Ten yoga apps compared on what they actually cost, what you get without paying, and who each one is really for — with App Store ratings verified in August 2026.
Every star rating and review count below was read from Apple's public App Store data on 8 August 2026 — not estimated, and checkable by opening any listing yourself. We describe what each app gives you before payment, because that is the part marketing pages tend to bury.
We publish FLOW, one of the ten apps here. It is listed under class planning, which is the only thing it does, and it is not ranked against apps that stream classes because they are not the same product. No app in this list paid to appear and none of these links earn us anything.
Almost every yoga app is free to download. The real question is what survives once the trial ends — a full library, a teaser, or nothing.
Streaming a class and planning one are opposite jobs. Apps that try both usually do one of them badly.
Studios have thick walls and retreats have none. Offline download is the difference between a practice and a spinner.
A generator that never repeats is fun for a month. A library with real teachers is what you still open in year two.
1Best for: Practising at home when you want a different class every time
2Best for: Practitioners past the beginner stage who want named, experienced teachers
3Best for: People who will keep opening an app that looks and feels beautiful
4Best for: Anyone whose actual problem is stiffness rather than yoga specifically
5Best for: People who want yoga to also be their workout
6Best for: Practitioners who want yoga as a tradition, not a workout
7Best for: Practising where there is no signal
8Best for: Teachers planning classes — not students following them
Pick for the job, not the rating. Every app here is rated above 4.5, which tells you almost nothing — they are rated by the people who chose correctly and stayed. Decide first whether you are practising or teaching, then whether you want a generated class or a named teacher. That narrows ten apps to two.
For practising at home, Down Dog is the strongest all-round choice: it generates a fresh sequence each session, works offline, and has a free tier you can genuinely use. If you want named, experienced teachers and programmes that run over weeks, Glo is the better pick. Teachers planning classes are doing a different job and need a sequence builder rather than a streaming app.
Yes, though most "free" apps mean a free trial. Sadhguru is free outright, funded by a non-profit. Bend has one of the most generous lasting free tiers. Down Dog's free tier is limited but usable. FLOW gives away its complete 420+ pose library on the free plan.
Down Dog, because you can set the level to complete beginner and the pace stays slow enough to follow without pausing. If your real problem is stiffness rather than wanting to learn yoga, Bend is a gentler entry point and asks less commitment.
Some do. Yoga Studio by Gaiam handles offline best — full classes download and play without a connection. Down Dog also supports downloads. Streaming-first apps generally need a connection, which matters in studios with thick walls and on retreats.
For maintaining a home practice, yes. For learning correct alignment in load-bearing poses, no — an app cannot see you. Most experienced practitioners use both: a class or two a month with a teacher who can adjust them, and an app for the days in between.
Teachers need a planning tool, not a class library: somewhere to order poses, set timing, record cues and contraindications, and export a lesson plan. That is what a yoga sequence builder does. FLOW is one; Tummee and Sequence Wiz are the established alternatives.
Most sit between roughly $10 and $25 a month, with meaningful discounts for annual billing. Prices move often, so check the vendor's own page before subscribing — the App Store listing usually shows only the cheapest in-app purchase, not the plan you will actually be on.
For practising at home, start with Down Dog — the free tier is real and you will know within a week. For planning classes, the job is different enough that a streaming app cannot help; that is where FLOW fits.
Every star rating and review count in the table above was read from Apple's public App Store data on 8 August 2026. They are not estimates and you can check any of them by opening the listing. We have deliberately not invented a scoring system — a number like "8.4/10" would imply we ran ten apps through an identical test, and nobody does that honestly across streaming libraries, generators and planning tools.
What we have done instead is describe what each app is for, what it gives you before you pay, and where it stops. That is the information that decides whether an app survives its first month on your phone.
One disclosure, stated plainly because it matters: we publish FLOW, which appears at number eight. It is listed under class planning, which is the only thing it does, and it is not ranked against Down Dog or Glo because it is not the same kind of product. If it were a streaming app it would not make this list.
Most "best yoga app" lists mix two products that have nothing in common.
The first kind gives you a class to follow. You press play, a teacher or a generated voice leads you, and the app's job is to be worth opening again tomorrow. Down Dog, Glo, Alo and Asana Rebel are all this.
The second kind helps you build a class for other people. There is no video. The job is ordering poses so the body is ready for what comes next, tracking how long the whole thing runs, and producing something you can teach from — or hand to a substitute. That is a different product with different users, and a streaming app cannot do it however good it is.
If you are a teacher searching for a yoga app, this is almost certainly why the lists you have read felt useless. They were reviewing the wrong category.
Every app here is free to download. That word is doing a lot of work.
Free forever. Sadhguru is genuinely free — it is funded by a non-profit rather than subscriptions. Bend keeps a substantial part of its content open indefinitely. FLOW's entire 420-pose library is on the free plan, because a library you cannot see is not a reason to subscribe.
Free tier with limits. Down Dog lets you practise without paying, with fewer options for pace and focus. You can use it for a long time before the limits become the reason you upgrade, which is the honest version of a free tier.
Free trial. Glo, Alo and Asana Rebel are subscription products with a trial attached. Nothing wrong with that, but "free" in an app-store listing means something different from what a reader assumes, and it is worth knowing before you install four apps expecting to compare them side by side.
Every app in this comparison is rated 4.5 or above. Nine of the ten are above 4.6. That spread is too narrow to choose on.
The reason is survivorship: app ratings are written overwhelmingly by people who picked correctly and stuck around. Someone who installed a yoga-fitness hybrid expecting traditional practice usually deletes it without leaving a review. So the rating measures how well an app serves the people it suited — not how likely it is to suit you.
Review count is more informative than the score. Down Dog's 326,769 ratings represent a scale nothing else here approaches, and scale at 4.9 is genuinely hard to fake or buy. A 4.9 across 300 reviews and a 4.9 across 300,000 are not the same claim.
Are you practising or teaching? If you are building classes for other people, stop reading roundups of streaming apps — you need a sequence builder. If you are practising, continue.
Do you want a class generated, or a teacher? A generator never repeats and never judges, which suits people whose failure mode is boredom. A named teacher is better if your failure mode is drifting out of good alignment without noticing, because a real person filmed teaching real students will say the thing you needed to hear.
Answer those two and ten apps become two. Install both, use the free tier for a fortnight, and keep whichever one you actually opened.
Whichever you pick, one thing is worth saying: the app that works is the one you open. A perfect library you never load is worth less than a limited free tier that gets you onto the mat three times a week.
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