Workout Builder Plugins for WordPress (2026): Top 12 Compared

WordPress.org lists exactly two plugins under its workout tag. The larger of the two runs on 30 sites. Filter by gym and you get five, topping out at 100 installs. Filter by bodybuilding and you get nothing at all. So there’s no real category here to crown a winner from. That’s why guides on this topic pad the list out with SEO plugins and header-image tools. This one sticks to what works, and what it costs.

Quick answer: Building workout plans on a budget? WM Workout Manager does it free, and nothing else does that job for USD 0. Running a studio with classes, trainers and members? Gym Builder covers all three free. Its USD 59.99 Pro Bundle adds progress charts and Stripe. Charging for access? Simple Membership does recurring billing free, which saves the USD 276 Ultimate Member wants for the same job. Selling programs to clients? Tutor LMS at USD 199 a year handles drip-fed weeks better than any fitness-branded plugin here.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Prices and plugin status verified against the WordPress.org plugin API and vendor pricing pages on 1 September 2026.

How We Selected These Plugins

Every plugin here cleared three hard gates on 1 September 2026. First, it has to still be installable. We queried each candidate against the WordPress.org plugin API and opened every premium listing directly. Four plugins from the earlier version of this guide are now closed on WordPress.org. One premium plugin has vanished from its marketplace entirely. Those are documented below rather than quietly dropped.

Second, it has to have shipped code in the last twelve months. Anything whose last update predates September 2025 was cut, no exceptions. WordPress 7.1 is the current release. A plugin never tested against WordPress 7.0 is a support problem waiting to happen.

Third, it has to do a job a fitness site actually needs. That means building workout plans, scheduling classes, gating content behind payment, tracking client progress, or delivering video. Yoast SEO and WP Header Images were on the old list. Both are fine plugins. Neither builds a workout, so neither is here.

We weighted free-tier capability heavily, because most people building a fitness site are one trainer with no budget. Install count and review volume mattered too, but both got discounted for this category. A workout plugin with 100 installs isn’t fringe here. It’s near the top of its tag. What we didn’t do is run load tests or measure page speed. Where a renewal price isn’t published, we say so instead of guessing.

Simply Schedule Appointments – Best for One-to-One PT Bookings

Free core, Plus USD 99/year | 50,000+ installs | Updated 25 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

You coach clients one at a time, in 30, 45 and 60-minute slots. You want them booking those slots themselves. That’s the exact shape Simply Schedule Appointments fits, and the free tier covers it completely. Unlimited appointment types, blackout dates for holidays, email confirmations, and a booking form for any page builder.

Where it stops mattering is group work. This plugin books a person into a slot. It won’t cap a spin class at 20 riders and it won’t sell a ten-session pass. If your business is classes rather than sessions, you’re on the wrong tool. The 155 reviews behind its rating come mostly from consultants and solo practitioners. That tells you who it was built for.

Taking money at booking is the expensive part. Stripe and PayPal live in the Professional tier at USD 199 a year. There’s no cheaper route to them. Gym Builder bundles Stripe into a USD 59.99 Pro Bundle, so you’re paying 3.3x more here for payment handling alone. That gap only pays off if SMS reminders and webhooks earn their keep too.

Pros

• Unlimited appointment types on the free tier
• Support replies to free users within one business day
• 30-day money-back guarantee on paid tiers
• Integrates with Gravity Forms, Formidable and MemberPress

Cons

• Payments locked behind the USD 199 Professional tier
• No class capacity limits, so group sessions need another plugin
• Every paid tier covers one site only

Pricing: The free Basic edition works on unlimited sites. Plus is listed at USD 99 a year against a USD 129 regular rate. Professional runs USD 199 against USD 249, and Business USD 399 against USD 499. Those first-year figures are introductory, so budget for the higher numbers from year two.

Best for: Personal trainers selling one-to-one sessions who want zero booking software cost.

Skip if: Your revenue comes from group classes.

Verdict: Buy this if you’re a solo trainer and your calendar is made of individual appointments. Don’t buy it if you run classes. Gym Builder handles capacity-limited sessions free, where this plugin can’t handle them at any price. And if you only want a deposit at booking, USD 199 for that one feature loses badly to Gym Builder’s USD 59.99 bundle.

WP Calorie Calculator – Best for Capturing Leads

Free core, Pro USD 49/year | 1,000+ installs | Version 4.4.2, updated 20 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

This isn’t a workout tool, and treating it as one is how people waste USD 49. It calculates daily calorie targets from height, weight, age and activity level, then emails the result. The workout content is yours to write. What this plugin does is give a visitor a reason to hand over an email address.

Look at it as lead capture and the numbers change. It’s the most-installed plugin carrying the fitness tag on WordPress.org, on 1,000 active sites. That tag holds only 19 plugins in total. In a category this small, that makes it the closest thing to a standard. The 12 ratings behind its score are thin, though, so treat the rating as a weak signal.

Development is steady rather than fast. WP Calorie Calculator 4.4.0 landed on 21 February 2026 with a redesigned admin interface, and renamed the “Sex” field to “Gender” throughout. Version 4.3.0 had added WordPress 6.9 support in December 2025. That’s a maintained plugin, just not an ambitious one.

On price, Pro is USD 49 a year for one site. That buys three calculation formulas and editable macronutrient breakdowns. Formidable Forms lists calculations at USD 79, so USD 30 more, though it builds every other form on your site too. Discount both for year one and the gap almost vanishes: roughly USD 39.20 here against Formidable’s USD 39.50. You’re paying either way to skip building the form yourself.

Pros

• Free version is genuinely usable, not a demo
• Emails results, so it doubles as a list builder
• Three formulas in Pro, including Mifflin-St Jeor

Cons

• Builds no workouts and stores no client history
• Rating rests on only 12 reviews
• Pro is per-year, not one-time

Pricing: Free on WordPress.org. Pro runs USD 49 a year for a single site, USD 79 for five sites, and USD 199 for fifty. A 20 percent first-year discount applied automatically at checkout when we looked, so year two costs more than year one.

Best for: Fitness bloggers who want an email list and have no client base yet.

Skip if: You need to store what a client weighed last month.

Verdict: Install the free version on any fitness blog. It costs nothing and converts readers into subscribers. Don’t pay USD 49 for Pro until you’ve measured that the calculator drives signups. Want calculators plus progress tracking plus client records? Gym Builder bundles four calculators into USD 59.99 and does the tracking this plugin never will.

Ultimate Member – Best Free Member Profiles

USD 276 a year. That’s what Ultimate Member charges for its cheapest paid plan, and it buys 21 extensions on one site. Hold that number, because it reframes everything else on this page.

Free core, Standard USD 276/year | 200,000+ installs | Version 2.13.0, updated 24 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

The free plugin is why it has 200,000 installs. You get member registration, login, editable profiles, member directories and role-based content restriction. For a gym site where members log in to see their program, that’s most of the job done at no cost. Profile photos, custom fields for height and starting weight, a searchable member list: all free.

Its reputation is uneven and the ratings show it. Of 1,444 reviews, 1,139 are five stars but 152 are one star. That’s an unusually heavy tail for a plugin this popular. The complaints cluster around upgrade breakage and extension support. Read it as a plugin that works well once configured and hurts when you touch it.

Pricing is where it falls down for fitness sites. Simple Membership gives you paid membership levels with Stripe, PayPal and Braintree recurring billing for USD 0. Ultimate Member wants USD 276 a year to reach comparable territory. That’s USD 276 of pure difference for a job a free plugin already does.

Pros

• Registration, profiles and directories all free
• Custom profile fields suit body-metric tracking
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Content restriction by user role in the free core

Cons

• 152 one-star reviews, mostly about update breakage
• Standard plan is USD 276 for one site
• Payments require paid extensions

Pricing: Core is free forever. Standard is USD 276 a year for one site with 21 extensions. Pro is USD 348 a year for two sites, adding Stripe, Zapier and the Ultimate Member theme. Both include a year of updates and email support. The vendor quotes these prices in USD on its own page.

Best for: Gyms that want member logins and profile pages without paying anything.

Skip if: You need to charge for membership.

Verdict: Use the free version for member profiles and directories, where it’s the strongest option here. Never buy Standard just to take payments. Simple Membership does recurring billing free and saves you the full USD 276. Want profiles and paid access together? Run Ultimate Member free alongside Simple Membership free and pay nothing at all.

Fitness Trainer – Best One-Time Purchase, With a Catch

Start with the problem. Fitness Trainer was last updated on 30 January 2025, over 19 months ago. WordPress 7.0 shipped in May 2026 and 7.1 in August 2026. This plugin has never been updated against either.

USD 39 one-time | 750 sales | 4.75 stars from 36 ratings | Last update 30 January 2025

That’s a shame, because feature-for-price it’s the best value here. USD 39 buys training plans in calendar or list form, plus diet and detox plans. You also get physical records for each client, a recipes section, and private comments between trainer and client. Subscription billing runs through PayPal or Stripe, with daily, weekly, monthly and yearly options plus free and paid trials.

Against Gym Builder’s USD 59.99 a year, this costs USD 20.99 less in year one and nothing after. Over three years you pay USD 39 against USD 179.97. That’s the argument, and on a spreadsheet it wins comfortably.

The counter-argument is the 19-month gap. This plugin handles payment data and client health records. No update through two major WordPress releases is a risk you’re choosing to accept. The Envato listing claims compatibility to WordPress 6.9, superseded back in May 2026. Buy it knowing that.

Pros

• One-time USD 39, no annual renewal
• Training plans, diet plans and client records in one plugin
• Subscription billing built in, no extension needed
• 4.75 stars across 36 ratings

Cons

• No update since January 2025
• Never tested against WordPress 7.0 or 7.1
• Support runs six months, then costs extra

Pricing: USD 39 for a regular license covering one site. That includes six months of developer support and future updates. An extended license exists for sites that charge end users. There’s no annual fee, so the only recurring cost is optional support renewal.

Best for: Trainers who want plans, diets and billing in one purchase, and who test on staging first.

Skip if: You handle client payment data and can’t accept a stale codebase.

Verdict: Buy it if USD 39 once beats USD 59.99 a year for you, and test it on staging before going live. Don’t buy it if the site takes card payments from the public. An unpatched plugin in that path isn’t worth USD 21 of savings. Pay Gym Builder USD 59.99 for code that shipped last week, or Tutor LMS USD 199 if the plans need real course structure.

WM Workout Manager – Best Free Workout Plan Builder

Thirty active installs. That’s the entire user base, and it’s still the most-installed plugin carrying the workout tag on WordPress.org. The tag contains two plugins. This is what the category looks like from the inside.

Free | 30+ installs | Version 1.1.0, updated 13 January 2026 | Added to the directory 21 August 2025

Small doesn’t mean bad. The plugin does one thing cleanly. You get custom post types for exercises and for workouts. Assemble those exercises into a named plan, then render it anywhere by shortcode. WM Workout Manager 1.1.0 shipped on 13 January 2026 with a card layout, a custom CSS editor and live admin preview. The accordion template ships accessibility-ready, which matters more than it sounds when your members skew older.

What you don’t get is anything around the workout. No client accounts, no progress logging, no payment, no scheduling. It publishes plans. Say you’re a trainer with a blog, and you want “Week 3: Lower Body” to look like a structured workout rather than a bulleted list. This is the whole answer, and it costs nothing.

Set it against Fitness Trainer’s USD 39 and you’re giving up client records and billing to save that USD 39. Set it against Gym Builder’s free tier and it wins on the point that matters most: it builds workout plans without a paid add-on. Gym Builder locks workouts inside its USD 59.99 Fitness Tracking module.

Pros

• Genuinely free, with no upsell tier
• Separate exercise and workout post types, so exercises are reusable
• Accessibility-ready accordion template
• Custom CSS editor for matching your theme

Cons

• Only 30 active installs, so abandonment risk is real
• No client accounts, tracking or payments
• Tested to WordPress 6.9.7, not 7.1

Pricing: Free, with no paid tier and no add-ons. There’s no renewal because there’s nothing to renew. The trade is that a single unpaid developer maintains it, and two ratings won’t tell you how it behaves at scale.

Best for: Trainers publishing workout plans as content on a blog or portfolio site.

Skip if: Clients need to log in and record what they lifted.

Verdict: Install it if publishing structured plans is the whole requirement, because nothing else does that for USD 0. Don’t build a business on it. Thirty installs and one maintainer is a thin foundation. Once you need client logins or payment, move to Gym Builder free plus Simple Membership free. That pair still costs USD 0 and covers far more.

Gym Builder – Best All-Round Studio Plugin

Where Ultimate Member charges USD 276 a year and Tutor LMS charges USD 199, Gym Builder’s full Pro Bundle is USD 59.99. That’s under a third of Tutor’s price and under a quarter of Ultimate Member’s. The free tier alone covers more studio-specific ground than either.

Free core, Pro Bundle USD 59.99/year | 100+ installs | Version 2.5.2, updated 25 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

The free version runs a small studio. You get classes with a weekly timetable and per-slot capacity, plus trainer profiles with bios and schedules. A member database auto-creates WordPress accounts. Membership and pricing plans work in multiple currencies, and both members and trainers get front-end dashboards. Four fitness calculators are included: BMI, body fat, water intake and protein intake. None of that costs anything.

Development is the fastest here. Gym Builder 2.3.0 added a separate trainer and student login system on 24 February 2026, and 2.5.0 added multi-class membership on 15 June 2026. Ten releases landed in the first eight months of 2026. No other fitness-specific plugin on this page matches that rate.

Here’s the part to price in. Workout plans and progress tracking aren’t free. They live in the Fitness Tracking add-on inside the Pro Bundle. That bundle also carries Stripe subscriptions, personal-session booking, attendance check-in, Zoom and 17 Elementor widgets. Individual add-ons run USD 19.99 to USD 39.99 a year. Just two at the top of that range cost USD 79.98, comfortably more than the whole bundle.

Pros

• Class capacity limits free, which Simply Schedule can’t do at any price
• Four calculators bundled, versus USD 49 for WP Calorie Calculator alone
• Perfect rating across seven reviews
• Ten releases in 2026 so far

Cons

• Workout plans and progress charts need the paid Pro Bundle
• Only 100 active installs
• Seven ratings is too few to judge edge cases

Pricing: Free core with no time limit. The Pro Bundle is USD 59.99 a year for a single site and unlocks ten add-ons, with a lifetime option offered. Individual add-ons sit between USD 19.99 and USD 39.99 a year.

Best for: A studio or box running scheduled classes with named trainers and a member roster.

Skip if: You coach individuals only and never run a class.

Verdict: This is the pick for anyone running classes. The free tier alone beats paying Ultimate Member USD 276 for a comparable member system. Buy the USD 59.99 bundle the moment you need progress charts or Stripe. If you coach one-to-one and never run classes, Simply Schedule Appointments does your booking free, and this plugin’s class engine goes unused.

Formidable Forms – Best Replacement for the Closed Weight Trackers

You need clients logging weight, waist and lifts each week, with a chart showing the trend. Until 2024 that job had two obvious answers. Then WordPress.org closed both Weight Tracker and Meal Tracker on 2 September 2024, citing a security issue for each, and neither has returned. Formidable Forms is where people went instead.

Free core, Basic USD 39.50 | 300,000+ installs | Updated 27 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

It’s a form builder, so nothing about it is fitness-specific. That’s the point. You define the fields you want tracked, set up a form clients submit weekly, and the entries accumulate as data you own. Calculations are available from the Basic tier, so BMI or one-rep-max formulas are a field setting rather than another purchase.

Charts are the part that costs. Graphs unlock in Plus at USD 99.50 for year one, listed against a USD 199 regular rate. Gym Builder puts progress charts inside its USD 59.99 bundle. You pay USD 39.51 more here for year one, and considerably more after that. What the difference buys is a license that builds every other form on the site.

Watch the tier ladder carefully. Front-end user registration and profile views sit in Business at USD 199.50. You need those if clients log in to see their own history. That’s the real price of a self-service client portal built this way. Compare it against Tutor LMS at the same USD 199 before committing.

Pros

• The highest install count here at 300,000, with 1,380 ratings
• Calculations available from the USD 39.50 Basic tier
• Client-owned data, no third-party service
• Handles every other form on the site too

Cons

• Charts need Plus at USD 99.50, rising to USD 199
• User registration needs Business at USD 199.50
• Nothing fitness-specific, so you design every field yourself

Pricing: Free on WordPress.org. Basic is USD 39.50 for year one against a USD 79 list rate. Plus runs USD 99.50 against USD 199, Business USD 199.50 against USD 399, and Elite USD 299.50 against USD 599. Those first-year prices roughly halve the list price, so plan for the full rate at renewal. A 14-day refund window applies.

Best for: Coaches who want weekly client check-ins with charts and full control of the data.

Skip if: You only need one calculator on a public page.

Verdict: Buy Plus at USD 99.50 if progress charts are the requirement and you need forms elsewhere too. If charts are the only reason you’re here, Gym Builder delivers them for USD 59.99 with a member system attached. That’s the better buy. For a single public calculator with no tracking, WP Calorie Calculator’s free tier costs nothing and takes ten minutes.

Tutor LMS – Best for Selling Structured Programs

A 12-week strength program is a course. Accept that, and the fitness-plugin category stops being the place to shop. Tutor LMS treats each week as a module and each session as a lesson. It drip-feeds them on a schedule, so clients can’t skip ahead to week ten.

Free core, Individual USD 199/year | 100,000+ installs | Updated 21 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.0.4

The free version already handles a lot. Unlimited courses, lessons, quizzes, a student dashboard and course progress all cost nothing. For a trainer packaging a program as a lead magnet, free is enough. Paid adds the parts that make it a business: subscriptions, certificates, assignments and content dripping.

Price it honestly against the alternatives. USD 199 a year for one site is more than three times Gym Builder’s USD 59.99, and Simple Membership does its own job for USD 0. What USD 199 buys that neither offers is real course sequencing, quiz-gated progression and completion certificates. If your product is a program with an order, that structure is the thing you’re paying for.

The lifetime option changes the math. USD 499 once for one site pays for itself in two and a half years. For a coach planning to sell the same program for years, look at that tier first. Note that the vendor moved its product pages to a new domain, so older bookmarks pointing at themeum.com now redirect.

Pros

• Content dripping stops clients jumping ahead in a program
• Free tier runs unlimited courses and students
• 30-day money-back guarantee
• Lifetime license available at USD 499

Cons

• USD 199 a year is the highest recurring price here
• Tested to WordPress 7.0.4, one release behind current
• Nothing fitness-aware, so no sets, reps or body metrics

Pricing: Free core on WordPress.org. Individual is USD 199 a year or USD 499 lifetime for one site. Business is USD 399 a year or USD 999 lifetime for ten sites. Agency is USD 799 a year for unlimited sites, or USD 1,999 lifetime capped at 50. All tiers carry a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Best for: Coaches selling multi-week programs where the order of sessions matters.

Skip if: Clients need workouts on demand rather than in sequence.

Verdict: Choose Tutor LMS when you sell a fixed-sequence program and want dripping and certificates. Take the USD 499 lifetime license over the annual one if you expect a third year. If clients pick workouts freely instead of following a sequence, that USD 199 buys structure you won’t use. Gym Builder plus Simple Membership covers you for USD 59.99.

Presto Player – Best for Workout Video Delivery

The weakness first, because it decides whether this suits you. Presto Player is a player, not a host. It doesn’t store your video files. You still need Bunny.net, Vimeo or YouTube behind it, and that bill is separate from the numbers below.

Free core, Starter USD 79 | 100,000+ installs | Version 4.4.1, updated 27 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

What it does instead is make video usable for training. Chapters let a member jump straight to the warm-up or the cool-down inside a 40-minute session. Presets keep every video branded the same way. Email capture can gate a video partway through, turning a free workout into a list-building tool. Analytics show where people stopped watching, which tells you which exercise lost them.

A 96 percent score across 339 ratings puts it among the better-reviewed plugins on this page. Chapters alone justify it on a fitness site. Scrubbing a video to find the third circuit is exactly the friction that makes members give up.

The tier pricing has an odd shape worth exploiting. Starter is USD 79 a year for one site. Pro is USD 119 a year for 25 sites. That’s USD 40 more for 24 extra sites, or USD 4.76 per site against USD 79. Run more than one fitness site, or build them for clients, and Starter is the wrong purchase.

Set that against the rest of this list and video looks expensive. Presto Player Pro at USD 119 costs USD 59.01 more than Gym Builder’s entire USD 59.99 Pro Bundle, which covers workouts, payments, booking and check-in. Video is the single priciest job on a fitness site, and it isn’t close.

Pros

• Chapters let members skip to a specific exercise
• Email gate mid-video converts free workouts into signups
• 96 percent rating across 339 reviews
• Pro covers 25 sites for USD 119

Cons

• Hosting and bandwidth are still your bill
• Only a 14-day refund window
• Analytics and chapters both need a paid tier

Pricing: The free version on WordPress.org covers basic playback and branding colours. Starter is USD 79 for year one against a USD 99 list rate, for one site. Pro is USD 119 against USD 149 and covers 25 sites. A lifetime license is USD 399 against USD 499, also 25 sites, or three payments of USD 139.

Best for: Studios delivering recorded classes where members jump between exercises.

Skip if: Your workouts are written, not filmed.

Verdict: Buy Pro at USD 119, not Starter at USD 79, unless you’re certain you’ll never run a second site. Skip the plugin entirely if your programs are text and images, since Gym Builder or WM Workout Manager display those free. Budget separately for video hosting before you commit. That recurring cost usually exceeds the USD 119 license.

MotoPress Timetable – Best Free Class Timetable

Free | 30,000+ installs | Version 2.4.19, updated 28 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

Publishing a weekly class grid is a display problem, not a booking problem. This plugin solves the display half properly for USD 0. You define columns as days and rows as time slots, then fill in classes with instructors and descriptions. It renders as a readable grid in Gutenberg or Elementor, and an upcoming-events widget handles the sidebar.

Longevity is the reassuring part. It’s been in the directory since April 2016, sits on 30,000 active sites, and shipped an update four days before we checked. For a plugin with no paid tier funding it, that’s an unusually stable base to build on.

The ratings deserve a caveat. Of 69 reviews, 54 are five stars and 9 are one star. That one-star cluster is large for the sample size. Complaints center on the limits of the free version rather than on bugs. Recurring events, month and day views, and multi-day events aren’t included.

The upsell is a separate product, not a pro tier, and it isn’t thriving. MotoPress Events Calendar sells for USD 39 on CodeCanyon, was last updated on 17 October 2025, and has recorded 16 sales. Now compare that USD 39 with Gym Builder’s USD 0 free tier, which includes the per-slot capacity limits this plugin doesn’t offer at any price.

Pros

• Fully free with no metered limits
• 30,000 installs and a decade in the directory
• Gutenberg and Elementor support built in
• Updated within the last week

Cons

• Displays classes but can’t take bookings
• No recurring events in the free version
• Paid upgrade is a separate USD 39 product with 16 sales

Pricing: Free, permanently, with no pro tier attached to this plugin. The vendor’s paid Events Calendar is a distinct CodeCanyon product at USD 39 for a regular license. Given 16 recorded sales and a last update in October 2025, treat it as a low-activity product rather than an active roadmap.

Best for: Studios that take bookings by phone or in person and just need the grid online.

Skip if: Members should be able to reserve a spot themselves.

Verdict: Use it when the timetable is information rather than a booking system, and it’ll cost you nothing forever. Don’t buy the USD 39 Events Calendar upgrade. Sixteen sales and a ten-month-old update aren’t a product to depend on. If members need to book a place in a class, Gym Builder’s free tier does capacity-limited booking and this plugin never will.

Simple Membership – Best Free Paywall

Ultimate Member wants USD 276 a year to charge for membership. Tutor LMS wants USD 199. Simple Membership does recurring billing through PayPal, Stripe and Braintree for USD 0, and has done since 2014.

Free | 40,000+ installs | Version 4.8.2, updated 31 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

The mechanics are plain, and that’s the appeal. Create membership levels called whatever you like, mark posts and pages as protected, then assign them to levels. Members register, pay, and see the content their level unlocks. One-time and recurring payments both work in the free core. That’s the feature most free membership plugins hold back.

For a fitness site the fit is direct. Put your workout library behind a Silver level at USD 15 a month. Put video sessions behind Gold at USD 30. The plugin handles who sees what. Combine it with WM Workout Manager for the plans themselves, and your entire paid workout site costs nothing in licenses.

Its 475 ratings run 399 five-star against 32 one-star. That’s a healthier spread than Ultimate Member’s 1,139 against 152. It updated the day before we checked. The honest limitation is polish: the admin interface is dated, and there’s no drag-and-drop anything. You’re trading appearance for USD 276 of savings.

Pros

• Recurring billing free, via PayPal, Stripe and Braintree
• Unlimited membership levels at no cost
• 6.7 percent one-star reviews, against Ultimate Member’s 10.5
• Twelve years in the directory, updated 31 August 2026

Cons

• Dated admin interface
• No member profiles or directories, unlike Ultimate Member
• Add-ons exist but their prices aren’t published

Pricing: Free, with the payment gateways included rather than sold as extensions. Premium add-ons are offered on the vendor site, but no prices are listed on the pages we checked, so we can’t quote them. The core paywall requires no payment at any point.

Best for: Anyone charging monthly for access to workout content.

Skip if: You need member profiles and a searchable directory.

Verdict: This is the default paywall for a fitness site. Paying Ultimate Member USD 276 to do the same job is money thrown away. Choose it whenever the requirement is “charge for access”. If you also need public member profiles and directories, run Ultimate Member’s free tier alongside it rather than buying either paid plan.

GamiPress – Best for Challenges and Streaks

A client who has logged twelve straight sessions doesn’t cancel. That’s the whole business case for gamification on a fitness site. It’s also why the old version of this guide included a leaderboard plugin. That plugin is no longer identifiable as a live product. GamiPress is where the job went.

Free core, Personal Pass USD 199/year | 10,000+ installs | Updated 31 August 2026 | Tested to WordPress 7.1

The free core covers points, achievements and ranks. Award points when a member completes a workout. Unlock a badge at ten sessions. Promote them from Bronze to Silver at fifty. For a 30-day challenge with a visible progress bar, the free version is the whole build.

Its 493 ratings produce a 98 percent score. Among plugins here with more than 100 reviews, only Simply Schedule Appointments beats it, with a perfect score across 155. That’s a meaningful signal in a category where most fitness-specific plugins have fewer than 15 reviews between them.

Paid pricing gets awkward for small sites. Personal Pass is USD 199 a year, the same as Tutor LMS Individual, and there’s no cheaper paid tier. (No USD 49 entry point, which for a plugin this fiddly to configure feels like a missed step.) You’re either on the free core or paying USD 199, and that tier unlocks the leaderboards most fitness sites actually want.

Pros

• Points, badges and ranks all free
• 98 percent from 493 reviews
• Integrates with Tutor LMS, so course completion awards points
• Updated the day before we checked

Cons

• Leaderboards need the USD 199 Personal Pass
• No cheap paid tier between free and USD 199
• Setup is fiddly, with points, types and triggers configured separately

Pricing: Core is free on WordPress.org. Personal Pass is USD 199 a year for one site with all add-ons. Professional Pass is USD 399 for five sites, All Access USD 699 for unlimited. Three-year and five-year terms are discounted by 20 and 40 percent. No refund period is stated on the pricing page.

Best for: Membership sites running challenges where streaks drive retention.

Skip if: You have fewer than 50 members, since nobody competes on an empty leaderboard.

Verdict: Run the free core on any site with an active member base. Badges and ranks cost nothing and measurably hold people. Only pay USD 199 once you have enough members for a leaderboard to feel competitive. Below 50 active members, spend that USD 199 on Tutor LMS instead and give people better programs to follow.

How to Choose a Workout Plugin for Your Site

Most guides hand you a feature checklist here. That isn’t useful when half the category is dead. What matters is matching your situation to a stack, so here are four, with real numbers.

Budget USD 0. Solo trainer, no clients yet. Use WM Workout Manager for the plans, Simply Schedule Appointments free for one-to-one bookings, and WP Calorie Calculator free to capture emails. Total license cost is zero and it stays zero. Skip Gym Builder here even though it’s better built. Its workout module is the paid part, and you’ve no members yet to justify USD 59.99.

Workload: 15+ classes a week. A studio with named instructors. Gym Builder free covers the timetable, capacity limits, trainer profiles and member roster. Add the USD 59.99 Pro Bundle when you want Stripe and attendance check-in. Skip Simply Schedule Appointments entirely: it can’t cap a class, so its USD 199 payment tier buys nothing you need.

Audience: 200+ paying members. Monthly access to a video library. Use Simple Membership free for the paywall, Presto Player Pro at USD 119 for 25 sites, and GamiPress free for streaks. That’s USD 119 a year in total. Skip Ultimate Member’s USD 276 Standard plan, which does the paywall job Simple Membership already does free. Skip Formidable Business at USD 199.50 unless clients submit weekly measurements.

Product: a 12-week program. Sold once, followed in order. Take Tutor LMS at USD 499 lifetime, because dripping is the feature and you’ll sell this for years. Skip the USD 199 annual tier if you expect a third year, since lifetime breaks even at two and a half. Skip Fitness Trainer’s USD 39 despite the price. A plugin last updated in January 2025 shouldn’t handle subscription payments.

One general rule cuts through the rest. Free tiers in this category are unusually strong, because the paid market is too small to sustain aggressive metering. Install the free version, run it for a month, and pay only when a specific missing feature blocks you. Still choosing where the site will live? Our guide to WordPress hosting for ecommerce covers what selling memberships demands from a host. And managed WordPress hosting in the USA matters more than usual once you start serving video.

Watch the plugin count as you assemble this. A fitness stack reaches six or seven plugins quickly. Our guide on how many plugins you should install explains why the number matters less than whether each one is maintained.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free WordPress plugin for creating workout plans?

Yes, but only one worth naming. WM Workout Manager builds exercises and workout plans free, with no paid tier, and renders them by shortcode. Gym Builder’s free version does classes, trainers and members, but puts workout plans in its USD 59.99 Pro Bundle. Everything else free in this space handles scheduling or calculators, not the workouts themselves.

Is WPGYM still available in 2026?

No. The WPGYM CodeCanyon listing returns “This item is no longer available”. The developer’s own site, mojoomla.com, serves a hosting suspension page as of 1 September 2026. The developer is still an active Envato author selling the WPGYM companion mobile app for USD 99. The WordPress plugin that app connects to is gone. Roundups published in 2026 still recommend it. Gym Builder is the closest live equivalent.

Can I sell workout plans on WordPress without WooCommerce?

Yes. Simple Membership takes recurring payments through PayPal, Stripe and Braintree in its free version, with no WooCommerce needed. Tutor LMS handles one-off program sales at USD 199 a year. Fitness Trainer includes subscription billing in its USD 39 one-time price. WooCommerce only earns its place once you also sell physical goods like supplements or apparel.

Which plugin lets personal trainers track client progress in WordPress?

Gym Builder’s Fitness Tracking add-on covers workouts, metrics, goals and progress charts inside the USD 59.99 bundle. Formidable Forms does the same job through custom forms, with charts unlocking at USD 99.50 for year one. WordPress.org closed Weight Tracker and Meal Tracker, the two plugins that used to own this job, on 2 September 2024 over security issues. Any guide still recommending them is out of date.

How much does a complete WordPress fitness site cost in plugins?

Zero, if you accept the free tiers. WM Workout Manager, Simple Membership, Gym Builder free, MotoPress Timetable and GamiPress free together cover plans, payments, classes, timetables and challenges with no license fee. A realistic paid stack runs USD 179 a year: Gym Builder Pro at USD 59.99 plus Presto Player Pro at USD 119 for video. Adding Tutor LMS pushes that to USD 378.

Final Verdict

The honest summary is that “workout builder plugin” isn’t really a category. Two plugins carry the tag on WordPress.org, and the larger runs on 30 sites. Anyone telling you there are 15 great options is padding. That’s exactly what the 2021 version of this page did, with Yoast SEO and a header-image plugin.

So build a stack instead. WM Workout Manager is the only free plugin that builds workout plans. Start there if publishing programs is the whole job. Gym Builder is the strongest all-rounder and our pick for a studio. Ten releases shipped in 2026, and class capacity limits are in the free tier. Simple Membership is the paywall, free, and it makes Ultimate Member’s USD 276 Standard plan hard to justify for anything but profiles.

Pay for exactly three things. Gym Builder Pro at USD 59.99 when you need progress charts. Presto Player Pro at USD 119 when workouts are filmed, taking the 25-site tier rather than USD 79 for one. Tutor LMS at USD 499 lifetime when you sell sequenced programs and expect a third year.

Two things to avoid outright. Don’t install anything still recommending WPGYM, Fitness Schedule, Weight Tracker or Meal Tracker. All four are gone, and three were closed over security. And don’t buy Fitness Trainer for a site taking public card payments, however good USD 39 once looks against USD 59.99 a year. Nineteen months without an update isn’t a risk worth USD 21.

Building the rest of the site? Our comparison of event and appointment plugins goes deeper on booking than this page does, and covers class-based scheduling in more detail. For everything that isn’t fitness-specific, from caching to backups, see our list of must-have WordPress plugins. One last thing worth watching. AllCoach, a coaching-management plugin from ThemeGrill, joined the directory on 5 May 2026. It’s on roughly 100 sites with no reviews yet, so it’s too new to recommend. It’s also the first serious entrant this category has seen in years.