Obé Review

Monday, May 19th

2025 Online Fitness Program Reviews

Obé

• Cost: $24.99/month or $14.17/month with annual billing
• 10,000+ on-demand videos across cardio (HIIT, dance, boxing), strength (sculpt, pilates), yoga, and activate/recover categories
• Quiz-based personalized training plans with filters for fitness level, body focus, impact, experience level, and goals
• High-energy instructors
• Mobile app functionality - user interface, offline access: available on iOS and Android, with Chromecast and Apple TV compatibility
• Body-positive approach to fitness.

Founded in 2018 by entertainment industry veterans Ashley Mills and Mark Mullett, Obé Fitness aims to transform your relationship with movement by offering a refreshing alternative to traditional fitness culture. The platform was born from their shared love of 80s-style living room workouts (like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons) and their recognition that existing fitness options weren't meeting modern needs. Through their signature technicolor studio called "the Box," high-energy instructors, and engaging classes, Obé provides a unique approach focused on making daily movement joyful rather than punishing.

Website includes an overview of women's history in fitness

Obé's mission directly challenges the fitness industry's history of diet culture marketing and negative messaging toward women, instead emphasizing body positivity and sustainable wellness through entertaining programs, body-positive language, and modern habit-building techniques. Their website even includes a brief timeline of women's fitness history. Can you imagine being banned from running a marathon just because you're a woman? That's exactly what Kathrine Switzer faced in 1967 when she entered the Boston Marathon using an alias to hide her gender, since men back then wrongly believed women were incapable of running more than 2 miles. When it was discovered she was a woman, the men in the race tried to physically remove her. We think it's great that Obé is highlighting this important moment in women's fitness history on their website, but their choice to use an AI-generated, arguably sexualized image of Switzer in a pink tracksuit with perfect hair and Hollywood makeup feels like a missed opportunity to showcase the power of this historical moment - especially when the real photographs are in the public domain.

Obé offers an expansive workout library organized into four main categories

Obé's library includes more than 10,000 on demand videos. You'll find them in categories such as:

• Cardio: Including HIIT, Dance HIIT, Dance Cardio, Boxing, Bounce, Jump, Ride, Step, Endurance, Run, and Walk classes to get your heart pumping
• Strength: Featuring Sculpt, Pilates, Strength, Power, and Barre workouts to build muscle and tone your body
• Yoga: Offering Vinyasa Yoga, Yoga Sculpt, Restorative Yoga, Breathwork, and Meditation for flexibility and mindfulness
• Activate/Recover: Providing Warmup, Cool-down, Stretch, and Foam Roll sessions to prepare for workouts and help your body recover

Live streaming went the way of the dodo

You can easily find the perfect workout by filtering based on music, fitness level, class length, body focus, impact level, instructors, equipment needed, release year, and fitness goals. While you can see descriptions and equipment requirements before signing up, you'll need to create an account to actually preview any workout videos. Also, Obé no longer offers live streaming classes, which came as a blow to much of their user-base (and the trainers they laid off), especially those who used it to stay connected and active during COVID lockdowns.

No free previews of video content

Before you can access Obé's fitness content, you'll need to complete a quick questionnaire about your fitness goals, experience level, preferred class types, and specific interests like running or dancing. The quiz also digs into your habit-forming style (are you self-motivated or do you need regular check-ins?) and other wellness interests such as meditation or cycle tracking - but stay tuned on that. Once you finish, Obé provides a personalized training plan and fitness "personality type" that determines which workouts appear in your feed.

Monthly plan costs more than rival fitness platforms

After completing the quiz, you'll finally see pricing options: $14.17/month with an annual commitment or $24.99 for month-to-month billing (which is rather expensive compared to competitors, though it has decreased slightly since they discontinued live classes).

Obé's tech experience is frustrating and buggy

You can access Obé workouts through their website, iOS app, or Android app. They claim compatibility with Chromecast and Apple TV for big-screen viewing (which definitely creates a better workout experience), but many users report serious casting problems. If you're planning to travel offline, the iOS app lets you download up to 30 workouts - a feature apparently not available on their neglected Android platform. Many users believe Obé has effectively abandoned Android development despite continuing to market the platform to all smartphone users - it's reported to be buggy, to require frequent reinstallation, and the music playing often doesn't match what's advertised for a given workout.

iOS users face declining service quality, too

Even the iOS experience has deteriorated significantly. Long-time subscribers note that Obé has reduced new content uploads to mostly short 10-minute workouts, closed their community Facebook group, and limited instructor interaction.

Misogynistic data practices

One of our biggest concerns with Obé is their menstrual cycle tracking feature. When an app markets itself so strongly as anti-misogynistic and supportive of women's health, it should live up to high standards in these areas. When we looked at Obé's privacy policy, however, we discovered that they collect and share sensitive data like menstrual cycle information with third parties -including law enforcement. The privacy policy explicitly states they can use such health information for "complying with legal obligations, law enforcement, and legal processes." This is particularly concerning in the post-Roe v. Wade era in the United States, where period tracking data could potentially be used in miscarriage- and abortion-related investigations.

Obé's values and practices are fundamentally at odds

Given Obé's problematic approach to user data, declining service quality, and technical issues across platforms, we cannot recommend this service - especially to women in states affected by draconian reproductive health laws. (It's hard to imagine a more profound betrayal of feminist principles than covertly collecting women's intimate health data and then reserving the right to hand it over to authorities investigating reproductive choices.) The disconnect between this fitness brand's feminist marketing and their actual business practices is too significant to ignore. Women looking to get fit would be better served by basically any other fitness platform in our review.