16 Indoor Cycling Bikes That Turn Your Home Into a Gym

Has any company disrupted the fitness industry quite like Peloton in the past decade? The OG bike was nice, but the newest version has several standout features that make it worth the extra cash. The screen has grown from 21.5 to 23.8 inches and rotates 360 degrees to make following along with Peloton’s cross-training classes (including boot camp, strength, and yoga) that much easier. The original bike’s rear-facing speakers were upgraded to front-facing ones and rear-facing woofers to create a more immersive sound experience.

And new digital resistance tech allows the bike to auto-adjust the resistance depending on an instructor's cues, so you can just ride along without worrying about turning a knob or pressing a button to make your ride more or less challenging. 

More: The Best Online Fitness Programs to Stream Anywhere

Want an at-home bike but don’t want to sacrifice the space in your living room or bedroom? This compact bike can be folded to half its size and easily wheeled into a closet or under a bed when you aren’t riding. 

It looks bare bones, but it still has eight levels of magnetic tension so you can adjust the resistance throughout your workout, and the LCD screen shows everything you need to see how effectively you’re working: distance, calories burned, time, speed, and heart rate. 

With a study steel frame and 50-pound weighted flywheel, this bike isn’t going anywhere. That flywheel resistance system gives the machine a more realistic, road-like feeling, and keeps things quiet so you can ride at home without disrupting whoever you share your space with. 

Otherwise, it has all the basics — an adjustable seat and handlebars, caged pedals, and a bottle holder — to keep you riding comfortably at an affordable price. 

Like Peloton and Flywheel, NordicTrack offers steaming and on-demand workouts. And the instructors in the iFit app — which comes free with the bike — can actually digitally adjust the incline, decline, and resistance on your bike as the “terrain” changes, so a) there’s no cheating and b) you can ride without fiddling around (don’t worry, you can easily override the automatic settings via the manual controls on the handlebar if you do want to make the workout harder or easier). 

The 22-inch, 360-degree rotating display screen also makes it easy to take advantage of cross-training workouts in the app.

At half the price of a Peloton bike, it’s hard to beat Nautilus’ Bowflex C6 — especially since you can actually sync it to the Peloton app, among others. 

While there’s no screen attached to the bike, you can use your smartphone, tablet, or even TV to stream Peloton’s live and on-demand classes or compete in Zwift’s virtual world. 

Not only can you subscribe to Nautilus’ Explore the World app — which pairs high-definition video with real-world routes to make you feel like you’re riding somewhere exotic rather than your living room — the C6 is compatible with JRNY, a membership program that features adaptive workouts and real-time coaching.

Some of the fancier stationary bikes are essentially marketed as stylish pieces of furniture. But what if you don’t want to stare at a workout device all day, or you don’t have room to keep a bike out in the middle of your living space? 

This device folds down to just 18 by 18 inches when not in use, but it's still sturdy enough to hold up to 225 pounds. The small LCD screen clearly displays your speed, distance, time, and calories burned, and you can monitor your heart rate with the pulse grips on the handlebars. 

Bonus: The seat is oversized and cushy for extra comfort.

Another more affordable option, the classic Schwinn IC4 delivers on everything that matters. It’s a smooth, quiet ride, the LCD screen tracks time, distance, calories, RPMs, and even heart rate, and there’s a built-in smartphone or tablet holder. 

This bike was also designed to work with the Peloton, Zwift, JRNY, and Explore the World apps — so you can access multiple libraries of workouts and distract yourself from the monotony of spinning in place with virtual trails and locales.

You don’t have to live near a SoulCycle studio to reap the rewards of the high-intensity, interval-based class anymore. Clip into the at-home bike and use the 21.5-inch touchscreen to stream rides in real time, or ride to an on-demand class — you’ll break a sweat doing the same sprints, hill work, choreography, and arm exercises from an IRL studio class. 

The Equinox+ app (which costs an additional $39 per month) also streams classes from PURE Yoga, Precision Run, and Equinox for a well-rounded fitness experience.

The YOSUDA bike doesn’t come with many frills, but that’s OK — it’s one of the cheapest bikes in the bunch, and great for beginners who aren’t ready to invest multiple paychecks into a piece of exercise equipment. 

Most spin bikes use a magnetic flywheel, but this design relies on a 35-pound, chain-driven flywheel — more like what you’d find on an outdoor bike — for a more familiar feel. It also comes with an adjustable nonslip handlebar, a padded seat, an LCD monitor, and a tablet holder. 

This smart spin bike requires three calibration rides to determine exactly how hard you need to ride to reach your max power. From then on, its algorithms calculate the resistance you need during each session and automatically applies it during your hardest efforts, so all you have to do is push the pedals. 

Whether you’re riding for less than 10 minutes or for a full 30 minutes, the bike promises to double your fitness in two months if you ride just three times a week. 

Invest in the MYX Plus Bike and you not only get a professional grade machine, but also a Polar OH1 Heart Rate Monitor, an XL exercise mat, a stabilizing mat, a kettlebell, three sets of hand weights (light, medium, and heavy), a SPRI stretch band, and a foam roller — basically everything you need for a solid at-home gym experience. And for $39 a month, you get access to hundreds of workouts on demand through the MYX Membership. (Just want the bike? It’s $200 cheaper.)

Another Peloton competitor, Echelon’s connected bikes were designed for performance. The Aero handlebar system and competition seat are adjustable for max comfort, and a new motor provides 32 levels of precise magnetic resistance. 

Pop your smartphone or tablet into the 180-degree rotating console for on- and off-the-bike workouts — Echelon’s “FitPass” features live and on-demand trainer-led rides, yoga, stretching, pre-and-post workout sessions, meditation, pilates, kickboxing, Zumba, and more.

For outdoor cyclists who need to shift their rides indoors during inclement weather, you can’t beat the Kickr. With integrated grade changes, customizable gearing, and simulated shifting, you get an uber-realistic training experience (you can even customize it with your own handlebars, pedals, and saddle). It’s also super easy to set up your bike, using three options built into the app: “professional fit,” “measure my bike,” and “measure my body.”

The bike has a 13-pound flywheel and enhanced motor that, despite the power it can generate, creates a virtually silent riding experience no matter how hard you're pedaling to crush a virtual hill or fast you're flying down the other side.

Prefer the feeling of shifting gears outside to increasing or decreasing the resistance on an indoor bike? This stationary bike lets you switch between standard training workouts and hill simulations which require you to use the paddle shifters on the handlebars — as the gradient changes from anywhere between -3% up to +15%, you’re responsible for shifting into the right gear to maintain the most efficient power and cadence.

Data nerds will geek out over the integrated 7-inch LCD console, which displays real-time feedback on cadence, watts, speed, distance, gradient, heart rate, selected gear, and gear ratio.