Strong remembers what you lifted.
Stronger tells you what it means.
Strong is one of the best minimalist gym logs ever made: fast, clean, cheap, trusted by millions. We're not here to argue with that. Stronger keeps the fast logging you'd expect and adds the layer Strong leaves out on purpose: a Strength Score, weak-point analysis, routines that adapt to your numbers, and friend challenges built on real progress.
If you came expecting us to call Strong broken or abandoned, close the tab. It isn't, and you'd know within a paragraph.
Rank yourself right now.
This is what Stronger hands you after a single workout. Strong logs your bench beautifully and then leaves you to wonder where it actually stands. Drag yours.
// illustrative model, men's/women's bench standards relative to bodyweight
A 1.22×-bodyweight bench puts you in Advanced. Strong will happily log it forever and never once tell you that.
A notebook stores events.
A score creates signal.
Strong calls itself "Workout. Notebook. Reinvented," and it earns that. You open it, see last week's numbers, log today's sets, leave. For a lot of lifters that's the whole job. Stronger reads those same sets and answers the question a notebook never can: are you actually getting stronger, or just busy?
Strong is built around the workout you already planned. Stronger is built around the progress you're trying to create.
// logged. filed. same as last week?
Which lifter are you?
Most people searching "Strong alternative" already know what Strong is. They're asking one thing: is switching worth the friction? Here's the honest answer, both ways.
Stay with Strong if…
- —You want the fastest, quietest minimalist logger and nothing more.
- —You already know exactly how you're going to train.
- —Apple Watch logging is your top priority. Strong's wrist app is mature; ours isn't there yet.
- —You want the cheapest paid tier. Strong is $4.99/mo to our $9.99.
- —You lean on the plate calculator, supersets, and CSV export, and you don't want a feed anywhere near your workout.
Switch to Stronger if…
- ✦You want a single Strength Score instead of a pile of charts you have to interpret.
- ✦You want to see which muscle group is holding your total back, not just your bench history.
- ✦You're tired of rebuilding templates every block and want routines that adapt to what you actually lift.
- ✦You train harder when friends are watching, but you don't want a public feed.
- ✦You've outgrown a plain logbook and want something between a notebook and a black-box AI coach.
The honest answer: yes, switch if you want feedback, benchmarking, and motivation layered on logging. No if you mainly want the cheapest, cleanest, Watch-first notebook. Don't switch to save money. Switch for more reasons to train.
Where Strong is still better
Strong has a decade of polish and a deep well of goodwill. Pretending otherwise would insult you. So here's exactly what it does better, said plainly.
It's cheaper, full stop
$4.99/mo or $29.99/yr, with a "PRO Forever" lifetime option around $99.99. We're $9.99/mo with no lifetime. If the cheapest paid tier decides it, Strong wins that round, and we'd rather tell you now than after you switch.
The free tier is genuinely good
Strong free logs unlimited workouts and never locks you out of your data, no ads. The real limit is three custom routines, which bites if you run a 4-day split. But it's a clean notebook, not a "log it, now pay" trap, and people are right to like it.
The Apple Watch app is mature
Record and control workouts from the wrist, heart rate, rest timers, Live Sync between Watch and iPhone. Strong rebuilt the whole Watch app in its v6 update. If you log from your wrist every session, Strong has the clearer Watch story today, and we'd rather say so than pretend our own is finished.
Mature lifter utilities
Supersets and circuits, a plate calculator, a warm-up calculator, warm-up/drop/failure set tags, RPE, body measurements, CSV export. None flashy. Detail-oriented lifters care about every one, and Strong has had years to get them right.
Trust and polish
Roughly 4.9 stars from about 108,000 App Store ratings and over a million Play downloads. The core logger is mature in a way no newer app can fake. That's earned, and it's a real reason to stay if logging is all you need.
And no, it's not abandoned
You may have heard that. It was a fair complaint during a long quiet stretch before the v6 rebuild, but it isn't true now. Strong shipped v6 in 2025 and has pushed steady fixes through 2026. Its roadmap is just conservative: polish the logger, don't chase new categories.
One number for "how strong am I, really?"
Strong tracks PRs and an estimated 1RM per exercise. Useful, but it's still exercise-by-exercise history you read yourself. Stronger turns your lifts into one Strength Score: benchmarked, adjusted for bodyweight, gender and training age, ranked against global standards from beginner to elite, tracked over time.
A chart says "here's what happened." A score says "here's where you stand." And per muscle, it shows you that your bench is outpacing your row, or that your posterior chain is lagging your quads, so you stop guessing what to bring up.
The three things a notebook can't do
Stop rebuilding templates
Strong stores the program you built; if you want a 6-week block you build and rebuild it by hand. Stronger generates routines from your goals and equipment, then adapts weights, sets and reps to your logged performance, with progressive-overload logic and deload suggestions. It's guidance you stay in control of, not a black box that hijacks your training.
Compare strength, not screenshots
Strong's sharing is a workout card. Stronger has friend groups, weekly and monthly challenges, leaderboards and achievements built around the Strength Score, so you're comparing strength, not who posted. No public feed required: you challenge people you actually train against and keep each other honest.
A dashboard, not a drawer
Strength curves, training volume by muscle group, daily insights, post-workout feedback. Strong is intentionally quiet. Stronger is intentionally a dashboard. For the lifter who's outgrown "did I beat last time?", that's the upgrade, with a 400+ exercise library behind it.
Feature by feature, fairly
Where Strong has a mature, well-built feature, we credit it plainly. We won't claim parity we can't back up. Our edge isn't matching Strong utility-for-utility, it's the benchmarking, adaptive and social layer Strong doesn't try to build.
Stronger- Fast logging, previous-set view, rest timers, RPE
- ✓ the benchmark
- ✓ fast, + Quick Log
- Plate & warm-up calculators, supersets
- ✓ all built in WIN
- RPE per set; no plate calc
- Custom routines on the free tier
- 3 max, unlimited logging
- Planner free; depth is Premium
- Strength Score, ranked vs global standards
- ✗ not a feature
- Core feature WIN
- Weak-point analysis, by muscle
- ✗
- Ranked & flagged WIN
- Estimated 1RM & progress charts
- ✓ charts (PRO)
- ✓ + tier-ranked, daily insights
- AI & adaptive routines
- Templates you rebuild by hand
- Adapts to your numbers WIN
- Friend challenges & leaderboards
- Workout sharing, minimal
- Built on the Score WIN
- Apple Watch logging
- Mature, dedicated app WIN
- iPhone & Android first
- Health sync (Apple Health / Health Connect)
- Apple Health, Google Fit
- Apple Health (R/W), Health Connect
- Data export
- CSV export WIN
- In-app export
- Price, monthly / lifetime
- $4.99 / ~$99.99 WIN
- $9.99 / none
- Maturity & trust
- ~4.9★, a decade deep
- 4.8★, newer and moving fast
Strong wins on price, polish, calculators and the Apple Watch. Stronger wins on the Strength Score, weak-point analysis, adaptive routines and ranked competition. Both are real. The difference: Strong's wins make logging nicer, ours tell you whether the logging is working.
"I logged everything. Now what?"
We read hundreds of App Store reviews and r/strongapp threads. The love is real, and it's almost always about the logging. The people who go hunting for an alternative aren't saying Strong can't log. They're saying the log stopped being enough.
"I logged my training in Strong for years. It was excellent, the UI is great and the free version isn't clogged up with ads."
"Wouldn't mind something that increased the weights for me and told me what to do."
"I care about progressive overload, strength standards, getting stronger over time."
"You can't create a 6 week program... you have to change your sets/reps every time."
"I would love to see auto calculation and routine update of weights and reps based on progressive overload."
"Integrate strength standards... compare your lifts to averages, maybe with progress bars."
Read those again. Not one says "Strong can't log my sets." They're all the same lifter, a few hundred sessions in, asking for the exact thing the Strength Score and adaptive routines were built to answer. Strong remembers. Stronger interprets.
Yes, Strong is cheaper.
We're not going to dress that up.
Strong's free plan is genuinely useful: unlimited logging, never locked out of your data. Free covers logging; PRO covers convenience. With us, the money buys interpretation, not access to your own sets.
Strong
cheaper, log-only- Workout loggingUnlimited
- Custom routines3
- Charts & calculatorsPRO
- Locked out of your data?Never
Stronger
7-DAY FREE TRIAL- ✦A Strength Score & global ranks
- ✦Weak-point analysis by muscle
- ✦AI & adaptive routines
- ✦Ranked friend challenges
Our annual price isn't perfectly consistent across surfaces yet, you'll see $39.99/yr in the App Store and an older $59.99 figure in some of our own copy. We're cleaning that up. Take the in-app plan screen as the real one.
Strong is cheaper, and Stronger costs more because it does more. If you only want a fast logbook, Strong's price is the right call. If you want benchmarking, adaptive programming and competition, that's what the difference buys.
What happens to your old workouts?
Serious lifters don't switch casually. After hundreds of sessions, your tracker holds your training memory, and you deserve straight talk about what moving costs.
Export your Strong data first, and check what transfers
Strong offers CSV export on iOS and Android, which is good. But Strong's own docs note exported data can't be imported back into Strong, and the CSV carries logged history, not your templates. There's no one-tap Strong→Stronger importer today. So "Strong has export" is true, but export isn't the same as clean, complete portability, and that's worth knowing before you assume any switch is frictionless.
The value builds fast
Your Strength Score, weak-point map and benchmarks start forming from your first few logged sessions. Rebuild your main routine, a PPL, an upper/lower, a 5x5, once, and let the adaptive logic take it from there. Within two to three weeks of logging, you've got the picture Strong was never built to show you.
The honest way to test it
Keep Strong. Run a week of workouts in Stronger alongside it. It's a week of double-logging, not a migration project. If your first Strength Score doesn't change how you train, you've lost nothing but seven days, and you'll have your answer.
Questions a Strong user asks
Is Stronger better than Strong?
Not for everyone, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling. Strong is better if you want a cheaper, simpler, more mature logger with a clean Apple Watch app. Stronger is better if you want strength benchmarking, AI and adaptive routines, weak-point insights and friend challenges. Different jobs.
Is Strong still a good app? Is it abandoned?
Strong is still one of the best minimalist gym logs, and no, it's not abandoned. It shipped a major v6 in 2025 and has been actively updated through 2026. The "abandoned" reputation is stale. Its development is just deliberately conservative, polishing the logger rather than chasing new categories.
Is Stronger cheaper than Strong?
No. Strong is cheaper, $4.99/month versus our $9.99, with a lifetime option we don't offer. Stronger costs more because it includes the Strength Score, adaptive and AI routines, advanced analytics and social challenges. If you don't want those, Strong's lower price makes sense.
Does Stronger have Apple Watch support?
Straight answer, because you'll check anyway: Strong currently has the clearer, more mature Apple Watch experience. Stronger runs on iPhone and Android, and our Watch story is something we're still firming up across our own surfaces. If wrist-first logging is your top priority today, Strong is the safer pick, and we'd rather say that than oversell it.
Can I import my Strong history into Stronger?
Strong lets you export your history as a CSV, but that export doesn't include templates and can't be read back into Strong itself. There's no one-tap Strong-to-Stronger importer today. Before switching, export your data and confirm what transfers. We'd rather set the expectation honestly than promise a migration that disappoints you.
What's the Strength Score, exactly?
One benchmarked number for your overall strength across major lifts, adjusted for bodyweight, gender and training age, ranked against global standards. It's not meant to replace your coach or your judgment, it's a consistent way to see whether your strength is moving, where you're lagging, and how you compare. Skeptical? Good. You can read how the underlying strength standards work before you ever download.
I want something free. What should I do?
Then Stronger probably isn't your first stop, and that's fine. Strong's free tier, unlimited logging and three routines, is genuinely good, and other apps push free harder still. We built Stronger for lifters who want depth, not for the free-tier shopper. Our roundup of the best workout tracker apps lays out the trade-offs across the category.
How does Stronger fit between Strong and Hevy?
Strong is the polished minimalist logger; Hevy is the social one with the bigger free tier. Stronger is the third path: it keeps the logging and adds the layer neither leads with, a Strength Score, ranked competition and adaptive progression. If "log it" is already solved for you and "interpret it" isn't, that's the gap. You can see the Stronger vs Hevy comparison too.
Strong remembers your lifts.
Find out what they mean.
Keep Strong. Run a week of workouts in Stronger free, see your Strength Score, and decide with your own data. If your log has become a place where numbers go in and nothing comes back out, that's your signal.
Or explore the features, see how the Strength Score works, or sharpen up first with our progressive overload guide and the free RPE calculator.
Stronger vs everything else
- vs HevySocial tracker→
- vs FitbodAI auto-programming→
- vs JEFITExercise database→
- vs BoostcampProgram library→
- vs CaliberCoaching app→
- vs StrengthLogFree-tier logger→
- vs RepCountNo-bloat logger→
- vs StravaSocial-proof layer→
- vs LiftoffGamified ranking→