Peloton vs Tonal vs Bowflex: Which Home Gym Is Actually Worth It (New and Used Prices)

The question I get more than any other right now is some version of best home gym peloton vs tonal vs bowflex, and the honest answer is that two of those three are not really home gyms at all. Tonal is a strength trainer. Peloton is a cardio company that sells a strength app. Bowflex is a catalogue of very different machines wearing one badge. Used, they land around $2,025 for a Tonal, $900 for a Peloton Bike, and $1,012 for a typical Bowflex, and those three numbers hide three completely different decisions.

I help people buy and sell this equipment for a living. I have watched hundreds of these machines get inspected, loaded into a truck and carried up a staircase, and the pattern rarely changes: people buy the brand they saw in an ad, then find out six weeks later that they bought cardio when they wanted strength. So here is the whole comparison in plain terms. What each machine does, what it costs once the subscription starts, what your room gives up, what used units trade for, and which one I would buy secondhand today.

Peloton vs Tonal vs Bowflex: what each one actually is

Tonal is the only one of the three that is a strength machine first. Peloton is cardio hardware with strength content bolted on. Bowflex is a brand name across treadmills, bikes, ellipticals and cable gyms.

Tonal is a flat panel that bolts to your wall with two articulated arms. It makes resistance with electromagnets instead of plates, which is why a unit that produces 200 pounds of load weighs only about 150 pounds itself. No weight stack in your basement. A screen, two arms, and a bar you hang on them.

Peloton sells the Bike, the Bike+, the Tread, the Tread+ and the Row. Every one is a cardio machine. All-Access does include strength classes, and they are good classes, but you supply the dumbbells and the floor space. Getting strong with Peloton means buying a bike and then buying weights separately.

Bowflex is the confusing one. The name covers the Power Rod gyms like the Xtreme 2 SE and the PR3000, the Revolution with its SpiraFlex plates, the Max Trainers, the C6 and VeloCore bikes, and the whole treadmill line. Saying you want a Bowflex is like saying you want a Ford. Which one matters far more than the badge.

Which home gym actually builds strength: Peloton vs Tonal vs Bowflex

Tonal builds strength fastest for most people, Bowflex builds it cheapest, and Peloton is a distant third unless you already own weights.

Tonal's advantage is not the electromagnets, it is that the machine counts for you. It picks the load, adds weight when the last set was easy, and stops the set when your form falls apart. That removes the biggest reason home strength programs die, which is that nobody wants to sit on the floor with a notebook deciding what to do next. Two hundred pounds of digital resistance is plenty for most people buying their first real strength setup. It is not plenty if you already deadlift four plates.

Bowflex Power Rod and Revolution gyms are honest machines. The resistance curve is not identical to free weights, and purists will tell you so, but a Revolution will take you a long way and it does not care whether the company that made it still exists. No screen, no login, no monthly charge.

Peloton's strength content is well produced. It is also a video. Buy a Bike expecting to get strong and you will need a bench, an adjustable dumbbell set and somewhere to put them, and at that point you have bought a home gym in pieces. I cover the crossover in my Bowflex vs Tonal comparison.

The real cost of a Peloton, a Tonal, and a Bowflex after the subscription

The subscription is the real price, not the hardware. Over three years the cheapest of these three costs less than half of the most expensive, and the hardware is not what decides it.

Machine	Used price	Subscription	3-year sub cost	Usable without a sub?
Peloton Bike	$900	All-Access, $49.99/mo	$1,800	Just Ride only, no classes
Peloton Bike+	$1,150	All-Access, $49.99/mo	$1,800	Same
Tonal	$2,025	$59.95/mo, 12-month commitment	$2,160	No
Bowflex Power Rod / Revolution	$1,150	None	$0	Yes, fully
Bowflex cardio (Max Trainer, C6)	$1,012	JRNY, $19.99/mo or $199.99/yr	$600	Yes, manual mode

Run the three-year math and a used Bowflex Revolution at $1,300 with no subscription costs less than a used Peloton Bike at $900 does. That is the number nobody puts in the comparison charts, and it is the most useful thing on this page.

The Tonal membership is the one to think hardest about. It is a 12-month commitment, and the machine is close to furniture without it. That is not a knock on Tonal, it is the deal. If you cancel every subscription you own each January, buy the Bowflex.

Space, walls, and ceilings: what each home gym needs from your room

Tonal has the smallest footprint and the strictest requirements. Everything else here is the reverse.

Tonal mounts to two studs, wood or metal, at least 2 by 4, spaced 16 to 24 inches apart and running floor to ceiling. Aluminum studs are not supported. You need roughly 7 feet of clear width and 7 feet of depth out from the wall, and about 7 feet 10 inches of ceiling for full arm extension. Most of the move library works at a 7 foot ceiling. Read that twice before buying used, because a Tonal on the wrong wall is a very expensive mirror.

A Peloton Bike takes about 4 feet by 2 feet on the floor and nothing on the wall. That is the entire appeal. It fits in an apartment corner and two people can move it.

A Bowflex Power Rod gym wants a real room. The Xtreme 2 SE and the Revolution both need clearance behind and beside them for the rods or arms to travel, and the bench folds but the frame does not vanish. Call it 8 by 6 feet in use. The upside is that it sits on the floor and asks nothing of your walls, which makes it the only one of the three that works against a concrete block wall you would rather not drill.

What used Peloton, Tonal, and Bowflex units sell for right now

Here is what these actually trade for, from our own listings rather than from a press release.

• Peloton Bike: most land between $700 and $1,150, median near $900. Retail on the same listings is about $1,939.
• Peloton Bike+: median near $1,150, running from roughly $350 for a tired early unit to $2,695 for a nearly new one. Retail is about $2,498.
• Tonal: median around $2,025, middle half between $1,525 and $2,425, clean recent units past $3,000. Retail averages about $4,250.
• Bowflex, all models: median near $1,012, range about $425 to $2,775. Xtreme 2 SE near $1,150, Revolutions near $1,157, Max Trainers near $1,075.

The Tonal number is the interesting one. A used Tonal at $2,025 against $4,250 new is the largest dollar saving of the three, and it is also the machine people are most nervous about buying secondhand. Those two facts are related. I go into the specifics on a used Tonal.

One seller had a 2023 Tonal she had stopped using. She listed it, we sent a crew, they took it off the wall, and it was gone. Her words were that it was an easy process. The buyer paid roughly half of retail for a two-year-old machine. Both people won out of one transaction, which is the part the new-equipment market cannot do.

Memberships, warranties, and what happens when the company changes hands

Memberships transfer, warranties usually do not, and the company risk is already priced in.

All three run the subscription against your account, not the machine's original owner. You buy the hardware, create your own login, and start paying. There is nothing to transfer and nothing the previous owner can take with them. Ask the seller to factory reset the unit and remove it from their account before pickup. It takes two minutes.

Warranties are the opposite. All three write coverage to the original purchaser, so a secondhand machine is out of warranty the moment it changes hands. The used market already prices that in.

Now the part people actually worry about. Nautilus, the company behind Bowflex, filed for Chapter 11 in March 2024. Johnson Health Tech bought the BowFlex and Schwinn brands along with the JRNY app for $37.5 million and closed that April. JRNY still runs, Bowflex still sells machines, and Johnson also owns Matrix and Horizon.

I would not let that scare you off. A Power Rod gym has no server to shut down. It is steel, cable and composite rods, and the aftermarket for parts is deep. A Tonal without its software is a very heavy wall bracket. That asymmetry is what matters when you compare these three as used purchases.

How to pick the best home gym: Peloton vs Tonal vs Bowflex in five steps

1. Decide strength or cardio first, before you look at a price. If the answer is cardio, the Tonal conversation is over and you are choosing between a Peloton Bike and a Bowflex Max Trainer.
2. Check your wall. Find the studs, measure the spacing, confirm they are wood or steel and not aluminum. No suitable wall means no Tonal.
3. Measure the room with the machine in use, not folded. Seven by seven for a Tonal. Eight by six for a Power Rod gym. Four by two for a bike.
4. Add three years of subscription to every price you are comparing. A $2,025 Tonal is really a $4,185 decision. A $1,300 Revolution is really a $1,300 decision.
5. Buy used and buy recent. A two to three year old machine in good condition costs roughly half of new across all three brands and behaves identically. The depreciation happens in the first eighteen months and you did not have to pay for it.

My blunt recommendation: if you want to get strong and you have the wall, buy a used Tonal and accept the membership. If you want to get strong and you hate subscriptions, buy a used Bowflex Revolution and never think about it again. If you want cardio and a room full of people yelling encouragement at you, buy a used Peloton and skip the strength argument entirely.

Frequently asked questions about Peloton vs Tonal vs Bowflex

Is a Tonal worth it compared to a Peloton?

They are not competing for the same job. Tonal is a strength machine at about $2,025 used and $59.95 a month. A Peloton Bike is a cardio machine at about $900 used and $49.99 a month. If you want to lift, Tonal wins by default because the Bike does not lift anything. If you want to sweat for 45 minutes, the Bike wins and costs less.

Which of the three works without any subscription?

Bowflex. The Power Rod and Revolution gyms are purely mechanical and have never needed an app. Bowflex cardio machines run in manual mode without JRNY. A Peloton will still spin in Just Ride mode with no classes, and a Tonal without its membership is not usable in any meaningful way.

Can I use my own Tonal membership on a used machine?

Yes. The membership belongs to your account rather than the hardware. Have the seller factory reset the unit and remove it from their Tonal account before pickup, then set it up as new when it arrives. The same is true for Peloton All-Access and Bowflex JRNY.

Is buying a used Bowflex risky now that the company was sold?

Not in a way that should change your decision. Johnson Health Tech bought the brand and the JRNY app out of the 2024 bankruptcy and kept both running. More to the point, a Power Rod gym has no software to lose. It is a mechanical machine and it will work in ten years regardless of who owns the logo.

What is the best home gym for a small apartment?

A Tonal if you own the wall, a Peloton Bike if you do not. Tonal takes the least floor space of anything that actually builds strength, but it requires drilling into studs, which rules it out for a lot of renters. The Bike needs no permission from anybody.

If one of these three is sitting in your house collecting laundry, list it now rather than next spring. This equipment depreciates on a calendar and the buyers are looking right now. We handle the pickup, the inspection and the payment, and nobody comes to your house to haggle. One seller had her Peloton Bike gone within a day of listing and the payment landed before the truck pulled away. Start at sell your equipment, and the process is spelled out in how it works.

And if you are buying, buy the two to three year old machine. All three brands built the same product in 2023 that they sell today, minus a screen refresh, and the used price is close to half. Browse home gyms, Tonal and Bowflex and pay for the machine, not the marketing.