The Peloton App is Changing – What Does That Mean?

Back in 2021, I wrote a post all about how I use an “off-brand” stationary bike (that I bought off of Amazon) paired with the Peloton app for an incredible work-out experience.

I’ve been using that exact pairing for THREE YEARS now and I still love it just as much today as I did three years ago. It truly is a winning combination!

However, recently a few things have changed – specifically with the Peloton app – so I wanted to write an update post (since my original blog post is one of my most popular blog posts ever written, go figure!)

If you want to get caught up, you can read about my personal fitness “journey” here in Part 1.

And then in Part 2 of the blog post, I talk about my exact set-up, as well as share some tips for putting everything together and making it work!

WHAT IT WAS

Originally, Peloton offered access to their app for just $12.99 a month. You had unlimited access to the entire library of recorded classes (which is absolutely massive), access to their community, you could attend live classes – everything. Additionally, you could pair a few “third party” trackers to the app (like my Wahoo RPM Cycling Speed Sensor) which allowed me to see how fast I was peddling during cycling classes directly on the screen within the class itself.

Let’s be honest: this was a steal of a deal.

It was so much cheaper than a normal physical gym membership, offered so many conveniences, an insanely huge library of classes all taught by all-star instructors – it was a no-brainer.

And honestly, without it? I truly believe that I wouldn’t be where I am in my “fitness journey” today.
The Peloton app kept me accountable, helped me build and maintain the habit of exercising, and offered so much variety that I could not get bored.

WHAT HAS CHANGED

Toward the end of last year, Peloton announced that they would be changing their digital offerings. They were splitting access to their app into two tiers. Instead of having just one, all-encompassing, unlimited option for $12.99 – they would now have two options:

Peloton App One – which gives you unlimited access to ONLY the strength and yoga classes and just 3 bike, treadmill, and row workouts per month.
*This option also removes access to pair a third-party cadence monitor to the app, so I can no longer see my real-time cycling metrics on my screen.

Peloton App+ (why is everything a “plus” now?) – which gives you full, unlimited access to EVERYTHING on the app, just like before.
*This option includes pairing a third-party cadence monitor to the app.

Peloton App One is $12.99 a month and Peloton App+ is $24 a month.
(If you choose to pay annually, they fall to $10.75 a month and $20 a month respectively.)

MY INITIAL RESPONSE

I was devastated.
Derrick and I had just revamped our entire family budget. A lot has changed and 2024 is going to be a “strange” year for our family (I don’t have a lot of weddings booked, things are changing with XscreamThrills, etc.) We cut a lot of “luxuries” out of our budget (we canceled a bunch of subscriptions or paired things down) and got ourselves to a solid place for the year.
We had budgeted the $10.75 a month price for my Peloton app.

But now, the price was DOUBLING.

Could we still afford it? Yes.
Was that extra $10 a month going to wreck our entire budget? No.
But since we had just done the work to get everything all set, it felt like such a low-blow.

To be fair: Peloton announced these price-changes last fall. So, it’s not like this was just randomly sprung on the world.
However, I had assumed (and when I went back and read the fine print, my assumptions were confirmed): Peloton was supposed to notify their customers of the updated pricing before simply charging the new price.
And I never got that notification – the charge simply showed up on my credit card.

Which (obviously) left me even angrier.

Regardless of whether Peloton dropped the ball with that or not, I was forced to take a long, hard look at my fitness routine, the tools I was using, and decide whether I wanted to keep going the way I was currently going or change things up.

MY RESEARCH

Let’s be honest, I figured: it’s 2024 – there have to be other fitness apps out there like Peloton, right?!

WRONG.

I did a ton of research after my access to the Peloton app became limited (only three cycling classes a month?! are you kidding me?!)
And I was shocked by what I found.

While yes, there are other fitness apps like Peloton out there, from what I could find, they all seemed to fall into two categories:
A. They’re MORE expensive than Peloton (even the higher tier) or
B. They’re MUCH smaller than Peloton

I did sign up for a handful of free trials and I did try out a few different apps.
They were “just fine”, but they had their limitations – they were not as user friendly, some of them didn’t work on my iPad (so I had to use them on my phone and my phone’s screen is not that big), they did not have as large a library of classes as Peloton, some of them didn’t have live classes, they were all missing the “community” aspect that Peloton has, and I truly did not care for the instructors I took classes with.

AND – the apps I tried? They were all around the $10 a month price point anyways. (I didn’t even try out the apps that were more expensive than Peloton, because I figured: if I was going to pay more, I would just pay the full price for the full Peloton app.)

In other words, I was pretty disappointed with my options outside of Peloton.

MY NEW SETUP AND ROUTINE

The week that I “left” Peloton and was trying out all of these other options – I was miserable. I felt like I had left a group of friends and I missed them so much.
After all – I’ve been training with these same instructors for more than THREE YEARS. Sure, we’ve never met in person, but I feel like I know them (thanks internet-age). So, suddenly not taking their classes left me lonelier than I ever expected feeling!! (It was so strange.)
Further, I was really scared that I would lose all of my progress and habits that I’d created over the last 3+ years. Listen: waking up at 6am and exercising is hard enough, but having to re-figure out my exercise routine scared me. I did not want to stop, but if I had to put in more work to figure this out, would I eventually quit?

By the end of the week, after listening to me cry about how much I hated trying all of these new apps, and how much I missed my Peloton app – Derrick re-assured me that I should just go back to Peloton, pay the $20 a month and let things go back to normal. The extra $10 a month wasn’t going to kill us (and if I really wanted to leave our budget as-is, I could cancel my Spotify account, which would then balance us back out. I didn’t want to do that though because I’d just discovered a TON of business books I’ve always wanted to read on Spotify as audiobooks and I’d just started listening to them! UGH.)

So, I did a lot of thinking and weighing my options, and here’s what I came up with.

+ I stayed with the Peloton App One (the lower, cheaper level). This means I can still take all of my strength and yoga classes that I love.
+ I can only take 3 cycling classes a month though (almost equalling out to one a week – why can’t they just give us 4?!)
+ So, I decided to go back to my “original” cycling instructor – Kaleigh Cohen Cycling on YouTube. Guess what? She is still teaching cycling classes FOR FREE on YouTube, she puts out new classes every single week, and she’s a fantastic instructor. I took her classes initially before I signed up for the Peloton app – she taught me the basics of the bike: how to set it up, how it works, and what the “terms” mean.

So, here is my current fitness routine:
Monday: Leg Day using the Peloton app
Tuesday: Cycling Class – a Kaleigh Cohen class
Wednesday: Arms and Shoulders + Core using the Peloton app
Thursday: Chest and Back + Core using the Peloton app
Friday: Cycling Class – once a week, I take a Peloton class – and when I’ve used my 3 classes for the month, I just take another Kaleigh Cohen class

And so far, this has worked for me. I wanted to try this out for a month to see how it would go – and even though it’s slightly annoying (let’s be honest: having everything centrally located in the Peloton app was just so easy) it does work.
It keeps my budget the same, I keep my habit strong, I keep my favorite instructors, and add back an old one.

Dear Peloton, please don’t change anything else.

MY CADENCE MONITOR SOLUTION

Losing access to my cadence monitor was a tough one to figure out, but I have come to a solution!
And the good news is: it’s a solution that works with both the Peloton classes AND the Kaleigh Cohen classes on YouTube as well.

I simply use a third-party app that links to my cadence monitor and shows me how fast I’m peddling.

It’s called My Cadence and it’s a super simple, minimalist app (which is fantastic).

I installed it on my iPad and it paired to my Wahoo RPM Cycling Speed Sensor instantly, without a single issue. After pairing, it then gives you the option to split your screen, so you can have the cadence monitor on one side, and the class you’re taking on the other.
I do have a giant 12.9″ iPad, so splitting my screen is no problem for me – but if you have a smaller tablet screen, this might make your class really tiny. In that case, I would just pull up the app on your phone and put it off to the side – that way you can still see your class full screen, while having your cadence tracked off to the side.
*The Peloton app will NOT allow you to split your screen – so while the screen-splitting works great for the YouTube classes, the 3 times a month I take a Peloton cycling class, I just pull up the My Cadence app on my phone and set it off to the side.

CONCLUSION

I told someone recently: Peloton ruined me – it really truly did. It spoiled me with it’s low price-point, hooked me with their amazing instructors, and truly nothing else compares to how well the app is built.
In all honesty: the company did probably need to raise their rates (after all, this is 2024 – the prices of EVERYTHING has doubled.

After “shopping” around with the other fitness apps, for what you get in the Peloton app (even with their new pricing structure) it’s still an amazing deal. Was I upset for a while? Yep. But after all of my research, I’ve come to love the Peloton app even more than before.