Week 1 · 31 Aug–6 Sep 2026
Seven days. Finish, and split the pool.
A recurring step challenge on Steppa with real money on the line and nothing buried in the terms. Walk 9,000 steps a day for a week. Everyone who finishes divides the pot. Everyone who doesn’t leaves their stake in it.
9,000 steps / day
7 days
$70 entry
Mondays every week
I host this challenge and am paid a 5% creator fee, charged by Steppa on top of each entry. I earn that fee whether or not you finish. Full disclosure.
Enter this week See the receipts
Week 1 join window: Saturday 29 August through Sunday 30 August. Walking starts Monday 31 August.
Illustration at a 67% finish rate, the difficulty this format is tuned to. Real numbers vary with how many enter and how many finish, and the real ones get posted every Monday, win or lose.
01 · The math
The pool size is a headline. The completion rate is the deal.
Your payout is your stake divided by the finish rate. A finisher in a 60-person pool at 67% completion gets 1.50×, the same multiple as a finisher on a house card at that rate.
On 16 August 2026 the live house card on playsteppa.com was Ballers: $250 stake, 15 days, 12,000 steps/day, $39,500 pool, 158 joined. Ours is $70 for 7 days at 9,000.
We transcribed 16 settled house cards the same day: median finish about 77%, return if you finished from 1.07× to 1.69×. Full table: /house-challenge-results.
The 5% is the creator-fee rate I set in Steppa’s create-challenge flow: 5% of each stake, charged on top, not carved out of the pool. The processing-fee line stays “shown in app” permanently. Read that screen, not this page. Steppa’s terms (updated 5 August 2026) define the up-front-fee model for challenges created on or after 18 June 2026.
The part nobody explains: if almost everyone finishes, everyone gets roughly their stake back. If two-thirds finish, finishers get about 1.5×. That’s why this is set at 9,000 a day rather than 5,000. An easy challenge is a worse deal for the people who finish it.
One more fact from Steppa’s terms: if nobody finishes, the platform keeps the entire pool. A challenge tuned so hard that it goes to zero transfers every dollar staked to the house. The 60–70% finish band is how we keep participants’ money in participants’ hands. Work the numbers yourself. Also: house results · is Steppa legit? · stake-and-split apps compared · how hosting actually pays.
02 · The week
How a Split runs.
Same shape every time. You’ll know exactly where you stand from Monday morning to Sunday night.
- Saturday
- The card goes live. Join window opens. Enter this week · How to join.
- Monday
- Day one. Last week’s Split settles and the receipt is published.
- Wednesday
- Midpoint standings. Who’s still perfect, who’s already out.
- Friday
- The danger list: everyone one bad day from losing their stake.
03 · Receipts
Every settlement, published.
Entered, finished, what each winner got, and how many people lost their stake. Including the weeks that go badly. This archive is the only reason to trust anything else on this page.
This is where every settlement will live, newest first. If you’re reading this before the first one, you’re early.
Until No. 1 settles, the numbers we can show are house numbers: 16 completed Steppa cards, 7,141 entries, pooled finish rate 77.5%. House challenge results.
04 · Before you enter
How people lose money here.
Not a disclaimer. An actual list, because these are the four ways it goes wrong and you should know all of them before you stake anything.
- One bad dayThere’s no partial credit and no makeup day. Miss Thursday and Monday through Wednesday counted for nothing.
- SyncSteps come from Apple Health. Third-party wearables can count if they write to Health, but they sync less reliably. Keep your iPhone or Apple Watch on you. If steps aren’t updating.
- Overconfidence9,000 a day is fine on a normal day. It’s brutal on a sick day, a travel day, or a 12-hour shift. Look at your actual week before you enter.
- The obvious oneYou can lose your entire entry fee. Don’t stake money you’d be upset to lose to a week of bad weather.
05 · Questions
The rest of it.
Who runs this?
An independent host, not Steppa. I create the challenge, cover the listing cost, publish the standings and the settlements, and take a 5% host fee that Steppa charges on top of each entry. I am not affiliated with Steppa LLC and have no control over their payouts, their app, or their rulings. More on who this is.
Do I need an iPhone?
The App Store listing is iPhone-only. Steppa reads step counts from Apple Health. Fitbit, Garmin, Oura and WHOOP can feed Apple Health, but during a paid week the reliable setup is your iPhone in your pocket or an Apple Watch on your wrist. Does Steppa work on Android? Their terms still mention Google Play in boilerplate. We re-check that rather than claiming there is never an Android client.
Can I join partway through?
No. The join window closes Sunday night and the challenge starts Monday. There’s a new one every week, so the wait is never longer than a few days.
What if almost everyone finishes?
Then finishers get close to their stake back and not much more. That’s an honest outcome, not a failure. The week still did its job. The difficulty is set to land around a two-thirds finish rate precisely so this doesn’t happen often.
Can I be in another challenge at the same time?
Steppa limits free accounts to one active challenge. You can queue a second one only during the final days of your current challenge. The exact number of days is set by Steppa and shown in the app. That’s why our join window opens on Saturday.
Is this gambling?
The outcome depends on your own behaviour rather than chance: you either walk the steps or you don’t. That said, real money is at risk and you can lose your entry fee. Paid challenges are 18+ and restricted in some regions; Steppa will tell you at signup whether they are available where you are. Steppa’s terms govern eligibility, not this page.
Why not just join a house challenge?
Pool size does not change your expected return. Completion rate does. House challenges don’t publish theirs. We do, every Monday. We also run a season, titles, a sync-rescue path, and a published goodwill policy, none of which a house card has. The honest comparison.