I’ve made a real commitment to walking everywhere I possibly can to improve my endurance. In order to quantify how successful I am being I decided to download a pedometer app to count my steps. I was originally counting them without an app, but I started looking stupid whispering my current number every place I went. Therefore I deigned to test several pedometer apps and post reviews of them here.
When looking for a pedometer I had a few hard and fast rules in mind for what I had to have:
- The pedometer had to be free. I was willing to accept some small, constant ads or infrequent, large ads in exchange for keeping my wallet closed.
- It had to work on an Android device. It is possible that the world’s greatest free pedometer app is on the iPhone (it’s not). If so, wouldn’t do me any good because I couldn’t download it.
- It had to specifically work on the Android 9.0 version. I know this is not the latest and greatest, but I am not upgrading my phone just for a step counting app. I downloaded a few apps that I couldn’t get to work and I think that compatibility might have been the reason.
- It had to work using only my physical activity data. That is the only permission anything was allowed to have. I was not giving my location data to any rando that uploads an app to the Play Store. I know for a fact that some apps I tried would not work correctly because I would not pony up my location and/or biometric data.
Other than those above, I just wanted an app that could count steps accurately and generally leave me alone 95% of the time unless I wanted to see my daily step number. As I downloaded these apps to test them I immediately noticed one annoyance. All of these apps had names so similar it was nearly impossible to differentiate them. For that reason I will include the name, developer, and Play Store link for each app I discuss so there is minimal confusion.
Without further ado, here are my thoughts on six different pedometer apps.
Step Counter – Pedometer
Leap Fitness Group
This app requested my age, gender, height, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 104 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. There were a fair amount of full screen ads, and most of them were the annoying kind of ad like “oh no, you just downloaded a virus” that try to scare you into clicking on it instead of telling you about a product or service that may interest you. There was also a constant small banner ad on the bottom of the screen. It would have cost $11 / year to remove all the ads.
This app made it easy to set custom daily and weekly goals and it counted calories as well as steps (provided you entered your gender and weight info). It also allowed me to see my daily step total right from the lock screen without having to unlock my phone. One cool feature with this app was that it included a lot of HIIT mini-workouts of 2-5 minutes for when you are in a hurry. For example, there was a 2 minute chest workout you could pull up that cycled through different easy chest exercises like wall pushups that could be done at home or in a hotel or wherever.
A very solid app that did lots of things I liked. The only real drawback here was the scary ads that were a little too frequent but the bonus mini-workouts were a solid bonus. Four out of five stars.
Pedometer – Step Counter
ITO Technologies
This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 105 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. The ads were largely TikTok ads that you could skip through after it played for 5-10 seconds. There was no premium or ad-free version that I could see.
The app let you customize theme and colors in a bajillion ways. I never gave that a second thought because I don’t want that sort of feature. It also counted not just steps but also calories, distance, and time walked. The big negative was the battery draw the app required to work. When you downloaded it there was a warning page about how quickly it drains your battery. And then while I used it I noticed my battery getting sucked dry in real time. It had a sleep mode you could use to minimize that, but then you needed to remember to un-sleep the app every time you went somewhere in order for those steps to get counted.
While accurate, this app lacked the ability to see your steps directly on the lock screen. That is the second most important feature I found across all the apps. The huge inefficiencies in battery life also made this a less than ideal app. Two out of five stars.
Pedometer App – Step Counter
AceTools Team
This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had an adjustable step length and the most accurate setting I could get showed 105 steps in the app for every 100 steps I actually took. There were banner ads at the bottom of the screen as well as full screen unskippable ads, and also ads where the X to close it would be purposely hidden to make you unlikely to close the ad without accidentally clicking on it and opening the sponsor’s website. Their Pro plan with no ads cost $30 / year.
The app counted steps and calories and showed them straight from the lock screen. Which was great because this app took an exceedingly long time to load. Not counting the extra time it took for the ads to get out of the way. It included a sleep logger so you could enter how much sleep you were getting and an AI “Health Pal” that I am not really sure what its actual use was. It absolutely was not able to help me with my property tax questions though.
Ultimately the long load times and nefarious ads undercut the other quality features of this app. Two and a half out of five stars.
StepUp Pedometer Step Counter
StepUp Inc
This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had no way to adjust my step length. That was really unfortunate because this counter registered 80 steps for every 100 steps I took. It didn’t matter if I said I was 5′ tall or 7′ tall it never got any more accurate than that. It also had a serious lag on counting steps. Like, I could walk from one end of a block to the other and the number wouldn’t change. Then after I stopped it would slowly count up until it got everything counted.
The app itself was very minimalist and bare bones, which I liked because there was no fluff and no battery overuse. It also had very minimal ads to the point that I cannot even remember any negatives from that perspective. The one thing this app would not shut up about was wanting me to go online. It constantly asked me to join a chat group and message my friends — about how much fun it is to walk, I guess.
One cool feature was that it had “bots” that race you throughout the day. For example, if your goal is 6000 steps there is a bot that slowly counts up to 6000 during the day and a leaderboard with you and another lazy bot that goes almost nowhere, and a busy bot that exceeds your daily goals to motivate you.
I liked the “bots” idea and the minimalist design. However, the most important feature for me is accuracy and counting only 80 steps per 100 I take was a major negative. Three out of five stars.
Before I continue with more reviews I need to talk about two things that I saw in almost every app I tested which annoyed the shit out of me. One, so many of them counted my weight in tenths of a pound. Why do this? Who accurately keeps track of their weight to the tenth of a pound? This is the same sort of meaningless hyper-accuracy as you see in rainfall totals to the hundredth of an inch.
Two, nearly every app I downloaded served me ad upon ad for other pedometer apps. Wait, what? Why does one step counter app try to pitch me a different step counter app? Do they think I need to run two pedometer apps simultaneously? Don’t they realize they are supposed to compete for my business? It makes as much sense to me as if I bought a six pack of Pepsi and inside there was a coupon for a free Coke.
Pedometer King – Step Counter
Kingbrain
This app requested my age, gender, and weight. It had no way to adjust my step length. Despite that fact this app was so accurate it counted 99 steps for every 100 steps I took. This was easily the most accurate of all the apps I tried. Weirdly, this was also the only app that counted in discrete intervals of 9 steps. Every other app I used would count individual steps and I could conceivably end on any number on any day. 4512, sure. 5398, absolutely. But this app only counted in increments of 9. If I started walking I had to go 9 steps before it would count all 9 at the same time. While this annoyed the ever living shit out of me at the beginning, I wound up accepting it since the app was so damn accurate.
This app had a banner ad on the top and video ads for Temu on startup. It had a premium plan that removed the ads for $5.49 / month. There were lots of notifications, if you didn’t turn them off it could get excessive. The app also showed your steps and calories on the lock screen.
In spite of the weird counting method and overzealous notifications, the fact that it was amazingly accurate and let me see my steps from my lock screen more than made up for it. Four out of five stars.
StepsApp – Step Counter
StepsApp
This app requested my age, gender, height, and weight. It also had minimal ads with a premium option without ads for $19.99 / year. However none of that mattered at all.
This app had adjustable step length but I was not able to dial it in anywhere close to my walking stride. No matter what height I used, no matter what step length I used, it remained wildly far off from my actual steps. The closest I could get it was 220 steps registered for every 100 steps I took. I wasted an entire afternoon just walking back and forth in my apartment parking lot trying every possible setting to get it sort of close to almost accurate-ish. Never got anywhere close. One out of five stars.
Those are my reviews of the six different free pedometer apps for Android 9.0 and earlier devices that I happened to try. I valued accuracy and lock screen step visibility more than anything else, then intrusiveness of ads and battery usage. Least important to me were customization of colors and themes and online features or anything that tried to create the feeling of a “team”. If those sorts of things are important to you, you’ll probably rate these apps differently.
Even though I had two apps both finish with four stars, the one I decided to continue using was Pedometer King because of those most important features. I reserve the right to delete this app if it starts serving too many ads or gets annoying in some other way.
Gene Hikes the Appalachian Trail 
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