Comparability
Active minutes, explained: the one cross-device number worth competing on
Apple Exercise Minutes, Fitbit Active Zone Minutes and Garmin Intensity Minutes measure almost the same thing. Here is how they line up across brands.
Quick answer
Active minutes count time above a moderate effort, judged mostly by heart rate relative to your own zones. Apple calls it Exercise Minutes, Fitbit calls it Active Zone Minutes, Garmin calls it Intensity Minutes, and all three lean on the same guideline of 150 moderate minutes a week. Because they measure real effort rather than a branded index, they line up between devices far better than a recovery score, making active minutes the fairest number to compete on across brands.
Most of the numbers on your wrist do not travel. A recovery score is private to one brand. A step count shifts with where you wear the sensor. But there is one number that holds its meaning when you hand it to a friend on a different watch: active minutes.
Here is why it survives the trip, and how the three big versions line up.
Three names, one idea
Apple, Fitbit and Garmin each ship a version of the same metric, and all three point at the same public health target.
The same metric under three brand names
| Apple | Fitbit | Garmin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it is called | Exercise Minutes | Active Zone Minutes | Intensity Minutes |
| Judged mainly by | Effort at or above a brisk walk | Heart rate vs your zones | Heart rate vs your zones |
| Vigorous effort earns double? | No, a minute is a minute | Yes | Yes |
| Anchored to | 150 min/week guideline | 150 min/week guideline | 150 min/week guideline |
The one row to remember is the third. Fitbit and Garmin pay double for vigorous work, so the same brutal interval session reads higher on those two than on an Apple Watch. Account for that and the three are close.
Why active minutes travel and scores do not
A branded readiness score is normalised to you and weighted by a formula the vendor keeps private, which is exactly why it means nothing on someone else’s wrist. We pulled that apart in why WHOOP Recovery, Body Battery and Oura Readiness never match, and it holds just as true for the readiness score Apple Watch added in 2026.
Active minutes are the opposite kind of number. They measure a real quantity, time spent above a moderate effort, against a guideline that every vendor shares. The effort is judged relative to your own heart-rate zones, so it is fair between a trained friend and a beginner: the harder a session feels for you, the faster you bank minutes.
That combination, a real unit plus a shared target, is what lets active minutes cross brands where a score cannot.
The catch worth knowing
Zones are personal, so two people doing the identical workout can earn different minutes, and that is correct. It means active minutes measure training load relative to the individual rather than raw speed. If you want to rank pure output instead, distance in kilometres is your cleaner unit; if you want to rank effort, active minutes are the one.
Steps, by contrast, drift with sensor placement, which we covered in why your phone, watch and ring all show a different step count. Active minutes sidestep that because they lean on heart rate, not arm swing.
What to do with this
- Chase the weekly 150, not a daily figure. Active minutes were designed around a weekly guideline; that is the goal that matters.
- Adjust for the double credit. When you compare with Fitbit or Garmin friends, remember their vigorous minutes count twice.
- Use active minutes for cross-brand contests. They are the fairest effort number that travels between devices, and a weekly active-minutes race is the easiest format to start with.
That is why Fit, the cross-brand fitness competition app, scores crews on active minutes rather than any single vendor’s index: it is the one effort metric a Garmin, an Apple Watch and a Fitbit can all be ranked on honestly. The fitness competition apps comparison covers the rest of the field.
Questions people actually ask
Are Apple Exercise Minutes the same as Fitbit Active Zone Minutes?
Nearly. Both count time spent at moderate-or-higher effort, and both anchor to the same 150-minutes-a-week guideline. The main difference is that Fitbit Active Zone Minutes and Garmin Intensity Minutes award double credit for vigorous effort, so a hard 20-minute session can show as 40, while Apple counts a minute as a minute. Expect the same workout to read a little higher on Fitbit and Garmin than on Apple.
Why do my active minutes differ from my friend's for the same workout?
Because active minutes are keyed to each person's heart-rate zones, which are personal. The same run at the same pace can be moderate effort for a trained friend and vigorous for you, so you earn minutes faster. This is a feature, not an error: it measures effort relative to the individual, which is the honest way to compare training load between different bodies.
How many active minutes should I aim for?
The widely used target is 150 minutes of moderate activity per week, or 75 minutes of vigorous, from the WHO and US physical activity guidelines. Every major device is built around that number. Hitting it is a far more meaningful goal than any single day's step count.
Do active minutes compare better across brands than a recovery score?
Yes, clearly. A recovery or readiness score is a branded index normalised to you, so a 70 on one device means nothing on another. Active minutes measure a real thing, time above a moderate effort, against a shared public guideline, so they survive the jump between brands with only a small vigorous-credit difference to account for.
Does heart rate or motion decide an active minute?
Mostly heart rate. All three systems primarily judge effort from how high your heart rate is relative to your zones, and fall back to motion for activities where the optical sensor struggles. That heart-rate basis is why active minutes track effort rather than just movement, and why they reward a hard cycle that produces few steps.
Sources
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