Fitbit Challenges in 2026: What's Left and What to Use

What Happened to Fitbit Challenges

Fitbit Challenges were a simple way for friends, families and coworkers to stay motivated together. Formats like the Workweek Hustle, Weekend Warrior and Daily Showdown worked the same way: pick a challenge type, invite your Fitbit friends, and compete on a leaderboard to see who could walk the most steps. No setup, no fee. You opened the Fitbit app and started to walk.

On 27 March 2023, Fitbit removed Challenges and Adventures from the app. That included Virtual Premium Challenges, Adventure Races and Solo Adventures. Open groups and trophies were removed at the same time. Only private groups with friends stayed.

For groups that ran a Workweek Hustle every week, the social reason to open the app was gone. Without the competition, the daily step count was a number on a screen with no stakes and no audience. The moment when you saw a friend pull ahead in the evening and decided to take one more lap around the block was gone.

In 2026 the change went further. Google announced the Google Health app on 7 May 2026, and it started to roll out to all users on 19 May as an update to the Fitbit app. Your data moved over automatically. Social features in the Fitbit app were locked from 12 May. In Google Health, the Groups and Community Feed features are removed, and you can no longer send or receive direct messages or notifications from others. Badges are discontinued, and historical badges are deleted. Your social profile uses your Google Account name and photo, with no custom username, and kid accounts cannot have friends.

What is left: you can manage friends and compete with them on a weekly leaderboard for steps or Cardio Load. Google's support page about the redesigned app does not mention challenges. So in 2026 there are no group step challenges in Fitbit or Google Health. To run one, you need a separate app.

What Made Fitbit Challenges Special

To understand what a good replacement needs to offer, it helps to understand exactly why Fitbit Challenges worked so well. At its core, the feature was a zero-friction social accountability system. You did not need to join a gym, sign up for a program, or commit to a training plan. You just needed friends with Fitbits. The challenge types were intuitive: Daily Showdown was a single-day sprint, Workweek Hustle ran Monday through Friday, and Weekend Warrior covered Saturday and Sunday. Each format served a different mood and schedule.

The magic was in the leaderboard. Seeing your name on a ranked list against people you actually know creates a fundamentally different motivation than tracking steps alone. Behavioral research consistently shows that social comparison is one of the strongest drivers of physical activity. Fitbit understood this instinctively. The leaderboard was always visible, always updating, and always just competitive enough to make you take the stairs instead of the elevator. It turned walking from a solitary health metric into a shared game.

What made it even more effective was how low the stakes were. Nobody was betting money. Nobody was training for a marathon. The "prize" for winning a Workweek Hustle was a digital trophy and bragging rights in your group chat. But that was enough. The format tapped into the same casual competitiveness that makes board game nights fun: you care about winning, but not so much that losing ruins your week. This kept people engaged week after week without the burnout that comes with high-stakes fitness programs.

Most alternatives that have tried to fill the Fitbit Challenges gap fail because they over-complicate this formula. They add calorie tracking, workout logging, nutrition plans, and social feeds that look like discount Instagram. They miss the point. Fitbit Challenges worked because they did one thing (step competitions with friends) and did it with almost no friction. A good replacement needs to respect that simplicity, work for friends on any phone, and give results that the group can trust.

A Replacement Built for Friend Groups: Upkeep

Upkeep is a step challenge app built specifically to fill the gap that Fitbit Challenges left behind. Joining a challenge is free. It recreates the core loop that made Fitbit Challenges addictive (private friend groups, step competitions, and real-time leaderboards) while adding features that Fitbit never offered. If you have been searching for something that feels like Workweek Hustle but works on iPhone and Android and actually verifies steps, Upkeep is built to be its successor.

The experience starts the same way Fitbit Challenges did: you create a group, share an invite link, and pick a challenge format. Friends join by tapping the link. The leaderboard updates in real time as participants walk throughout the day. The familiar dopamine hit of checking the standings at lunch and seeing whether your friend has overtaken you is fully intact. Upkeep nails the core experience that Fitbit users loved.

For a bigger or longer challenge, only the host pays. Upkeep Pro gives groups of 16 to 250 people and challenges of up to 30 days. A Creator Pass covers one challenge of up to 50 people and 30 days. Members always join free.

Upkeep adds three things. First, results you can trust. In any step competition, someone eventually posts a number that looks too good to be true. On Upkeep, steps sync from Apple Health or Health Connect, and manually entered steps do not count. Upkeep checks synced days. A day that does not look like real walking can be removed from a challenge result, so your challenge results actually mean something.

Second, Upkeep adds long-term progression through the Consistency Score. Fitbit Challenges were purely transactional: win a challenge, get a trophy, repeat. There was no reward for showing up week after week for months or years. Upkeep's Consistency Score is a persistent number from 0 to 100 that tracks how close you get to your step goal, day after day. Every day earns credit for the share of your goal you hit, never zero, and your lowest days each week are left out automatically. Over time, your score becomes a visible marker of sustained commitment. Third, device freedom: steps sync from Apple Health on iPhone or Health Connect on Android, which means Upkeep works with your phone's built-in step counter, Apple Watch, and other watches whose app writes steps to Apple Health or Health Connect. Your friend group can join on iPhone or Android.

Other Step Challenge Apps: Pacer, Stridekick, StepBet

Other apps also run step challenges. Here is what each one says about itself on its own site, and how it differs from the friend-group format that Upkeep brings back.

Pacer is a walking and fitness app. Its pedometer is free and counts steps with just your phone. You can join or create step challenges for friends, an office or a club, and it has a league leaderboard. Pacer Premium adds more weight loss and fitness challenges and advanced data insights. Pacer lists Fitbit, Apple Health, Google Fit and Samsung Health among its connections. The app also covers walking clubs, weight loss and more, so it can feel busy if you only want a step competition with friends.

Stridekick is built for step challenges. Its free plan lets you create public challenges. Private challenges, where only the people you invite can take part, need a paid Pro or Unlimited plan. Only the challenge organizer pays; everyone else joins with a free account. The pricing page does not name the devices or apps that Stridekick syncs with, so check that your friends' trackers work before you start.

StepBet takes a different approach. You bet real money into a pot and try to reach personalized weekly step goals. The winners who meet their goals for the whole game share the pot. StepBet lists Fitbit, Garmin, Apple Health and Health Connect among its trackers. The motivation is financial rather than social, and that is a different thing from the casual, no-stakes competition that made a Workweek Hustle fun. On Upkeep, nobody bets and members join free.

How to Run a Step Challenge With Friends Who Wear a Fitbit

A Fitbit still counts steps. Google only removed the challenge layer, so you do not need new hardware. You need to get the steps out of Google Health and into an app that runs the challenge. Upkeep reads steps from Apple Health on iPhone and Health Connect on Android, and Google Health can write steps to both.

On iPhone, open Google Health and go to Connections → Apps and services, then tap Apple Health under “Add connections”. This needs iOS 16.4 or later and an adult Google Account. On Android, open Google Health and go to Connections → Partner apps, then tap Sync your favorite health apps → Set up. Allow Steps in both cases. The full iPhone steps are in our guide to sync Fitbit steps to Apple Health.

Then the host downloads Upkeep, creates a challenge, sets the daily step target, and shares the invite link. Friends join free on iPhone or Android. On Android, a friend picks Google Health as the step source in Upkeep if Upkeep did not pick it automatically. Friends with an Apple Watch, another watch whose app writes steps to Apple Health or Health Connect, or just a phone can join the same challenge. Your old Workweek Hustle group can be on one Upkeep leaderboard again, whatever devices they use now.