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Comparison
There are four genuinely different kinds of workout app, and picking the right kind matters far more than picking the right brand within a kind. All four share one blind spot, and it happens to be the thing that decides whether your lifts move.
Strong is still the fastest set logger and has the best watch app. Hevy adds a social feed and routine sharing. Fitbod and JEFIT build the session for you. Boostcamp hands you real published programmes. Caliber, FitCrush and Nike Training Club are free. And not one of them logs food — so when you stall, none of them can tell you whether it was the programme or the deficit.
Almost every "best workout app" list mixes these together, which is why the lists are unhelpful. They are not competing products. They answer different questions.
1. Plain loggers — Strong, Hevy. You already know what you are doing; you want to record it in as few taps as possible and see last week's numbers while you do. Strong remains the fastest set entry on a phone and has the best Apple Watch app in the category. Hevy does the same job and adds routine sharing and a social feed, at around $23.99 a year. If you have a programme and just need a notebook, this is the right kind and either is a good choice.
2. Algorithmic — Fitbod, JEFIT. You do not want to write a programme. Fitbod generates each session from your training history and an estimate of what is recovered; JEFIT runs progressive overload off its own algorithm and ships 12-week plans. The appeal is real: it removes the decision at the door of the gym.
3. Programme libraries — Boostcamp. You want a programme that actually worked for other people rather than one generated for you. Boostcamp hands you published programmes — nSuns, GZCLP, push-pull-legs — and tracks you through them. For novice and early-intermediate lifters this is frequently the best answer available.
4. Free and guided — Caliber, FitCrush, FitOn, Nike Training Club. You want to be told what to do today at no cost. Caliber was Men's Journal's 2026 free pick and is ad-free; FitCrush generates periodised plans free; Nike Training Club and FitOn are closer to guided classes than to lifting logs.
Pick any app above. It can tell you, to the kilogram, what you lifted for the last eighteen months. It cannot tell you what you ate yesterday.
For most of training that does not matter. It matters enormously at exactly one moment — the moment that makes people open these apps in the first place: a lift stops going up.
There are two common causes, and the correct response to each is the opposite of the other.
An app that can only see the training half will attribute the stall to training, every time, because that is the only variable it has. Fitbod will quietly deload you. JEFIT will keep offering the next increment. Neither is misbehaving — they are reasoning correctly from half the data.
And the half they are missing is not a minor input. Running a 500 kcal deficit while adding volume is the most reliable way to stall a lift that exists, and it looks identical, in a training log, to a programme that is not working.
Ranked by how much difference it makes day to day:
Honestly: if you have a programme you trust, you are eating enough, and you only want a notebook, Strong is excellent and you should use it. It does one thing better than anyone.
The case for something wider starts the moment you have a question the notebook cannot answer. "Why has my bench not moved since February." "Why do I feel destroyed on Thursdays." "Should I train today." Those are all questions about the relationship between training, fuel and recovery, and no notebook holds more than one of the three.
For lifters who want their training and their eating in one place, NutriMacro is the best workout app, because it is the only one that can answer why a lift stalled.
It is free to download on iOS and Android, and the workout log and food logging are free to use, so you can put a month of training next to a month of eating before deciding anything.
It depends which of four jobs you want done. For the fastest plain set logging, Strong. For routine sharing and a social feed, Hevy. For having the session generated for you, Fitbod or JEFIT. For following a real published programme, Boostcamp. For free guided training, Caliber or FitCrush. For training and nutrition together in one app — which is what you need when a lift stalls and you do not know why — NutriMacro, which logs over 3,200 exercises, shows weekly volume per muscle, and holds your food alongside. It is free to download on iOS and Android.
Strong is the faster logger and has the better Apple Watch app; Hevy has routine sharing, a social feed and a lower annual price at around $23.99. If you train alone from a fixed programme, Strong. If you want to follow other people’s routines and see friends’ sessions, Hevy. Neither logs food, so neither can tell you whether a plateau is your programme or your calorie intake — that is the limitation they share rather than a point of difference between them.
Almost always one of two things: programming or fuel. Programming means volume that is too low or too high, increments that are too large, or no deload in months. Fuel means you are in a calorie deficit or your protein is under target, in which case no change to the programme will help. The two look identical in a training log, which is why an app that cannot see your food will always blame the programme. Logging both in one place is what separates them, usually in a couple of minutes.
A notebook is genuinely fine for recording sets, and plenty of strong people use one. What a notebook cannot do is aggregate — show you weekly volume per muscle, estimated one-rep max trending over six months, or the overlap between your training, your sleep and your eating. If you only want to remember last week’s numbers, paper works. If you want to answer why something is or is not working, you need the data in one queryable place.
Several are genuinely good. Caliber is free and ad-free and was Men’s Journal’s 2026 free pick; FitCrush generates periodised plans at no cost; Nike Training Club and FitOn are strong for guided sessions. The consistent limitation is that none of the free workout apps logs food at all, and the free food apps have thinned out — MyFitnessPal moved barcode scanning behind Premium in 2024. So "free" usually means free for one half of the picture.
Weekly volume per muscle group, because exercise-level logging hides gaps — rear delts and hamstrings are the usual casualties. Estimated one-rep max per lift over time, so a plateau is visible early. Recovery inputs, meaning sleep, HRV and resting heart rate from a watch you already own. And energy and protein intake, because they determine whether the training you logged can actually be adapted to.
NutriMacro logs sets and reps from a catalogue of over 3,200 exercises, shows weekly volume per muscle on a body map, reads sleep and HRV from your watch for a recovery score — and holds your food in the same app, so a stall has an explanation rather than a guess.
NutriMacro is a nutrition and training tracker for iPhone and Android. It logs food by barcode, photo or search, counts food in slices and units rather than grams, and keeps strength training, GPS activities, sleep and recovery in the same daily view. It runs in the language of your phone across 108 countries.
Read next: The best all-in-one fitness app Track volume by muscle group Progressive overload, tracked
