You’re constantly hearing about Peloton from your friends who love exercising, but your cycling buddies are telling you all about Zwift. What’s the difference between Peloton and Zwift? Aren’t they both for indoor cycling?
Let’s explain the basic differences between Peloton and Zwift and help you understand which one might be best for you.
What is Peloton?
Peloton is both an exercise bike and an app with streaming video instructors that teach spin classes that are either live or pre-recorded. (Peloton also makes a similar treadmill product, but we are not covering it in this comparison.)
If you are familiar with spin classes at your local gym, then you’ll get a pretty clear idea of what Peloton is all about. It’s basically like you buy the spin bike from the gym and then have a variety of instructors beamed into your home, whenever you want. If you like spin classes, you’ll probably like Peloton.
The Peloton bike itself costs around $2,300, although the company offers credit terms so that you can pay it off with monthly payments if you don’t want to buy it in one big lump sum.
After you get the bike, you’ll pay $39 a month for the Peloton service so that you can watch all the instructors and take the streaming or recorded classes and participate with other Peloton users.
Pros: Comes with all the equipment you need to start indoor cycling.
Cons: Bike is expensive, and monthly service is another $39.
What is Zwift?
Zwift is only an app, and does not include any hardware at all. You’ll need your own bike and a bike trainer, which you might already have at home.
You put your bicycle on your trainer, and you start the app. The app works with almost any basic bike trainer, but is significantly better if you own a smart trainer, which is a more expensive type of bike trainer that measures your wattage output and also controls how hard you pedal.
Zwift doesn’t come with spin class teachers, because it is designed to make indoor cycling seem like riding outside. You’ll see a cartoon world around you filled with hundreds of other bicycle rider characters on the screen. Each of those characters represents someone else who is using the app at the same time as you.
You can try to keep up with other characters, or go faster and leave them behind and race them on the screen. Or you can just ride at your own pace and watch the others go by. There are many different “locations” you can ride on the Zwift app, and you’ll find yourself pedaling through futuristic looking cities, and other regular cities like London.
You can find organized group rides, where riders all do the same workout together on the screen. You can chat online with the other riders as you workout.
If you like working out alone, there are dozens of workouts that the app of varying length and difficulty that allow you to complete a prescribed workout by yourself. There are even multi-workout plans to help you gain fitness and prepare for a specific event like a real life century ride (100 miles). You can even load your own workouts into Zwift, or workouts that your cycling coach has created for you.
Zwift also offers online racing, which is very popular for fit riders who like to compete. Many of the races require a smart trainer and a heart rate monitor, to help prevent any attempts at cheating. Races have different categories based on your current fitness levels, so you are racing against people of similar abilities.
It’s free to try for 30 days, but then it will cost around $15 per month to keep using it.
Pros: Cheaper at only $15 a month. It’s like a video game version of riding your bike outside.
Cons: Requires a separate bike trainer and bicycle to mount on it.
How to Choose Peloton or Zwift
There’s no right or wrong answer between Peloton and Zwift. It really depends on what you hope to accomplish, and what you like better.
If your main focus is to become a faster cyclist, you should go with Zwift. Zwift workouts are all built with cycling specific fitness in mind. The entire app is built around cycling as a sport. From the ability to just ride around to group rides to workouts and even online racing, it’s all about becoming a stronger and faster cyclist.
Peloton, on the other hand, is built around the idea of riding an indoor spin bike like the classes you see at gyms. You’ll burn a lot of calories and you’ll really improve your cardiovascular fitness, which will definitely help with your cycling. But the workouts are not specific to bicycle racing and are more generally about cardiovascular endurance and fitness.
If you love spin classes and the music and camaraderie that comes with an instructor cheering you on and telling you what to do, then Peloton is your best choice. It’s a terrific alternative to driving to the gym to take expensive spin classes there.
That’s a very fair and accurate comparison. Worth mentioning that for a lot less money and no monthly fees, you can buy a more than adequate indoor bike trainer on Amazon for $300 and use free online classes such as Ride with GCN on YouTube and achieve the vast majority of winter fitness needs for all but the most hard core cyclists. If you want more bio-feedback, add a $30 heart rate monitor to the mix. I find the indoor trainer alleviates additional wear and tear on my road bike, and I can do without forking over subscription fees to another company.
While everything is, not everything has to be about saving money. Sometimes we’re looking for the best ways to spend our money and not save it for obvious and better uses.
I’ve had both Peleton and Zwift. The general problem with indoor training is that it is boring compared to being outside. No scenery, no coffee shops to stop at for an espresso, no fresh air etc. Peleton makes it more fun with the music and instructors and I use it almost every day. Zwift is kind of boring and I didn’t like using it more than about twice a week.
Hmm… I am the opposite, I recently sold my Peloton Original Bike and upgraded to Wahoo Kickr Bike, as I found the cycling (spin) classes didn’t reflect or get me to grips with real life gearing when I’m out on a road bike outside. I have no complaints of the Peloton getting me fit in cardio sense, and the classes were great. But something was missing… I didn’t enjoy just seeing my name on the leaderboard to smash anyone.
I’m yet to try Zwift, but I am sure it will be interesting. Especially the fast paced races where I can actually race people and see where I stand in a 3d world.
Hi Oliver thanks for you comment. I am a road bike rider and looking for something to replace road bike riding for indoors. Have you since tried swift? What are your thoughts? Peleton or Zwift?
Thanks for your help. Best regards Margei
Hi Margei, my detailed feedback is this….
For Zwift, it’s a steep learning curve, as you must do a Ramp or FTP test you are aware or you have probably already done one as an experienced road biker. But once you’ve done it, it’s pretty intuitive once you get your FTP result. I can see why the casual user will get put off… If you’re serious you can proceed with it.
The Zwift App, the Companion app and registering to Zwift Power I can see the schedule of races or social rides and join in at a time that suites me (similar to Peloton). Or you can choose to go around in circles on a free ride on your own and at your own pace. Or you can create your own workouts… All can be uploaded to Strava same as Peloton.
There is also a ‘What’s on Zwift’ to show you all the professional workouts on the website which you can look for in the Zwift app. It’s not so straightforward looking for workouts in the actual Zwift app which they can improve on massively though through their menus.
Peloton wins for menu option and user interface. That’s why people prefer them.. not too much thinking or design of a workout and bam! You’re riding.
I also have my own music running in the background. As previously on the Peloton bike they were pushing out the music for their carefully considered workout rides which was convenient.
They have power zone rides are interesting as you will train to similar to Zwift do an FTP test and then train to ‘power zones’. Which can be 20-30-45 or 90 mins or more in length. I never tried their Power Zone rides. If I still had my Peloton I would’ve done.
Ultimately the Peloton is great if you don’t want to do TOO much thinking, jump on the bike, scroll through a class which suites your music taste, instructor and duration and smash out a workout and you WILL get fit… I would say to anyone if you don’t want to plan your own stuff jump on the Peloton.
However I wanted freedom. Freedom to use my own bike computer indoors, freedom to be able to watch youtube or watch movies at the same time as cycling. Freedom to go on Zwift for both social and races and feel on a more realistic road bike and not pay $50-55 a month for it…
Sometimes I don’t want to keep smashing a HIIT session like Peloton keep made me doing…, I want to do chilled Zone 1, 2 or sweet spot Zone 3 rides and watch a Movie or TV series as that’s my preferred way of watching TV rather than doing nothing on the couch.
Thanks.
… No scenery, no coffee shops to stop at for an espresso, no fresh air.
Exactly!
Please, why the obsession with cell phones at the gym …. no down time!
I’m with Oliver on this one.
Zwift setup on my indoor road bike has been nothing but sensational and a game changer this winter. I used to use Peloton for cycling only, but what Peloton can’t tell you is the amount of accumulative fatigue you pick up by smashing out high intensity workouts constantly even if you get fit.
Using Zwift, Strava and third party apps I am able to see my metrics in more detail and the fatigue and when I need to rest and vary my workouts.
I do however recently use Peloton app for Strength and Running and Running/Bootcamp now. Because I don’t really enjoy running, Peloton makes running more interesting and gets me through it.