The Best Online Workout Programs to Give Your Routine the Virtual Kick it Needs

For better or for worse, the rise in availability of online workout programs has made it harder than ever to avoid getting into shape. And like the abundant content streaming services you enjoy while indulging in less vigorous activities, there’s an endless array of online workout services to choose from. Finding the best online workout program that’ll fit you and your fitness goals is also the best way to ensure you’ll commit to the program fully. We’ve rounded up nine excellent online workout programs that cover a range of exercise types, motivation styles, and budgets. Find the system that’ll best help you focus on health, gain muscle, or drop pounds. 

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• Best Overall Online Workout Program – Future
• Best Online Streaming Workout Program – Obé Fitness
• Best Online Workout Program for Variety – FIIT
• Best Online Yoga Program – Alo Moves
• Best At Home Workout Program – Peloton Digital
• Best Free Online Workout Program – Nike Training Club
• Best Online Pilates Program – Glo
• Best Online Dance Program – Sculpt Society
• Best Online HIIT Workout Program – Daily Burn

Working Out with Future

Who doesn’t love the glow that comes from receiving personal attention? With the personal training app Future you receive the personal attention of a trainer for a fraction of the cost of an in-person trainer. Your Future coach, who is carefully curated based on what you’re seeking in a fitness program and coach, works with you on an on-going basis, dropping personalized workouts into the app each week. All the while, they’ll be staying in touch via in-app messaging to keep you accountable, tweak workout intensities as needed, and work around the equipment you have available.

Why We Love It

From Tinder to Rover, many apps ultimately exist to find and connect you with a real person. Unlike those apps though, the personal trainer you connect with via the Future app won’t be providing their services IRL. And that’s good news, considering the cost of one personal training session is close to a month of Future workouts. There’s hardly another way to get that level of accountability and coaching from a personal trainer without shelling out the equivalent of a six-figure salary to retain an in-person, on-call fitness guru.

Working Out with Obé Fitness

The obé (pronounced like “obey”) fitness app has a distinctly soft and feminine vibe, as evidenced by the abundance of bright pastels and smiling women on its website. But don’t let that fool you into thinking obé isn’t chock full of über hardcore workouts suitable for fitness enthusiasts of all genders. The app’s on-demand workout library and steady stream of live exercise classes offer more than enough intensity for any fitness routine. 

Why We Love It

There’s tons of range within obé’s catalog. You can get your heart rate up with a HIIT (high-intensity interval training) class; build strength with dumbbells and pilates; relax with restorative yoga; and recover with a guided foam roll. Each type of workout class is provided on the same platform. Plus, if you enjoy the supportive feel of a community, obé fitness has a thriving Facebook page where fellow members offer lots of tips and support. The platform also curates training regimes, for those who like bursts of bootcamp-style commitment. 

Working Out with FIIT

You might feel overwhelmed when you initially log into the FIIT app, given the sheer volume of content available, but a good place to start is with one of the curated training regimes — a fan favorite perk among FIIT users. You can also ask the FIIT Facebook group for help where to start. The app has any and all levels of difficulty, exercise types (with or without equipment) and duration. Some classes even feature two trainers, so you can follow on-the-spot modified moves if you’re battling injury or fatigue.  The app’s gamified “FIIT score” also adds some spicy competition to live classes.

Why We Love It

One thing you might notice first about FIIT is the dearth of American accents. The UK-based FIIT is instead populated with jolly, British-accent-having instructors, which is a fun novelty. And novelty is the name of the game with FIIT: It’s hard to overstate the quantity and variety of workouts the app provides. And all that variety in your workouts are key to keeping your mind — and muscle fibers — engaged, regardless of your fitness level starting out. You can also monitor your metrics while your workout in the app if you have an Apple Watch or other fitness tracker.

Working Out with Alo Moves

Alo Moves comes from the popular clothing brand Alo Yoga, which makes a cameo of sorts periodically within other workout apps — you’ll spot lots of instructors sporting the trendy athleisure brand. And like the Alo Yoga clothes line, the Alo Moves app has a clear and defined focus on yoga classes, though users can also access HIIT cardio workouts, barre, and pilates classes with their subscription, too.

Why We Love It

Alo Moves has a sleek, soothing production value to its user-friendly app. When you boot up the app, you can take a survey in order to quickly and seamlessly get started and find workouts that you’ll enjoy and match your skill level and goals. And while it’s great when an app has a variety of workouts, and Alo Moves gives you plenty of options to get a cardio burn, you get a true sense that its focus on yoga meant the best of the best when it came time to recruit yogis to guide you.

Working Out with Peloton Digital

Peloton tends to be synonymous with its flagship product, the Peloton bike. However, you may not realize that for $12.99 a month — less than what bike users pay to sync their wheels with an “All-Access” $44 a month membership — users can gain access a vast catalog of strength, cardio and recovery workouts. You can also center yourself with mindfulness classes, or enroll in a bootcamp over the course of several days or weeks. Watch yourself live on the leaderboard during classes, or opt in to your sweat session at a different time that’s convenient for you.

Why We Love It

The Peloton app offers so many options to get a full body burn, often without equipment required. If you do need equipment though, they’ll let you know before you hit “play” within the app. Plus, if you do have a bike (pro tip: it doesn’t have to be a Peloton), that opens the door to a whole other swarm of options for live classes to follow. Nearly 400,000 Peloton digital devotees within the “#HardCORE On the Floor” Facebook group can offer up excellent tips and support through your fitness journey. Peloton keeps their content creative and fresh and with themed classes, celebrity cameos, and excellent playlists. If you have a specific goal in mind, too, like running a marathon, Peloton curates guided boot camps to help reach any aspirational fitness objectives you may have. 

Working Out with Nike Training Club

The Nike Training Club, often shortened to “NTC” by its users, formerly had a premium version that required users to pay.  Those days are gone and users now get access to a wholly free app, offering full body workouts via video- and voice-guided narration, or high-energy, trainer-led workouts. The app interface also provides access to lots of other wellness content, like podcasts and articles about mental health, nutrition and recovery.

Why We Love It

Did we mention already that Nike Training Club is free? Need we say more? Likely not, but we will nonetheless. You’ll never be bored with the workouts on the app, since fresh content is added weekly, and there’s lots of fun collaborations, like Megan Thee Stallion’s six-part “Hottie Bootcamp.” Browsing through the app’s “Expert Tips” section, you can indulge a holistic approach to wellness, with advice on nutrition, motivation and mindfulness, among other things.

Working Out with Glo

Although pilates doesn’t quite take the forefront (that would be yoga) with Glo, the app still places a weighty emphasis on its pilates content. And as any true pilates enthusiast knows, yoga and pilates are not, in fact, interchangeable. All levels and length of pilates class are available. Plus, if you want to improve both your core and your overall wellness, there’s also supplementary materials in the form of lectures and courses provided in the app’s “Education section.” There’s less cardio content at your disposal, but still plenty banked in Glo’s library if you want to work up a sweat on the same platform. 

Why We Love It

Users (it’s us, we’re users) love that the app has a search feature that allows users to search for a class based on something hyper-specific, like a music style, props needed, or the body part you want to work. Live classes, which are later added to the library of classes, add a sense of community to connect and motivate users. Pilates classes tend to be one of the pricier workout class types, so you can really save money by paying the equivalent of one in-person class, for a full month of digital workouts on demand.

Working Out with Sculpt Society

Led by the magnetic celebrity trainer Megan Roup, Sculpt Society is all about joyful movement. There are workouts for a myriad of needs, from those who are expecting (Roup had a baby herself in 2021) to those who are recovering from an injury. The classes are geared to be accessible, fun and empowering. In addition to the app’s dance-cardio emphasis, there are strength-building workouts requiring minimal equipment — usually light hand weights (think: Bala Bangles) and resistance bands. Subscribers can also tap into the app’s 10-week, full-body workout program.

Why We Love It

Working out can get a bad rep for being tedious and, let’s face it, not very fun. Sculpt Society aims to change that narrative, giving users fun and upbeat classes that are designed to energize and encourage you and make exercising more pleasant. And dance cardio is truly a great way to up your heart rate without even noticing that you’re breaking a sweat. Plus, unlike similarly oriented dance cardio apps, users said The Sculpt Society is much more beginner friendly. 

Working Out with Daily Burn

Daily Burn will get you started in the app based on your primary fitness goal (whether that’s to lose weight, build muscle, get toned or reduce stress), fitness level, and the types of exercise that spark joy for you. The clear focus of Daily Burn is primarily on HIIT classes, which come in a diverse array of styles and intensity levels, with a smorgasbord of on-demand classes that live stream every day. The library of on-demand HIIT workouts come in all sizes, so whether you have an hour or 10-minutes, you can squeeze something in. 

Why We Love It

Daily Burn will track your metrics, like calories burned and time spent working out, within the app for quick reference, which is a nice accountability tool and helps users track their progress. You get both quantity and quality of HIIT with daily burn, including the Daily Burn 360, full body class requiring no equipment that’s hosted live every morning. If you aren’t available (or alert enough) for the morning session though, it’s then added to the vast catalog of 2,500+ workouts. Subscribers can also tap into community support on the Daily Burn Facebook group. 

Are you looking for an app that will help you introduce gentle consistency to your workout routine at an affordable price? Or an effective kickstart for that half marathon training? There’s no right or wrong answer of course, but you should formulate some sort of response for yourself before hitting start on an online workout program. Fortunately for us commitment-phobes, the vast majority of online workout programs kick off with a free trial. That way, if the program instructor’s peppy attitude irks you, the music playlists aren’t your vibe or you’re too short on space for the moves, you can back out before your card is charged. With the amount of variety and instructor personalities nestled within each app though, you’re likely to find what works for you, as long as you  have a basic grasp of the workout types offered by the app.

Workout Types: If we were forced to put workout types on a binary, we’d say there’s strength building and cardio. Most apps offer some semblance of both, so you won’t have to sacrifice one for the other. However, how apps furnish their strength and cardio content will vary hugely. HIIT is a hugely popular way to get in bursts of cardio in 15 to 30 minute blocks, often not requiring much space (although apartment dwellers may annoy their downstairs neighbor) or equipment at home, whereas strength training can get trickier with the [dumb]bells and whistles required. If you’re lacking workout equipment, be sure to find a program that won’t require a hefty investment in hardware in addition to its monthly subscription cost.

Subscription Type: You may be tempted to go for a yearlong subscription when shopping for an online workout program, since the monthly cost shakes out lower. Our suggestion however would be to test run the app on a month-to-month basis first, since the free trial may not be enough to determine the strength of your commitment. Most fitness class apps offer a choice between a monthly or yearly subscription. 

Price: The monthly price of online workout programs run the gamut from the equivalent of a drive-in movie ticket to orchestra seats at the opera. If you’re paying closer to $10 a month, you can still expect tons of quality content. However, you won’t get the personalized attention of a trainer that you get from an app like Future, which is the priciest workout plan at $149 a month. If joining Future means canceling your Equinox membership (which start at $168 a month), the price is easily justifiable.