Best budget fitness tracker 2024: Hit your fitness goals without breaking the bank

You do not need to spend hundreds of dollars on a shiny new smartwatch to reap the benefits of fitness tracking — you can monitor your stats just as effectively with the best budget fitness trackers. These smart wearables boast great performance, a wealth of smart features and stylish design, yet they cost far less than some of the top-shelf models. 

True, the best budget fitness trackers may not offer the high-octane performance and military-grade durability typical of best Garmin watches, but they still feature most of the key metrics like heart rate, body composition, sleep tracking and step count. When used consistently, even the most affordable wearables can help you make positive changes to your lifestyle. 

However, picking the right model can be a difficult task, even for the most data-driven consumers. The market is flooded with low-cost fitness trackers of dubious quality, and frustrated users often abandon them not long after the purchase. But that is where we step in. 

To help you make the best choice possible, we have tried and tested countless budget fitness trackers on the market. We put each and every model through its paces, taking note of their battery life, design, features, ease of use, and many other aspects. Here's our ultimate roundup of the fitness trackers that won't break the bank.

But if you are looking for wearables with a more premium feel, check our general guide to the best fitness trackers. And if you are a keen runner, our guide to the best running watches can offer you some great advice.

The quick list

• Back to the top ⤴

The best budget fitness trackers we recommend in 2024

The best budget fitness tracker overall

Image 1 of 4

The Fitbit Inspire 3 takes the top spot thanks to its compact design, excellent battery life and a multitude of tracking features. If you are looking for excellent value for money, this colorful band should land on your radar.  

With a big color AMOLED screen, the Inspire 3 can track steps, workouts, heart rate and sleep. It can also tell you how much time you spend in each heart rate zone, personalized to your age and fitness level. Similar to the Apple Watch’s Activity app, it has a metric called Active Zone Minutes that encourages you to reach daily movement goals. During our Fitbit Inspire 3 review, we enjoyed how it tracks passively in the background giving you useful insights into your health and fitness habits.

As with so many of Fitbit’s products, it is the battery life – 10 days – that is most impressive on the Inspire 3. While this will depend on usage, and go down significantly if you use the always-on display mode, it is still great to not have to charge the tracker too often.

The Inspire 3 does not have the same quick-release buttons as the Charge 5, so swapping bands is a little bit fiddly. It is also lacking GPS but you can use your phone to track routes and distances on hikes and runs. Comes with six months free Fitbit Premium membership so you can enjoy extra features and content.

• Read our full Fitbit Inspire 3 review

• Back to the top ⤴

Best budget fitness tracker for sports activities

Image 1 of 3

The Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 7 is proof that you do not have to spend a fortune on health and fitness tracking, nor do you have to sacrifice fancy features either. Its design makes it nice to look at, too. During our Xiaomi Smart Band 7 fitness tracker review, we were impressed by the sheer number of features on this Fitbit lookalike. For example, you can use it to track your menstrual cycle - a feature previously reserved for some of the more premium players, such as the Apple Watch. However, we also found that its screen can become unresponsive, especially when wet or sweaty.

The band tracks blood oxygen, sleep and stress – impressive for a product at this low price – and we love the ‘relax reminders’ that prompt us to do a guided breathing meditation when stress levels reach above a certain number. If you are a swimmer, it is water resistant up to 50 meters, although we found the screen hard to use during and post-swim.

The Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 7 has an impressive battery life and is a comprehensive health and fitness tracker at a budget-friendly price. It has a ludicrous number of activity tracking options too, with over 110 different sports modes. 

If you are a budget-conscious fitness fanatic and you are willing to compromise on accuracy and screen design, the Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 7 will be right up your street.

• Read our full Xiaomi Mi Smart Band 7 review

• Back to the top ⤴

Best budget fitness tracker for health tracking

Image 1 of 4

If you are the kind of person who loves a huge amount of data, and do not mind the Vivosmart 5’s utilitarian design, then this could be the budget fitness tracker for you. Lightweight, easy to use and with heart rate and SpO2 sensors, it has a crisp OLED screen, but it is still monochrome rather than color.

You can look at your stats free of charge in the brilliant Garmin Connect app, where there are also guided workouts to try, plus running and cycling training programs. During our Garmin Vivosmart 5 review, we were particularly impressed by the automatic sleep tracker. Every morning you get a mini sleep report including a ‘sleep score’ to help you understand how much rest you are getting. But note, it does not track naps – so if you like a snooze this could mess up your nightly sleep data.

Garmin says the watch has a seven-day battery life – but most people report five days when they have been using it for regular workout tracking. 

The Vivosmart 5 does not have an inbuilt GPS, so you will need a Bluetooth connection to your phone to track your route and pace when training outside. It has an on-board accelerator that can gauge distance and pace, but we would only use this as a rough estimate. This watch is all about the stats, so if you are a numbers nerd you will love it.

• Read our full Garmin Vivosmart 5 review

• Back to the top ⤴

Best budget fitness tracker for smartwatch credentials

Image 1 of 3

Like all the best fitness trackers, The Amazfit Bip 3 Pro is lightweight, comfortable to wear (even during sleep) and has a simplistic design that is easy to use. The sleep tracker on this band comes with lots of actionable tools, although the accuracy does vary.

During our Amazfit Bip 3 Pro review, we liked that it doubled as a smartwatch, packing in tools like ‘find my phone’ and displaying notifications on its easy-to-read screen. While it does not have in-built music storage, it does allow you to navigate your tunes from your wrist (when your phone is connected) and you can control your camera, although we are not sure how useful that would be.

Women can use the watch to track their cycles and monitor fertility, which is a nice touch, and its in-depth sleep tracking actually tells you how well you are managing the different stages of sleep (light, deep and REM.) 

If you want absolute accuracy for distance tracking, you will need to try one of the best running watches — but we think most people will be impressed with the in-built GPS on this model. All in all, it is a good package for this price. 

• Read our full Amazfit Bip 3 Pro review

• Back to the top ⤴

Best budget fitness tracker for sleep tracking

Image 1 of 3

Drum roll please, in our opinion this is the best Fitbit you can buy right now, with options for stress and sleep tracking, mindfulness sessions and health and fitness data you did not even know you needed. At nearly $150, it is one of the most expensive models in this guide, but this neat wearable offers excellent value for money — and let us explain why.

The Fitbit Charge 5 feels like the Swiss Army Knife of fitness trackers, with in-built GPS, heart rate and step monitoring, as well as an ECG app and new electrodermal activity (EDA) tracker. This will allow you to check for atrial fibrillation (an irregular heartbeat) while the EDA test looks at sweat secretion — a marker of stress. Once you have worked out your stress levels, you can help reduce them with the library of mindfulness sessions.

During our Fitbit Charge 5 review, we loved how easy it was to read, even in sunlight, which is a good thing as there are no physical buttons. Sadly there is no option for music playback and it is quite reliant on its accompanying app if you want to get the most out of it, but other than that we struggle to fault this extremely impressive and affordable wearable. As we mentioned before, the Charge 5 is slightly more pricey than the other options in this list, but also has a wider range of features.

• Read our full Fitbit Charge 5 review

• Back to the top ⤴

How we test the best budget fitness trackers

We test the models in this guide by using them to track workout sessions, sleep and daily activity. We then compare this data to high-end, accurate models to see how well these cheaper products match up. Once we've spent two weeks with the models, we evaluate them on design, performance, features and value for money and give them an overall score.

FAQs

• Back to the top ⤴