Best Treadmills That Don't Require a Subscription

Many treadmills require that you immediately sign up for an on-demand workout service. These picks from CR don't come with steep monthly costs.

Catherine Roberts, Consumer Reports Senior Health & Food Reporter.

By Catherine Roberts
Senior Health & Food Reporter

May 30, 2024

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LifeSpan TR5500i Treadmill, Xterra TRX5500 Treadmill, and the Sole TT8 Treadmill

When you’re shopping for a treadmill, you aren’t just shopping for the machine itself. You also need to consider whether you’re willing to pay for an associated on-demand fitness video subscription service as well.

If you buy a Peloton, NordicTrack, or ProForm treadmill, for example, you’ll need to sign up for the company’s associated subscription. That’s Peloton’s All-Access membership, $44 per month, and for NordicTrack and ProForm it’s iFit, $39 per month. Without that extra monthly payment, you’ll have access to the machines’ most basic features only.

But if you’re not willing to commit to both a machine and a subscription fitness video service right off the bat, you can still find a great treadmill that gives you plenty of workout options.

In this article

Self-Contained Treadmills
Treadmills That Work With Third-Party Services

First, there are self-contained treadmills that come with a full set of features out of the box, including a variety of programmed workouts that you can access right from the machine’s console. In many cases, you can even create your own custom workout programs right on the machine—no third-party service necessary. And some treadmill companies have free apps that provide a library of on-demand workouts.

Second, if you want the option of using a subscription service but don’t want to be locked in to one, there’s another good option: A number of treadmills work with a variety of different on-demand workout subscription services, rather than a single proprietary service. That means you can take advantage of trial periods and shop around for the workout subscription you like best.

When you’re shopping, look to see whether the machine you’re considering has implemented FTMS (Fitness Machine Service) protocol—that’s the Bluetooth standard that facilitates communication between fitness apps and machines, and allows a third-party app to adjust settings like incline and speed automatically in sync with a workout. (These types of treadmills also generally offer a slate of programmed workouts accessible from the console, so connecting with a third-party app isn’t required.)

The marketing for these kinds of treadmills tends to highlight two services that use the FTMS protocol: Kinomap, a $12-per-month subscription service that provides access to a library of user-generated exercise videos, including ones that follow real-world running routes around the world; and Zwift, for $20 per month, which offers a library of workouts set in virtual environments. Peloton also recently began offering FTMS-compatibility for its App+ and All-Access members, which means that FTMS-capable treadmills and rowing machines (though not bikes) can also operate with Peloton. Currently, though, iFit can be used only on iFit-enabled machines. (In our ratings, those are the treadmills from NordicTrack and ProForm.)

To help you shop, we rounded up a few of our top-rated folding and nonfolding treadmills that don’t require you to subscribe to any on-demand workout service from the get-go. We included treadmills that are mostly self-contained and aren’t designed to work with third-party subscriptions, and FTMS-capable treadmills that can be paired with a variety of different subscription services.

Here’s what you need to know about these high-performing treadmills, and how they connect with various fitness apps and streaming services.

Find out whether an iFit subscription is worth it for your treadmill.

Recommended Self-Contained Treadmills

Recommended Treadmills That Work With Third-Party Services

Catherine Roberts

Catherine Roberts is a health and science journalist at Consumer Reports. She has been at CR since 2016, covering infectious diseases, bugs and bug sprays, consumer medical devices like hearing aids and blood pressure monitors, health privacy, and more. As a civilian, her passions include bike rides, horror films and fiction, and research rabbit holes. Follow her on X: @catharob.