of the purchasing journey and should stay top of mind as you browse different fitness trackers.