Comparison

Stepwise vs Loop

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

Head to head
About

Stepwise

Features
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Make every step count. Stepwise is a clean, battery-friendly pedometer and GPS activity tracker that turns daily movement into lasting momentum—with 3D awards, customizable widgets, and 100% on-device privacy. Whether you're taking a mindful walk, commuting, hiking a scenic trail, or training for a run, get real-time metrics, precision GPS route tracking, interactive widgets, and collectible 3D awards—all in one battery-friendly, privacy-first experience. TRACK YOUR DAILY MOVEMENT & HABITS • Daily Activity at a Glance: Monitor steps, active calories, walking distance, flights climbed, and active minutes in real time. • Smart Goals & Streaks: Set personalized daily step targets and build motivating streaks. Need a rest day? Pause your goal without breaking your streak. • Interactive Trends & Visual Calendar: Explore daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly trends with fluid charts, or look back at any date using the visual calendar. • Meaningful Activity Insights: Uncover your most active hours, weekday patterns, and fun milestone comparisons as you move. • Smart Weather & Running Advisories: Check temperature, UV index, and conditions before stepping out, with smart advisories for great walking and running weather. RECORD OUTDOOR & INDOOR WORKOUTS • Multi-Sport Tracking: Track walking, running, cycling, and hiking with dedicated indoor and outdoor activity modes. • Precision GPS & Lock-Screen Routes: Follow your route, live pace, elevation, split times, and GPS signal strength—even with your phone locked. • Built-In Apple Music Player: Enjoy your favorite workout playlists and curated radio stations without ever leaving the app, with convenient lock-screen controls. • Brag-Worthy Share Cards: Add photos to your workouts, overlay your route and statistics, and share your achievements with friends. • Apple Health Two-Way Sync: Seamlessly sync workouts, steps, and distance with Apple HealthKit to keep your health data centralized. COLLECT 3D AWARDS & MEDALLIONS • Interactive 3D Medals: Celebrate achievements with beautifully rendered 3D medals that you can drag, rotate, and inspect up close. • Collector Ranks & Sneaker Drops: Unlock exclusive sneaker drops and level up your status from Novice Stepper all the way to Obsidian Legend. • Lifetime Milestones: Earn trophies for consistency, distance milestones, and special workout challenges. CRAFTED EXCLUSIVELY FOR APPLE • Live Activities & Dynamic Island: Glance at your active workout time, distance, and pace directly from your Lock Screen or Dynamic Island. • Home & Lock Screen Widgets: Keep your step progress and current streak front and center throughout your day. • Apple Watch Companion: Check daily steps, monitor activity metrics, and start workouts right from your wrist. • Thoughtfully Customizable: Choose between Dark and Light mode, pick custom app icons, select metric or imperial units, and set your preferred week start day. BATTERY EFFICIENT & PRIVACY FIRST • Gentle on Your Battery: Powered by Apple’s built-in motion coprocessor for all-day tracking without draining your battery. • 100% On-Device Privacy: Your health, motion, and location data stay safely on your device and inside Apple Health. No third-party data tracking or selling—ever. Supported Languages: English, Simplified Chinese (简体中文), German (Deutsch), Korean (한국어), Japanese (日本語), Traditional Chinese (繁體中文), French (Français), and Spanish (Español). Start moving, build lasting habits, and celebrate your progress—one step at a time.

About

Loop

Features
Read full description

LOOP — EVERYTHING YOUR WATCH KNOWS, IN ONE CLEAR OVERVIEW Your Apple Watch measures more than you ever get to see. Loop shows all of it on one calm page, no searching, no tapping through menus. Open the app and your latest run is right there: distance, pace, heart rate, splits, the weather, the route. Swipe for the run before it. CLASSIC DESIGN Warm paper, one amber accent, big clear numbers. No loud colors, no feed, no ads, no account, no subscription. Loop is designed like a good instrument: everything you need, nothing that distracts. THE WEATHER DURING YOUR RUN What no other app does: the weather at the moment you ran. Temperature, feels-like, rain and UV, and for every kilometer whether you had a headwind or a tailwind, calculated from the wind direction and your heading. Now you know why that one kilometer felt harder. WHEN TO GO A score from 1 to 10 for running, cycling, walking and outdoor sports, right now and hour by hour for the rest of the day, with the reason: warm, wind, rain, strong sun. "Best from 6 to 8 pm" — that's all you need to know. EVERYTHING YOUR WATCH RECORDS • Splits per kilometer or mile with pace, heart rate, wind and temperature • Heart rate, cadence, running power, stride length, ground contact time, vertical oscillation, elevation • Cycling power, cadence and speed from paired sensors • The route on a map • Charts in your order: put what matters to you at the top RECORDS Your fastest 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, 20 km, half marathon, 25, 30, 40 km, marathon and 50 km — the top three per distance, even when it was a stretch inside a longer run. A run with a record gets a medal. WORKOUTS Create a pace run, heart rate run or intervals on your iPhone (warm-up, blocks by distance or time, repeats, cool-down). They go to the Watch by themselves. While running you see a speedometer: up is on target, left too slow, right too fast; outside the band you get taps. Share a workout as a TCX file with Strava, Garmin or Komoot. LIST AND FAVORITES All workouts by month, filtered by running, cycling, walking, swimming, other, distance and favorites. Tap and you're in the run. PRIVACY Everything stays on your iPhone. Loop only reads from Health, writes nothing, and has no server of its own. Weather comes from Apple Weather. For iPhone, with workouts from Apple Watch or any app that writes to Health, such as Strava or Garmin. English, Dutch, German, French and Spanish. Kilometers or miles, °C or °F, following your device.

Screenshots

Stepwise4 screens
Loop4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is update cadence: Loop at daily against Stepwise's every 3 days. Loop also leads on iOS requirement (17.0 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support 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. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Stepwise ships an update every 3 days, Loop daily. The most recent releases landed on October 15, 2026 and October 18, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard2 real differences · 4 level
Stepwise versus Loop: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterStepwiseLoop
PriceFreeFree
Update frequencyEvery 3 daysDaily — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Apple Watch — betteriPhone, Apple Watch
Requires iOS26.017.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size50 MB4 MB
Age rating4+4+
Developer璇 冯Dimitry van den Berg

In-app purchases

None

Stepwise

No in-app purchases

None

Loop

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is Stepwise free?
Stepwise is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Is Loop free?
Loop is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Do Stepwise or Loop have ads?
Neither Stepwise nor Loop shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Stepwise or Loop?
Stepwise ships an update every 3 days, and Loop daily. Most recently, Stepwise was updated on October 15, 2026 and Loop on October 18, 2026.

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