The Best Budget Fitness Trackers for Staying Active in 2025

Fitbit continues to show its dominance in the field of budget fitness trackers with the Fitbit Inspire 3. For under $100, you get a bright AMOLED display and durable band that's sleek, compact, and comfortable enough to sleep in. Once you’ve got the watch on, you won’t need to take it off often thanks to the 10-day battery life, though that shrinks when taking advantage of the always-on display mode – while navigating is simple using touch technology and two haptic buttons.

Of course, you purchased the Fitbit Inspire 3 for fitness tracking, and it’s full of handy features like 24/7 heart-rate monitoring, step counting, blood oxygen level measuring, and movement reminders. Beyond that, you get automatic exercise tracking, so if you’re prone to forgetting to start a workout, this is useful, and sleep monitoring helps you better understand the quality of your sleep. It’s also got some basic smartwatch features, including phone notifications and a find my phone feature when the two devices use Bluetooth, though you can’t store music or make contactless payments with this fitness tracker.

The Xiaomi Smart Band 9 might be under $50, but just because it’s low-cost doesn’t mean it’s missing any of the features you expect in a fitness tracker. From a host of health monitoring to a sleek, slim design, it offers everything you could want in. In fact, it even gives Fitbit a run for its money.

The basics are packed in like a pedometer, heart rate monitor, blood oxygen saturation, and sleep monitoring. This band’s smarts go far beyond that though, as there are over 150 fitness modes, including running, HITT, kickboxing, and swimming. Each offers intel into your activity, from calories burned and average heart rate to workout time. These metrics may not be as precisely accurate as an Apple Watch or higher-end smartwatch with GPS and additional sensors. Still, the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 provides great insight into your workouts.

With the latest model of Xiaomi’s Smart Band comes a boost to battery life, so it should last a whopping three weeks with moderate usage. An increase in the screen’s brightness is also a welcome upgrade, hitting 1,200 nits for easy viewing in direct sunlight. Lacking physical buttons, the band’s colorful, 1.62-inch AMOLED display has excellent touch responsiveness for quickly finding fitness metrics or taking advantage of its few smartwatch features, like call and message notifications and music playback control. But be prepared for some finicky phone pairing.

Like the sound of the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 but want something slightly heavier on the features? Well, the Chinese tech giant known for making ultra-affordable alternatives to high-end gadgets has an upgraded model, the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro. The most obvious difference between the two bands is the larger, rectangular 1.74-inch AMOLED display on the Pro model; it gives off major Apple Watch vibes. Then, there’s the addition of a surprisingly accurate GPS to keep track of all your runs, bike rides, hikes, and more.

Of course, the Smart Band 9 Pro still comes with 24/7 heart rate and SPO₂ monitoring, sleep tracking, and stress monitoring. Health metrics are pushed even further with support for over 150 sports modes, ensuring almost any activity you do can be tracked. However, many of the more unique “modes” will only measure heart rate and time — not the most insightful information.

Although it’s not a smartwatch, this band offers a few limited smartwatch features. There’s music playback, and when connected to your phone, it can display notifications. Unfortunately, you can’t respond to those notifications, and no NFC support is on board. Still, at under $100, the Xiaomi Smart Band 9 Pro is a stylish fitness tracker with a bright, responsive screen, easy-to-master user interface, and impressive battery life.

Amazfit packs an impressive amount of capability into the Band 7, especially considering it's only $50. You get a large 1.47-inch always-on AMOLED display to easily view health and workout data while the actual band remains slim and comfortable on the wrist. Battery life is a boon as well, lasting eight days with typical usage and 28 days in battery-saver mode.

The Amazfit Band 7 supports over 120 sports modes with automatic smart recognition of four, and with water resistance up to 50m, it can easily handle a dip in the pool. Its health monitoring includes heart rate, blood-oxygen level, and stress, while sleep tracking delivers insight into the quality of your sleep each night. The Band 7 also offers a degree of smartwatch functionality with on-watch notifications and Amazon Alexa integration.

Not every fitness tracker has to be simply dedicated to fitness, and not all the best Apple Watches need to be painfully expensive. With the 2nd-gen Apple Watch SE comes an optical heart rate sensor and a built-in GPS, so you’ll never get lost on hikes. It also automatically detects various workouts, including swimming, and if you find Apple's own fitness apps lacking, you can always download additional ones from the App Store as the watch comes with 32GB of built-in storage.

The Apple Watch SE is a full-fledged, highly capable smartwatch, so you’ll be able to answer calls, respond to messages, make contactless payments, and stream music all from your wrist. This generation of device also comes with crash detection, so it can automatically call emergency services for you when you’ve been in an accident. And all of this is packed into a slim, comfortable form factor with impressive battery life – at least by Apple Watch standards.

For serious health and fitness tracking, Garmin is always an excellent option, as the company packs its watches full of insightful features. However, with all that precise information comes a higher price tag, so even Garmin’s more budget-minded Venu 3 is the highest-priced option of our cheap picks. Still, it’s worth the investment if you’re serious about your workouts.

The Venu 3 offers impressive functionality allowing it to track various exercises, including swimming, cycling, and golf. In total, over 30 preloaded sports apps work in conjunction with the hightly accurate GPS, heart rate monitor, ECG, blood oxygen, temperature, and other sensors on the watch. It even includes animated workouts to follow along with, like pilates, HIIT, and cardio. But what makes this band a real standout is its Body Battery feature, which provides helpful data into how well-rested your body is based on activity, stress, and sleep.

On top of the ample fitness data, the Garmin Venu 3 is a modestly sized smartwatch with a bright AMOLED touchscreen display. It can hit up to a lengthy 14 days of battery life, but that will diminish quickly when taking advantage of the always-on display and automatic workout detection. All the other expected smartwatch features, like receiving calls, smart assistants, and responding to texts are available when paired with the best Android phones. However, the app selection is limited compared to Apple and Google smartwatches.