15 Best Walking Apps for Weight Loss in 2023

Walking daily comes with many benefits, including helping with weight management, improving cardiovascular fitness, and strengthening muscles and bones. It is also good for all fitness levels and can get you moving again after a long period of inactivity.

If you’ve been thinking about walking to lose weight, you might want to get a walking app that can record your walking routes, track distance, and calculate how many calories each walk has burned.

In this article, we’re going to look at the best walking apps, how they work, how they benefit you, and any drawbacks they might have.

Best Walking Apps for Weight Loss at a Glance

• Best overall: Walking.Diet
• Best for motivation: Nike Run Club
• Best for recording stats: Strava
• Best for mapping routes: MapMyWalk
• Best for quick workouts: Runkeeper
• Best for weight loss: BetterMe
• Best for long walks and hikes: Walkmeter
• Best for all abilities: Leap Fitness Walking App
• Best for elderly users: Apple Health
• Best for fundraising: Charity Miles
• Best for hikers: Footpath
• Best for counting steps: Pacer
• Best for celebrating walking: Go Jauntly
• Best for trails off the beaten path: AllTrails
• Best for tracking daily activity: Fitbit Walking Tracker

15 Best Walking Apps for Weight Loss: Our Detailed List

Here’s our detailed list of the best walking apps that will help you choose an option that meets your unique weight loss needs and goals.

#1 Best overall: Walking.Diet

Walking.Diet is a health and fitness program developed by professional coaches. It uses research-backed data to create an individual workout plan for each user. Users simply need to take a short quiz, and a plan will be created suited to their needs, fitness levels, and schedule.

Walking.Diet is a subscription service that includes other features, like a recipe book designed to support weight management and a healthy lifestyle, educational guides to help you understand the daily walking benefits, and even a private consultation.

Walking.Diet is suitable for everyone, including those with chronic illnesses, those with no experience of walking, and those who are seasoned walkers.

Walking.Diet is our best overall walking app as it creates individualized walking workouts for each user and offers a number of other features that may not be found on other apps for walking.

Learn more: Walking.Diet review

#2 Best for motivation: Nike Run Club

The Nike Run Club app is designed to offer guided sessions as you take your own walking routes. There are a number of different settings, including Quick Run, Guided Run, and Coached Run, which can be switched between.

The Coached Run setting allows for more dedicated walkers trying to build good habits, whereas the Guided Run can include mindful sessions, supporting better mental health. If you wish, Nike Run Club offers a personalized plan and is an audio-based walking app. It integrates with other Nike apps as well as music apps, like Spotify.

With many famous voices and lots of variety in the audio you listen to while using the app, this is by far the best app for motivation. If you find it difficult to get up and walk each day, you should try this app.

#3 Best for recording stats: Strava

Strava is an incredibly well-known running app and can be used as a walking app too. It is a fantastic app if you want to record routes, stats, and calories burned and thoroughly track your progress.

Statistics it will record include your distance walked, average pace, elevation gain, how many calories burned per session, heart rate, and much more. It will also integrate with fitness watches, like the Apple Watch or Fitbit app.

We’ve dubbed this the best walking app for recording your stats because it’s got a comprehensive list of statistics available per walk. You can also connect with friends, compare stats, and even see their routes, too.

#4 Best for mapping routes: MapMyWalk

As the names suggest, MapMyWalk is an app that records your route and workout data and works out how many calories are burned per session. It offers a free version, but with the paid option, you will get extra stats, including heart rate tracking.

Like many walking apps, MapMyWalk also has other exercise settings, like yoga, gym workout, and treadmill run. This means it can be used in a variety of settings. The app encourages social interaction with an Instagram-style feed that lets you see others’ workout data and walking routes.

This app is the best for mapping your walking routes, with a Google Maps-style map feature.

#5 Best for quick workouts: Runkeeper

Runkeeper is another well-known running app that can be used effectively as a way to record your walks. The free version offers a space to record basic stats, though, with some in-app purchases, you can record much more detailed metrics.

Runkeeper can be used to record a range of workout types, but the QuickRun feature is a speedy way to record without the hassle of finding your workout style. The app also provides 5-minute audio stats to keep you updated on how your run is going.

The app is the best walking app for a hands-free experience. The QuickRun feature allows you to start and stop without any hassle, and the audio updates keep you up to date with your stats without needing to look at your phone. If you just want to put your phone away and walk, this is the one for you.

#6 Best for weight loss: BetterMe

BetterMe is a weight loss program designed to promote behavioral changes for better weight management. It offers meal plans, recipes, motivation, education, and a long list of workout plans.

The BetterMe app has a space to track your walks and is designed for all fitness levels, ages, and abilities. It has been curated by a health coach and provides daily motivation for weight loss.

The BetterMe app focuses on a holistic approach to weight loss and, as such, is our best app recommendation if walking for weight loss is your ultimate goal.

Learn more: BetterMe Review

#7 Best for long walks and hikes: Walkmeter

Walkmeter is an expertly designed app that tracks and records data from walks and hikes. It offers some training plans and is fantastic for hands-free use. There is a free option with an elite version on subscription.

The app offers in-depth stats analysis, helping you track your progress. This is a great app for serious walkers and hikers.

#8 Best for all abilities: Leap Fitness Walking App

Leap Fitness Walking App is one of the best walking apps for different ability levels. It offers training plans for interval walking and is designed to help you lose weight and burn more fat.

This app lets you record stats, see your progress, and set exercise goals. We’ve recommended it as the best app for all fitness levels due to the different training levels it offers.

#9 Best for elderly users: Apple Health

The Apple Health app records basic stats with regard to your walking gait, balance, strength, and pace. It is designed to help you monitor your risk of a fall and offers emergency contact with people’s loved ones if your walking becomes unsteady.

This app is a great addition to elderly walkers’ phones as it can increase their safety while walking for fitness. It will also give their loved ones peace of mind.

#10 Best for fundraising: Charity Miles

The Charity Miles app turns your daily walk into a fundraising tool. It tracks and records your walks, and for every mile you reach, money is donated to a charity of your choice, and you can even get sponsored by big companies.

#11 Best for hikers: Footpath

Footpath Route Planner is an app designed to help you effectively plan your route. While Google Maps may give you navigation, this app allows you to set your own route, gives you data on the distance and elevation, and offers audio navigation en route.

This app is a great choice for hikers and walkers covering long distances and can help you find the best route possible for your walk.

#12 Best for counting steps: Pacer

Pacer is essentially a step-counting app for smartphones. It tracks steps and activities all day long and can run in the background of your phone. It is free and easy to use. It also has the capability to track other metrics, like weight loss, BMI, and heart rate.

This simple app is the best choice if you’re looking to count your steps each day and not much else. Its location features don’t feel developed enough for much more than this, but it will let you know when you’ve hit your 10,000-step goal each day.

#13 Best for celebrating walking: Go Jauntly

Go Jauntly is one of the few walking apps we have reviewed that offers users routes of its own. You can pick a frequently trodden route or a lesser-known route and follow along with this free app. The app encourages you to take photographs along the way and upload them and celebrates the joys of walking.

This is one of the best walking apps for simply celebrating walking. The free open street maps the app provides take you on scenic adventures and encourage you to actually enjoy your exercise.

#14 Best for trails off the beaten path: AllTrails

AllTrails is a great app choice for hikers. It allows you to set up and follow your trail all on the app. It allows you to track your route using your phone’s GPS and even encourages you to share photographs of your trail.

This is a good choice for hikers who like to get off the beaten track and out into nature.

#15 Best for tracking daily activity: Fitbit Walking Tracker

Though a little different from other walking apps, the Fitbit app allows you to track your routes, distance, and steps even when you don’t have your phone with you. It works with the Fitbit fitness watch to track your daily distance and step count.

The Fitbit app is a great choice if you’re looking to gather data about your daily activity. It allows you to see steps done, distance traveled, floors climbed, and much more.

Comparison Table

How to Choose the Best Walking App

When it comes to choosing the best walking apps for your daily exercise, there are a few things you should consider. These include the quality of the app, its effectiveness, the brand’s reputation, and the price.

Quality

The best walking apps available will be of good quality, meaning they will offer comprehensive training plans, individualized content, and educational articles to help improve your workout. While many options offer some of these features, not all of them can offer them all.

Price

While we all want a free app, some free walking apps aren’t good enough to help you reach your fitness goals. For this reason, it may be necessary to pay a subscription fee for your walking apps.

When choosing your app, you need to evaluate whether the features you get are worth the price it is charging. If the app only offers a few ordnance survey maps and a step counter, it’s not worth as much as one that provides you with a personalized training plan, legendary global routes, and daily metrics.

Brand reputation

Well-reputed brands are more likely to produce effective, quality apps, and so brand reputation is important when choosing an app. You can look for your favorite fitness brands’ apps on Google Play or the App Store. 

Effectiveness

Checking out the user reviews for the app you have chosen is a great way to find out how effective the app is. Look out for people who have successfully progressed in their fitness goals or lost weight using the app to find the most effective apps for walking.

Conclusion

While all of these 15 walking apps are great, and each offers some unique features, Walking.Diet is our top choice when it comes to walking apps for weight loss. It is an effective and comprehensive app that offers quality, personalized training plans to all users.

If you’re also interested in learning about other weight loss options, make sure to check out our reviews of some of the best weight loss apps and running apps.