Comparison

TheDailySteps vs PaceBuddy

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

TheDailySteps

This app helps you track your daily steps and stay motivated to reach your fitness goals. Set personal targets, maintain streaks with flexible rest days, and join challenges for extra motivation. Receive gentle reminders to keep you moving throughout the day.

Highlights
  • Step tracking via Health data
  • Apple Watch compatibility
  • Personal step goal setting
  • Streak system with rest days
  • Fitness challenges
  • Encouraging reminders
Features
Read full description

The Daily Steps – Move More, Stay Consistent! The Daily Steps uses your iPhone's Health data to track your steps throughout the day, and is fully compatible with Apple Watch. Set a personal step goal and stay on track with a built-in streak system. Life happens, so you can choose up to 3 rest days that won't break your streak — giving you flexibility without losing your progress. Ready to push further? Enroll in a challenge and take your step game to the next level. Each challenge has its own rules around rest days and step targets, so make sure to read them before enrolling. And if a challenge doesn't go as planned, don't give up — you can always re-enroll and try again. Your personal step goal and streak are always yours to keep, no matter what happens with a challenge. Throughout the day, The Daily Steps sends gentle, encouraging reminders to keep you motivated toward both your personal goal and any active challenge goal. Your journey, your pace — one step at a time.

About

PaceBuddy

This app acts as a personal running coach, allowing you to race against your past performances on familiar routes. It provides real-time feedback on your pace and distance, with advanced features for accurate tracking on varied terrain and integration with smartwatches.

Highlights
  • Race against past runs or personal bests
  • Live ahead/behind pace feedback
  • Falling-behind alerts (vibration, beep, spoken)
  • Accurate distance and elevation tracking
  • Calorie calculation with climbing cost
  • Apple Watch standalone workouts
Features
Read full description

Everyone has a route they do over and over — the same loop, the same hill, the same trail. PaceBuddy is built on one idea: on that route, the only pace worth chasing is your own. It replays your last run beside you, second by second, and tells you whether you're ahead or behind and by how far. Race your last attempt, or your best. RACE YOURSELF, NOT A STRANGER • Live ahead/behind against your own past run on the same route • Choose your last run or your personal best as the target • Works even if you start the loop from a different point each day • Falling-behind alerts by vibration, beep, or spoken callout • Distance announcements at every kilometre or mile • Lap splits with distance, time, pace and calories BUILT FOR REAL TERRAIN • Elevation from the barometer, not GPS altitude — far more accurate on hills • Distance from GPS Doppler speed with step-based stride calibration, so it holds up under tree cover and on switchbacks • Calories that account for the metabolic cost of climbing, not just distance • Heart-rate zones when you wear an Apple Watch APPLE WATCH, WITH OR WITHOUT YOUR IPHONE • Standalone workouts — leave the phone at home • Create routes on your wrist; they sync back automatically • Live heart rate and heart-rate zones • Lap splits and alerts on the watch too PRIVATE BY DESIGN • No ads — ever • No subscription. One purchase, yours forever • No account, no sign-up, no tracking, no analytics • No third-party SDKs PaceBuddy has no servers and makes no network connections. Your workouts, routes and settings stay on your devices — aside from heart-rate and workout data you choose to sync through Apple Health. TRY IT FIRST PaceBuddy is free for 14 days, with everything unlocked. After that, a single one-time purchase keeps it. No subscription, no renewal, and the workouts you recorded stay readable either way. A NOTE ON HOW IT WORKS Pace coaching compares you to your own history on a given route, so it appears from your second workout on that route onward — a first run has nothing to race yet. Workouts under 100 m are treated as accidental starts and discarded.

Screenshots

TheDailySteps4 screens
PaceBuddy4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is in-app purchases: TheDailySteps at none against PaceBuddy's 1. On price, rating, ratings volume and ads there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Both are free to download. PaceBuddy sells 1 one-off in-app purchase. TheDailySteps asks for nothing beyond the download.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for TheDailySteps against 5.0 for PaceBuddy. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 2 and 2 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 8 level
TheDailySteps versus PaceBuddy: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterTheDailyStepsPaceBuddy
PriceFreeFree
Rating5.0 (2 ratings)5.0 (2 ratings)
Positive reviews100.0% of reviews—
Number of ratings22
Update frequencyEvery 11 days—
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationFree — betterFree with in-app purchases
DevicesiPhoneiPhone, Apple Watch — better
Requires iOS17.616.2 — better
Further details — not scored
Size42 MB35 MB
Age rating12+4+
DeveloperAndrea MonroyShahab Karimi

In-app purchases

None

TheDailySteps

No in-app purchases

1 purchases

PaceBuddy

One-time1
  • Unlock PaceBuddy$6.99

Questions

Is TheDailySteps free?
TheDailySteps is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is PaceBuddy free?
PaceBuddy is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Which has better reviews, TheDailySteps or PaceBuddy?
TheDailySteps and PaceBuddy are both rated 5.0 out of 5 on the App Store, from 2 and 2 ratings respectively.
Do TheDailySteps or PaceBuddy have ads?
Neither TheDailySteps nor PaceBuddy shows ads.

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