Apple cuts Fitness+ jobs, subscription merging to Health+?
Apple has cut jobs at Fitness+, according to Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter today. It’s the first actual reduction in force at the service, rather than a reorganisation or a review.
What Gurman reported
The cuts hit the audio side of Fitness+, the team behind Time to Walk and Time to Run. Gurman describes it as a handful of roles. New audio episodes will come out less often, though they aren’t stopping.
The cuts happened in the past week, separate from August’s Siri and Vision Pro layoffs. Gurman still doesn’t expect Apple to shut Fitness+ down. His bet is that it eventually folds into the Health app, more likely in 2027 than sooner.
The Health+ theory
Apple moved Fitness+ under its Health division and services chief Eddy Cue in October 2025. Since November, Gurman has described the service as under review, citing high churn and weak revenue.
Health+ is Gurman’s own name for a possible combined subscription that would eventually replace Fitness+. Apple’s September 9 event added Readiness scores and AI insights to the Health app for Apple Watch, but stopped short of folding Fitness+ into it. Gurman reads that as timing rather than a change of plan.
The pushback
AppleInsider disputes the framing, arguing that a handful of cuts doesn’t support talk of major change. Their counterpoint: Apple currently has 73 Cupertino roles open that mention fitness.
That figure covers fitness broadly. It’s not confirmed how many, if any, of those roles sit on the Fitness+ team itself, so it doesn’t directly rebut cuts to that team specifically.
What to watch
Whether Health+ actually appears as a combined subscription, and when. Whether Fitness+’s own output, new audio episodes and workout programmes, visibly slows over the coming months. And whether Apple pairs the change with a hardware event, its usual pattern for big service moves, something that didn’t happen this September.
The take
This site’s view supports Gurman’s theory: the significantly improved new Health app will eventually spawn its own subscription tier. Two relatively thin subscriptions sitting side by side would be an odd result, so the more likely outcome is that they get merged together.
Last Updated on 20 September 2026 by the5krunner
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tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. ID
