What changes after 40, and why a general free app often misses it
This is the part that decides whether a free app is a bargain or a waste of your Tuesday evening, so it is worth being specific rather than gesturing at “hormones”.
Muscle and bone start going, and oestrogen is why. Reviewing the physiology, Maltais and colleagues, writing in the Journal of Musculoskeletal and Neuronal Interactions in 2009, put it plainly: menopause “is associated with a natural decline in estrogen, that increases visceral fat mass, decreases bone mass density, muscle mass, and strength”. Four things at once, none of which a generic HIIT playlist is designed to address.
The scale hides it. In the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation, Greendale and colleagues, writing in JCI Insight in 2019, found that at the start of the transition “rate of fat gain doubled, and lean mass declined”, while weight itself “climbed linearly during premenopause without acceleration”. You can be the same weight and a different body.
Resistance training is the countermeasure, and it works at this age. In a meta-analysis of sixteen studies, Ramos-Campo and colleagues, in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity in 2022, found circuit resistance training in middle-aged and older women produced “a moderate and large favorable effect on arm, trunk, and lower limb strength”, with increases in muscle mass. Sá and colleagues, in Menopause in 2023, reached the same conclusion in a systematic review specific to postmenopausal women.
And the stakes are not cosmetic. Pooling sixteen studies, Momma and colleagues, writing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2022, found muscle-strengthening activity was associated with “a 10-17% lower risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease (CVD), total cancer, diabetes and lung cancer”.
Bone is the one place free content most often falls short. In a meta-analysis of exercise and postmenopausal bone loss, Martyn-St James and Carroll, in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2009, found the protocols that worked combined loading with impact, while “other forms of impact exercise appear less effective”. Mohebbi and colleagues, in Osteoporosis International in 2023, reached similar conclusions in an updated review. Gentle mat content, which is what a great deal of free content is, has a real ceiling here.
Protein matters more than it used to, and no app supplies it. The PROT-AGE position paper, Bauer and colleagues in the Journal of the American Medical Directors Association in 2013, states that “older adults need more dietary protein than do younger adults”. Free workout libraries almost never mention it.
So the checklist for a free app is short and specific: does it load you enough to defend muscle, does it do anything for bone, does it demonstrate joint-friendly options rather than just mentioning them, and does it acknowledge that your body is not a 28-year-old’s? Most free content fails at least two. The eight below are the ones that fail fewest.
Does a free app actually get you moving? The honest evidence
This is where the research is more sobering than the app stores would like, and it is the single best argument for structure over sheer volume.
Reviewing nine trials with 1,740 participants, Romeo and colleagues, writing in the Journal of Medical Internet Research in 2019, found smartphone apps produced “a nonsignificant” increase in steps per day compared with controls. Simply having an app on your phone changes very little.
But the larger and more recent picture is better, and more instructive. Pooling twenty-eight studies with 7,454 participants, Laranjo and colleagues, in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2021, found “a small-to-moderate positive effect on physical activity measures… corresponding to 1850 steps per day”. Crucially, they reported that “interventions including text-messaging and personalisation features were significantly more effective”.
Personalisation. Not size of library. The apps that change behaviour are the ones that tell you what to do, and the free tier is precisely where that guidance tends to be thinnest.
Tested by Katy Cole, on why free stalls: Free sources can feel overwhelming when you are new and you need a structured programme. Decision fatigue is a big thing, and it happened to me even now: I once spent half an hour finding the right programme. That is not great if you are doing it a few times a week. Thirty minutes of scrolling is thirty minutes you could have spent training, and it is the reason people quietly stop.
That experience is exactly what the Laranjo finding describes. A free library with two thousand videos and no plan is not the same product as a free programme that opens on week three, day two. When you look at the list below, the ones near the top are the ones that decide for you.
How do the best free workout apps compare?
Eight programmes that are genuinely free or freemium, ranked on our menopause fit score, weighted 70%, blended with ease of use, weighted 30%. Menopause fit is built from twelve capabilities covering how well a programme serves a midlife body. Value for money is shown for information and is not part of the ranking, because everything here is already free. Overall is the weighted score across all nine criteria. All four scores update live from each programme’s own review.
| Rank | Programme | What it costs | Menopause fit 70% | Ease of use 30% | Value not ranked | Overall | Testing tier | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fabulous50s | Free on YouTube | 6.5/10 | 7/10 | 8/10 | 7.6/10 | Sample tested | Strength, balance and mobility actually made for an over-50 body |
| 2 | Alo Wellness Club | Free with an account | 5.7/10 | 8/10 | 10/10 | 7.7/10 | Fully tested | The biggest free library, strength through to yoga, with the best filtering |
| 3 | Yoga With Adriene | Free on YouTube | 5.6/10 | 8/10 | 8/10 | 6.8/10 | Sample tested | Joints, recovery and stress, and the least intimidating start anywhere |
| 4 | Fitness Blender | Free library | 5.8/10 | 5/10 | 9/10 | 7.2/10 | Sample tested | Real strength progression for nothing, if you forgive the interface |
| 5 | Nike Training Club | Free | 4.5/10 | 7/10 | 10/10 | 6.6/10 | Sample tested | A polished, properly free app with structured multi-week plans |
| 6 | Grow with Jo | Free on YouTube | 4.6/10 | 6/10 | 6/10 | 6.3/10 | Sample tested | Low-impact walking and standing workouts you can follow along to |
| 7 | Move With Nicole | Free on YouTube | 3.9/10 | 7/10 | 9/10 | 6.1/10 | Data profile | Calm mat Pilates, joint-kind and beautifully produced |
| 8 | FitOn | Free tier, Pro optional | 3.9/10 | 6.5/10 | 9.5/10 | 7.3/10 | Fully tested | The broadest genuinely free tier across the most workout styles |
Two things stand out reading down. The value column is nearly flat, because free is free, which is exactly why it is not the ranking. And the top of the list is not the biggest library: it is the one that decides for you.
Which free workout apps rank highest?
Fabulous50s: the only free library built for this body from the start
Strength, balance and mobility designed for an over-50 body, free on YouTube
Fabulous50s is Schellea Fowler’s library. She is a certified fitness instructor and personal trainer who also holds a Neuro Athletics Coach credential and specialises in exercise for older adults. It is low impact by design, with all-standing and chair options, and it programmes balance deliberately, which almost nothing else here does.
Balance is worth pausing on. It is trainable, it declines with age, and it is the capability that keeps you independent later. Most free fitness content ignores it completely.
Tested by Katy Cole: Fabulous50s definitely stands out for women in peri and menopause. I did the 30-minute Full Body Improved Strength session, and if you assume anything labelled “50s” will be too gentle for a woman in her late 30s or 40s, you would be wrong. I later used the app properly on the 14-day trial that comes with the annual plan, so this is a hands-on look rather than a full multi-week test.
The honest limitation: loading stays light with limited progressive overload, so pair it with heavier work if muscle is your priority. The menopause approach is education-led rather than clinician-led.
Cost: free on YouTube. The Vitality app is $14.99 a month with a 14-day trial.
Alo Wellness Club: the best free library there is
A large, high-production library covering strength through to yoga, free since late 2025
Alo Wellness Club costs nothing with a free Alo Access account, having previously been $12.99 a month. It scores a perfect ten for value on our scale and carries genuinely loaded strength work alongside deep yoga, Pilates and restorative content.
Tested by Katy Cole: As a free version, Alo Wellness especially stands out. I have personally tested it and it has an amazing amount of resources, from strength workouts all the way to yoga. The filtering is the best thing about it: you can go, in under a minute, from “I have twenty-five minutes, a kettlebell and a dodgy knee” to a list of classes that actually match. Dumbbells, a kettlebell, a resistance band and a mat covered almost everything I did.
Why the biggest free library is not first: it misses perimenopause and menopause programming entirely, and there is no progress tracking, no overload plan and no verifiable named clinician behind the health content. TV support is Apple only. If you want breadth and can supply your own structure, nothing free beats it. If you want the app to know what decade you are in, Fabulous50s does and this does not.
Cost: free with an Alo Access account.
Yoga With Adriene: the least intimidating start there is
The warmest free teaching on the internet, and genuinely useful for midlife joints
Yoga With Adriene is Adriene Mishler’s YouTube library, taught by a Yoga Alliance certified Hatha teacher. She is not a clinician. It ranks third on menopause fit because joints, recovery and stress are three of the things that get harder in this decade, and gentle yoga is genuinely good for all three.
Sampled by Katy Cole: I signed up for the one-week Find What Feels Good trial and practised across the app rather than running a full 30-day test. There is so much guidance that it is a great place to start, and I was positively surprised to find sessions on the pelvic floor too.
What it will not do: no strength or bone loading and no menopause programming. Given what Momma and colleagues found about muscle-strengthening and mortality, treat this as the recovery half of your week rather than the whole of it.
Cost: free on YouTube. The Find What Feels Good app is $12.99 a month with a 7-day trial.
Fitness Blender: real strength progression, for nothing
The most over-40-relevant free library here, in the least attractive interface
Fitness Blender was co-founded in 2010 by Kelli and Daniel Segars, Kelli a certified personal trainer. Our review credits it with real over-40 relevance, genuine strength progression and low-impact options, which is a combination almost nothing free manages.
Sampled by Katy Cole: I worked out with Fitness Blender years ago, so I was curious to see what had changed, and in some ways not much, except that the library is far bigger now with a massive variety. I did Total Body Strength with Dumbbells with Kelli and Total Body Compound Strength, and the filterable library is genuinely useful.
On menopause fit alone it would rank first on this page. It sits fourth purely because it scores lowest here for ease of use, and given what the app research says about personalisation driving adherence, that is a real cost rather than a cosmetic one.
Cost: a large permanent free library. FB Plus is around $8.99 a month.
Nike Training Club: properly free, properly built
A polished app with structured multi-week plans, at no cost and with no upsell
Nike Training Club is free, full stop, with no premium tier waiting behind the good content. There is no clinician involved and no menopause material, but the strength content is real and the plans are structured rather than a pile of classes.
Sampled by Katy Cole: I signed up, explored the whole free library and completed a workout rather than running a multi-week programme. I was positively surprised by how much real strength content is free, and I found a genuinely useful joint-strengthening workout.
The honest limitation: default loading is light and there is a self-structuring burden over 40. Nothing in it acknowledges midlife, so the joint and loading decisions are yours to make.
Cost: free.
Grow with Jo: walk-at-home workouts, and a menopause category
Low-impact follow-along cardio that is genuinely welcoming for a deconditioned start
Grow with Jo is Johanna Devries Da Silva, a certified personal trainer since 2013 specialising in low-impact work. The YouTube library is free, upbeat and easy on the joints, which makes it one of the better answers for restarting after a long gap.
Sampled by Katy Cole: I liked how easy it is to find workouts by time and stack your own week, and it carries more than I expected: a real 51-video Menopause and Beyond category, multi-week strength plans and a nutrition section. I explored the library and followed along rather than running a full multi-week plan.
Mind the app pricing: the YouTube content is free, but the Grow with Jo app is $39.99 a month, which is premium pricing despite the free-content association. The free library is the reason it is on this page.
The honest limitation: little real strength progression and no bone work, so it belongs alongside loaded training rather than instead of it.
Cost: free on YouTube. The app is $39.99 a month with a 7-day trial.
Move With Nicole: calm mat Pilates, beautifully made
A free Pilates library that is joint-kind and unusually well produced
Move With Nicole is Nicole McPherson, a mat and reformer Pilates instructor and RYT-500 yoga teacher based in Australia. It carries a Data profile tier on this list rather than a tested one.
I have not tested this one first hand. What follows comes from the research profile, not from using it. What earns it a place is that the production quality and calm pacing make it one of the easier free libraries to actually keep opening, and it is genuinely gentle on joints.
The gap: low loading limits what it can do for muscle and bone, and there is no menopause content at all. On the evidence above about lean mass and bone density, that makes it a supporting programme rather than a plan.
Cost: free on YouTube and the website. There is no subscription app.
FitOn: the broadest genuinely free tier
Unlimited free workouts across more styles than anything else here
FitOn gives you genuinely unlimited free workouts across strength, HIIT, yoga and Pilates, with known trainers and no paywall on the core library. Our own review calls it the best free fitness app for women over 40 on breadth alone.
An honesty note about my testing: I came into my second round with FitOn already fit, so my observations reflect someone with an existing base rather than a beginner encounter. The breadth is not in doubt; how well it carries a beginner from zero is the part my testing cannot settle.
It ranks eighth despite that breadth because it scores low on menopause fit: nothing in the programming is built around a midlife body, and this page ranks on fit rather than on volume.
Cost: the free tier is genuinely unlimited. FitOn PRO starts at $24.99 for six months and adds meal plans and offline downloads.
What you give up by staying free, and when to pay
Three things are consistently missing or thinner at the free tier, and it is worth naming them rather than pretending free is a free lunch.
Structure and progression. Almost every free library hands you classes rather than a plan. That matters more than it sounds, because progressive overload is the mechanism behind the muscle findings above, and a library cannot progress you if it does not know what you lifted last week.
Menopause-specific programming. Only two entries on this page acknowledge midlife at all. Everything else is general fitness that happens to be joint-friendly.
Clinical input. No programme on this page has a named clinician behind its health claims. That is not disqualifying for exercise content, but it is the clearest difference from the paid tier.
Tested by Katy Cole, on paying a little: Peloton is not free, but at $12.99 a month for App One it is close, and it is great especially if you already own the equipment, a treadmill or a bike. It has a genuine menopause collection, which most of the free options do not. If you are low on budget, or you just want to test a few apps or videos, YouTube has an enormous amount of material. The catch is that free sources can overwhelm you when you are new and need a structured programme.
So the honest sequence is this. Start free, because the evidence says any activity beats none and the barrier is what stops most people. Pick something that decides your week for you rather than the biggest library. And if after a couple of months you are still scrolling instead of training, that is the moment a small subscription earns its money, not before.
Which free workout app is right for you?
If you want one free answer built for your age, Fabulous50s. It is the only one here that starts where you are.
If you want the biggest free library and can supply your own structure, Alo Wellness Club.
If starting at all is the hard part, Yoga With Adriene, free, and forgiving.
If you want real strength progression without paying, Fitness Blender, and ignore how it looks.
If you want a structured plan rather than a library, Nike Training Club.
If you are restarting after a long gap, Grow with Jo, and stay on the free YouTube library rather than the $39.99 app.
Whichever you pick, decide your week in advance rather than choosing at the point of training. That single habit is worth more than any feature on this page.
How did we choose these eight free workout apps?
Two steps, and the first one is the page’s promise.
The qualifier is cost. A programme has to be genuinely free or freemium, meaning the core workout library is usable without paying. Nineteen of our 86 published programmes qualify. Apps that are merely cheap were excluded, which is why Peloton at $12.99 a month is discussed above but is not ranked here.
The ranking is menopause fit. Qualifying programmes are ranked on our menopause fit score, weighted 70%, blended with ease of use at 30%. Menopause fit is built from twelve capabilities covering how well a programme serves a midlife body. The two are close to independent, correlating at only r = 0.15, so the blend adds information rather than counting the same thing twice.
We deliberately did not rank on value for money. Everything here is free, so ranking by value would tell you which is cheapest, which is a question the qualifier has already answered.
Several very popular free libraries qualify on price and were left out on fit rather than on quality: Chloe Ting scores 2.5/10 for menopause fit, with jump-heavy sessions and aesthetic weight-loss framing, and Blogilates and Pamela Reif score similarly. They are good at what they do. They are not built for the reader this page is written for.
Two corrections were made to our own data while building this page: BODi and ZGYM were tagged as under $15 but cost $19 and $19.95 a month, and both were re-tagged.
All eight I have used, three across a full test and five sampled, except Move With Nicole, which is assessed from published information only and is labelled that way.
We buy our own subscriptions. Some links on this page earn a commission, which never affects a score or a position; scores are set in each programme’s own review before any page like this is built.
What research is this page based on?
- Maltais ML, Desroches J, Dionne IJ. Changes in muscle mass and strength after menopause. Journal of Musculoskeletal and Neuronal Interactions, 2009.
- Greendale GA, Sternfeld B, Huang M, et al. Changes in body composition and weight during the menopause transition. JCI Insight, 2019.
- Ramos-Campo DJ, Andreu-Caravaca L, Carrasco-Poyatos M, et al. Effects of Circuit Resistance Training on Body Composition, Strength, and Cardiorespiratory Fitness in Middle-Aged and Older Women. Journal of Aging and Physical Activity, 2022.
- Sá KMM, da Silva GR, Martins UK, et al. Resistance training for postmenopausal women: systematic review and meta-analysis. Menopause, 2023.
- Momma H, Kawakami R, Honda T, Sawada SS. Muscle-strengthening activities are associated with lower risk and mortality in major non-communicable diseases. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2022.
- Martyn-St James M, Carroll S. A meta-analysis of impact exercise on postmenopausal bone loss: the case for mixed loading exercise programmes. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2009.
- Mohebbi R, Shojaa M, Kohl M, et al. Exercise training and bone mineral density in postmenopausal women: an updated systematic review and meta-analysis. Osteoporosis International, 2023.
- Bauer J, Biolo G, Cederholm T, et al. Evidence-based recommendations for optimal dietary protein intake in older people: the PROT-AGE position paper. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 2013.
- Romeo A, Edney S, Plotnikoff R, et al. Can Smartphone Apps Increase Physical Activity? Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2019.
- Laranjo L, Ding D, Heleno B, et al. Do smartphone applications and activity trackers increase physical activity in adults? Systematic review and meta-analysis. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2021.
- World Health Organization. Physical activity fact sheet.
Nothing on this page is medical advice. If you have a diagnosed condition, osteopenia, osteoporosis or an injury, check with your doctor or a physiotherapist before starting.
Frequently asked questions about free workout apps
Fabulous50s is our top pick, because it is the only genuinely free library built for an over-50 body from the start rather than adapted down to it, and it programmes balance and mobility that most free content ignores. Alo Wellness Club is the best free library by sheer volume, covering strength through to yoga at no cost since Alo dropped its paywall in late 2025, but it has no perimenopause or menopause programming.
Yes. Nike Training Club is free with no premium tier holding back the strength content, Alo Wellness Club is free with an Alo Access account, and FitOn's core library is genuinely unlimited on the free tier. Fabulous50s, Yoga With Adriene, Fitness Blender, Grow with Jo and Move With Nicole are all free on YouTube. Several do sell an optional paid app, so check whether the feature you want sits behind it.
Yoga With Adriene, because the teaching is heavily guided and there is no performance pressure, which is what stops most beginners. If you want structure rather than a library, Nike Training Club offers multi-week plans for free. Fabulous50s is the better choice if you are over 50 or restarting after a long gap, as it includes all-standing and chair options.
It can, but only if it loads you progressively. In a meta-analysis of sixteen studies in the Journal of Aging and Physical Activity in 2022, Ramos-Campo and colleagues found circuit resistance training in middle-aged and older women produced a moderate to large favourable effect on arm, trunk and lower limb strength. The mechanism is progressive overload, so a library that gives you a different class each day is not the same as a plan that increases the load. Fitness Blender is the strongest free option on this point.
Usually not on their own. In a meta-analysis in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2009, Martyn-St James and Carroll found the protocols that reduced postmenopausal bone loss combined loading with impact, and that other forms of impact exercise were less effective. Most free content is gentle mat work, which has a real ceiling here. If bone density is your specific concern, discuss adding loaded resistance work and impact with your doctor.
Usually decision fatigue rather than the workouts. Pooling twenty-eight studies in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2021, Laranjo and colleagues found apps produced a small to moderate increase in activity, and that interventions with personalisation features were significantly more effective. A library with two thousand videos and no plan asks you to choose every time, and choosing is the step people quietly stop doing. Pick something that opens on week three, day two.
Only once free has stopped working for you. What you give up at the free tier is structure and progression, menopause-specific programming, and any named clinician behind the health claims. Peloton's App One tier at $12.99 a month is the smallest useful step up, and it carries a real menopause collection. If you are still scrolling instead of training after a couple of months, that is the moment a subscription earns its money.
Nike Training Club, because its strength content assumes equipment and its plans are structured across weeks rather than offered as standalone classes. FitOn covers more styles on its free tier but is lighter on gym-specific loading. Neither carries menopause-specific programming, so the joint and loading decisions are yours.
Where should you read next?
- Our full Fabulous50s review, including what the paid app adds over the free YouTube library.
- Our full Alo Wellness Club review, including how far the free tier really goes.
- Best strength training apps, if you want to close the loading gap the free tier leaves.
- How we score, including how the menopause fit score is built.
