Fitbit Challenges are gone. Here is what actually replaces them

For years the best thing about a Fitbit was not the hardware. It was Tuesday afternoon of a Workweek Hustle, three colleagues within a thousand steps of each other, someone doing laps of the car park before a meeting. Then, on March 27, 2023, Google switched it all off: Challenges, Adventures, trophies, open groups, gone in one update, with a short note about streamlining the app.

The tracker on your wrist still counts everything. It just lost its opponents. Here is what happened, and the realistic ways to get the race back.

What was removed, and what people actually lost

The features had names people still use like they are common nouns: Workweek Hustle, Weekend Warrior, the step-powered Adventure walks through Yosemite. Google’s stated reason was that it was rebuilding the Fitbit app on Google technology and trimming what did not fit.

The community’s reaction has not really ended. A Change.org petition to bring the features back is still collecting signatures, and the Fitbit subreddit still gets “bring back challenges” threads years later. Local news covered the frustration when it happened:

And the removals did not stop there. Watchers of the platform have spent the Google era cataloguing features that keep quietly disappearing, which is worth knowing before you wait for this one to come back:

Three years on, the pattern is clear enough to plan around: the challenges are not returning. The good news is that what they provided is replaceable, and in one respect the replacements are better.

Where each piece of the old experience went

The first row is the easy one. Stridekick and StepUp are free, read the major wearables including Fitbit, and run the familiar invite-your-friends step formats. If your group is all-Fitbit and thinks in steps, either app restores most of what Google deleted, group chat included; we compare them and the rest in the best step challenge apps for a group guide.

The last row is where something better is available. The old challenges had a ceiling: everyone needed a Fitbit. In the years since 2023, look around your group chat; half of those wrists now carry an Apple Watch or a Garmin. A Fitbit-only race, even if Google rebuilt it tomorrow, could no longer hold your actual friends.

The cross-brand route, and one warning about steps

A mixed group needs two things the old challenges never did: an app every brand can feed, and a metric every brand counts the same way. Steps are shakier there than most people expect; a wrist, a pocket and a ring each count the same walk differently, which we unpacked in why step counts differ between devices. Across brands, the fair race runs on active minutes and kilometres.

That is the lane Fit, the cross-brand fitness competition app, is built for, and the disclosure is that Fit is our app. Crews hold a standing rank on active minutes and distance, Fitbit data arrives through Google’s health platform alongside Apple Health and Garmin, and the friend who defected to an Apple Watch in 2024 becomes an opponent again. Where Fit loses against the old memories: it has no Adventures, no Yosemite walks, no trophies, and an all-Fitbit steps-only group will find Stridekick closer to the thing they miss.

What to do with this

1. Stop waiting. The features have been gone since March 2023 and the platform has only shed social features since. Plan on third-party.
2. All-Fitbit group, steps culture: Stridekick or StepUp. Free, familiar, running this week.
3. Mixed group: move the race to active minutes and use a cross-brand app like Fit, so nobody’s hardware disqualifies them.
4. Set it up properly once. Group size, length and stakes decide whether a challenge survives; the challenge-design guide is the recipe.
5. Missing Workweek Hustle at the office? The work fitness challenge playbook covers teams, privacy and mixed devices.