A disclaimer worth reading

Every workout-app comparison you’ll find is written by one of the apps. This one too — we build Repsheet. What we can offer instead of neutrality is specificity: we’ll name the cases where you should pick Strong or Hevy over us, because those cases exist.

The context for this post: workout trackers have spent the last few years quietly tightening their free tiers — routine caps, locked charts, locked measurements. If you’re comparing in 2026, the question isn’t “which app is best” but “which app is best at the tier you’ll actually use.”

The landscape in June 2026

Strong

The iOS incumbent, around for roughly a decade, and still the most polished native experience of the bunch.

Excellent Apple Watch app — log a whole session without touching your phone.
Unlimited workout logging on the free tier.
As of mid-2026, the free tier caps saved routines at 3; unlimited routines, extra body measurements, and the deeper charts sit behind Strong Pro (about $5/month or $30/year — varies by region, check in-app).
Reliable CSV export, free tier included. Respect for that.
No web app.

Hevy

The fastest-moving competitor, and the one with a genuinely good web app alongside iOS/Android.

Social feed: follow friends, see their sessions, like PRs. If training with friends keeps you consistent, this is a real feature, not a gimmick.
Big exercise library with animations; Apple Watch and Wear OS apps.
As of mid-2026, the free tier caps routines at 4 and keeps some analytics behind Hevy Pro (around $4/month, less on the annual plan — varies by region, check in-app).
CSV export available. Also respect.

FitNotes

The minimalist outlier: Android-only, made by one developer, genuinely free.

Tiny, fast, works offline, no account required at all.
CSV export and local backup files built in.
The trade: Android only (no iOS, no web), a dated UI, manual backups you must remember to move off the phone yourself, and a slow update pace.

Repsheet (us)

Free, entirely. No routine caps, no locked charts, no Pro tier — the whole app is the free tier. One person builds it, runs it, and pays the server bill.
Local-first: works offline in a basement gym, syncs when you reconnect. Runs in the browser and installs as a PWA on iOS, Android, and desktop.
Two-tap set logging with prefill from your last session, reusable templates and multi-week programs, a body heatmap on a human silhouette, per-muscle-group volume over 30 days plus an 8-week volume chart, personal records, and streaks.
Cycle-aware load suggestions for female athletes — opt-in, off by default, stored locally unless you enable sync.
An AI coach angle none of the others have: connect Claude Desktop or Cursor over MCP and the assistant reads your actual history — workouts, stats, PRs, current cycle phase — and can add custom exercises to your library.
One-tap JSON export of everything; you can even self-host the API.

And the honest cons: no Apple Watch or Wear OS app. No social feed. No app-store listing — PWA install is genuinely fine, but some people want the store badge, and that’s fair. The built-in exercise library is smaller than Hevy’s (custom exercises are unlimited). And a one-person project has a bus factor — mitigated by the JSON export and self-hosting, but it would be dishonest not to say it.

How to choose

Apple Watch is non-negotiable: Strong. Best watch experience in the category, worth the subscription if you log from the wrist.
Your friends keep you training: Hevy. The social feed is its real moat.
Android, minimal, no accounts, no cloud: FitNotes.
Everything free, browser + offline PWA, your data exportable, AI coach on top: Repsheet.
You run percentage-based periodization in a spreadsheet: honestly, maybe keep the spreadsheet — here’s our own case for when it still wins.

Switching costs are low

Unlike some app categories, this one is kind to leavers: Strong, Hevy, and FitNotes all export CSV, so your history is never hostage. We wrote a step-by-step guide: how to export your workouts from Strong and Hevy. Repsheet has no CSV importer today (said honestly in that guide too) — migration means moving your current working weights, not your archive, and takes about 15 minutes.

Updated as things change

Free-tier limits and prices in this post were last verified 2026-06-18. These numbers move — if you spot a stale one, tell us and we’ll fix it.