There are more running apps than anyone needs. Most of them track a route, show a pace, and send you a badge. The hard part is that the ones that actually change how you run tend to do one thing well, and the thing they do well is not always the thing you need. A plan app is wasted on someone who just wants a map of their Sunday loop. A social feed is useless to someone who has never run for more than two minutes without stopping.
So this is a ranking by job, not by download count. We have put the apps in rough order of how useful they are to the widest range of runners, but the label next to each one matters more than the number. Prices were correct when we checked in October 2026 and will drift, so treat them as a guide.
1. Runna: best for structured training plans
Runna is the app most runners are talking about this year, and the one Strava liked enough to buy in April 2025. It builds a personalised plan for anything from a 5K to an ultra, fits it around the days you can actually train, and pushes each session to your watch with the intervals already loaded. Strength sessions are built in, which is more than most plan apps bother with.
The downside is that it assumes you know your own fitness. The onboarding takes your self-reported level at face value, and if you overstate it the early weeks can be brutal. A fair number of physios have grumbled about seeing Runna-shaped injuries from runners who progressed too fast. That is a problem with overconfidence as much as with the app, but it is worth knowing before you tick "intermediate".
There is no free tier. In the UK it is £15.99 a month or £99.99 a year, with a 7-day trial.
Pick it if you want to be told exactly what to run tomorrow and you already run a few times a week.
2. Strava: best for tracking and community
Strava is still the default place to log a run. The free version records unlimited activities, lets you follow friends, give kudos and join clubs. The paid tier adds segment leaderboards, route building, the Fitness and Freshness graphs and the newer AI summaries of your training. Over the last few years more features have slipped behind that paywall, which long-time users complain about, but the core tracker remains free.
What Strava is not is a coach. It will tell you what you did. It will not tell you what to do next. That is why the Runna purchase makes sense, and why there is now a combined Strava + Runna subscription at £119.99 a year in the UK.
Pick it if you like seeing your runs next to your friends' runs and you already know how to train.
3. Femrun: best running app for women, especially beginners
Most running apps are built for people who already run. Femrun is built for women who are starting, or starting again, and a lot of its members are in their 40s and 50s. That changes almost every design decision in the app.
You start with a short quiz about your level, your goal and the days you have free. Femrun turns that into a plan, which for a true beginner means a walk-to-run ladder toward a first 5K, and for someone further along means a 10K or half marathon build. The plan adjusts week by week based on how your runs actually went, so a bad week does not wreck the schedule. During the run, voice cues tell you when to run and when to walk, so you never need to stare at your phone.
The part that makes it different from a Couch to 5K ladder is the coaching layer. There is a coach you can message, who checks in, answers questions and moves sessions around when life gets in the way. There are also small groups of women at the same level, and no leaderboards anywhere. If you have ever opened Strava, seen a friend's 4:30 kilometres and quietly closed the app, you will understand why that matters.
Femrun is a subscription, sold in 4-week and 12-week blocks after the quiz, with free download on iOS and Android. It is not the app for someone chasing a marathon PB, and it does not pretend to be.
Pick it if you are a woman who has bounced off running before and wants a plan that starts where you are, with someone in your corner.
4. Nike Run Club: best free guided runs
Nike Run Club has been free for years and still is. The guided audio runs are the reason to install it. A coach talks you through an easy run or a set of intervals the way a podcast would, and for a nervous beginner that voice in your ear is worth more than any graph. There are free training plans for 5K through marathon too.
The tracker itself is the weak spot. GPS wanders under tree cover, some updates have over-counted distance, and treadmill runs have to be entered by hand. The social side is thin compared with Strava.
Pick it if you want company on your runs without paying for it.
5. NHS Couch to 5K: best free beginner programme
The NHS Couch to 5K app is a nine-week programme with a BBC presenter in your ear telling you when to run and when to walk. It is free, has no ads, and has more App Store ratings than any other app on this list. For a lot of people in the UK it is the first running app they ever open.
It is also a fixed ladder. Weeks two to five step up quickly, there is no strength work, nothing adapts if you miss a week, and once you hit 5K the programme simply ends. A 2023 study put the completion rate at around 27%, which tells you a fixed plan is not enough for most beginners on its own. If you like the format but want it to bend around your life, that is the gap Femrun is filling.
Pick it if you want a zero-cost way to find out whether running is for you.
6. Garmin Connect and the Coros app: best for watch owners
If you own a Garmin or a Coros watch, the companion app is already on your phone and you should use it. Both give you training load, recovery scores and race predictions from the sensor data on your wrist, which no phone-only app can match.
Garmin Connect is free, but in 2025 Garmin added a Connect+ tier at £6.99 a month for AI insights and a performance dashboard, and the reaction from long-time owners was not kind. Coros keeps its EvoLab analytics and web Training Hub free for everyone. Neither app does anything without the hardware, and Garmin's app in particular has a reputation for clutter.
Pick whichever matches the watch you already own. Pair it with Strava for the social side.
7. Runkeeper: best simple tracker
Runkeeper has been around since 2008, and ASICS has owned it since 2016. The free version does what it says: tracks your run with GPS, logs it and gets out of the way. Runkeeper Go, roughly $40 a year, adds coached plans up to half marathon and voice guidance.
It has not changed much in years, which is either a relief or a problem depending on what you want. The plans are basic next to Runna's.
Pick it if you want a tracker with no feed and no fuss.
8. adidas Running: best for challenges
The app formerly known as Runtastic is a solid free tracker with monthly distance challenges and a decent community. Premium adds plans and deeper stats for roughly $40 a year. It does nothing badly and nothing uniquely well, which is why it sits here rather than higher.
Pick it if a monthly challenge is what gets you out of the door.
9. Zwift Run: best for treadmill runners
Zwift puts you in a virtual world and lets you run alongside other people from your treadmill. At the time of writing, running itself is free on Zwift. You only need the £17.99 a month membership for automatic incline on a compatible treadmill. You do need a footpod or a treadmill that broadcasts speed, and the app is far more developed for cyclists than for runners.
Pick it if you do most of your winter mileage indoors and get bored.
10. Joggo: best if weight loss is the goal
Joggo combines a running plan with a meal plan, reassesses both every two weeks, and is squarely aimed at people running to lose weight. It is a subscription with no free tier and no trial, and reviewers note that the weight-loss framing is pushed even if you did not pick it as a goal. Interestingly, it is built by a team in Vilnius, same as Motifind.
Pick it if the scale is your main scoreboard and you want food and running in one plan.
Which one should you download?
If you have never run before, start with Couch to 5K if you want free, or Femrun if you are a woman who wants the plan to adapt and someone to talk to. If you already run and want to get faster, Runna. If you already run and want to see your mates' runs, Strava. If you own a watch, use its app and feed Strava from it. Most runners end up with two apps installed: one that plans, one that tracks and shares.
A note for trainers
Plenty of personal trainers now coach runners alongside their gym clients, and an app plan is not a replacement for that. If you coach running, or are looking for someone to coach yours, Motifind lets trainers build running programmes, track a client's weekly sessions and get paid, all from one place.