How to choose a weightlifting app

There are dozens of weightlifting apps and they all look alike on their App Store page. Let us get this out of the way first: this article is published by Musku, which is one of them. So you are entitled to be sceptical, and that is exactly why you will not find a ranking here where the house app comes out on top. Everyone is looking for the best weightlifting app, and the answer depends mostly on you. What follows are the criteria that decide whether an app survives six months in your pocket or gets deleted after three sessions.

The right question is not which one is best

The right question is what you actually want from it. Three very different needs hide behind "a lifting app", and most disappointments start there.

You want to log your sets. You already have a programme, you know what to do in the gym, you just want a reliable place to write your loads and find what you did last time. By far the most common need.

You want to be told what to do. You are starting out or coming back, you want a ready-made programme, full body or push pull legs, with the progression decided for you.

You want to analyse. You have been training for years, you want volume by muscle group, charts, records, something to adjust your programme against real numbers.

An app that excels at the second need will be painful for the first, because it imposes its own framework. Work out where you stand first, everything else follows.

The main families, with names

Training logs

Strong and Hevy are the two international references. Strong is the leaner of the two, very fast to log with, its free tier capped at three custom routines. Hevy is more social, with a feed showing your contacts' sessions, and a free tier capped at four routines and, more importantly, three months of history. Both are designed in English, which is an advantage here. FitNotes, free and ruthlessly efficient, exists only on Android. Musku belongs to this family.

Apps that decide for you

Fitbod is the best known: it builds your session around the equipment you have and what you have already fatigued. It is comfortable when you want to decide nothing, and frustrating if you already follow a programme, because you spend your time correcting its suggestions. The model is a subscription, with no lasting free tier.

Programme catalogues

Boostcamp and Jefit sit in between: they do not compose your session, they give you access to existing written programmes, from beginner full body routines to well-known strength cycles, and track your progress inside them. It is the most direct answer to the second need described above. Jefit leans on a very large exercise catalogue, Boostcamp on staying faithful to the original programmes. The trade-off is the same either way: you gain a ready-made structure and lose the freedom to tinker without leaving the rails.

Brand apps

Gymshark Training and Decathlon Coach are free and competently built, but they exist to maintain a commercial relationship, not to be the best possible logbook. Decathlon Coach covers a lot of sports, which makes it less precise on load tracking.

The spreadsheet

Do not dismiss it too quickly, it is still the main competitor to every app on this list. Free, infinitely adaptable, and your data is genuinely yours. Its single flaw is decisive for many people: it is miserable to fill in standing up, between two sets, with sweaty hands.

What "free" actually covers, app by app

Almost all of these are free to install and limited afterwards, but not in the same place, and that is where your choice is decided. Recorded in July 2026 and worth re-checking, as these rules change often: Strong caps at three routines, Hevy at four routines and three months of history, Musku at three workout templates.

App	What the free tier covers	Model
Strong	3 custom routines, unlimited sessions, full history	Subscription
Hevy	4 routines, unlimited sessions, 3 months of history	Subscription
Fitbod	Limited trial, then subscription required	Subscription
Musku	3 workout templates, unlimited sessions, full history	Subscription

So the right question is not the monthly price, it is what you lose the day you stop paying. Losing access to charts is survivable. Losing access to your own session history is another matter entirely, since that is precisely what you spent months building. Check this before you commit; it is rarely highlighted on product pages.

The criteria that actually matter

How many taps it takes to log a set. This is criterion number one and nobody talks about it. You have fifteen seconds, you are standing, one hand is holding the phone. Count the taps needed to record a set in the app you are testing. Three is good. Seven and you will quit within a month, however beautiful the charts.

Showing you last time's numbers. A good app displays what you lifted last time on that exercise without you having to go looking. That is the feature that genuinely drives progress, because progressive overload requires knowing where you started. If you have to navigate into a history screen to find it, the app has failed at its job.

Behaviour with no signal. Plenty of gyms are in basements, and an app that stalls or loses a set while waiting for a server becomes useless exactly where you need it. Put your phone in airplane mode and log three sets to see what happens. It is a thirty second test that eliminates candidates.

A clear business model. Free with ads, subscription, one-off purchase: none is dishonourable, but you should know which one you are choosing. Be most wary of free with no visible model, which usually means the product is somewhere else. Check too what remains usable if you stop paying, and specifically whether you keep access to past sessions.

The exit, not just the entrance. A question rarely asked before committing: the day you switch apps, can you take your history with you? Some export a readable file, others nothing at all. Two years of sessions is the most valuable thing you have built, and it is also what most effectively keeps you inside an app you no longer like. Look for "export" in the settings before you start, not after.

The watch, if you have one. Pulling out your phone between sets breaks the rhythm and invites notifications. A real watch app, one that drives the session rather than just running a timer, changes the experience completely. Check that it is a standalone app and not a mirrored display.

Language and vocabulary. Machine translation shows up immediately in exercise names, and a badly translated catalogue makes searching painful every single session.

Bad reasons to choose an app

The 2000-exercise catalogue. You will use thirty of them. A large, badly organised catalogue mainly slows your search down.

AI as a headline feature. Ask yourself what it concretely does with your numbers. If it produces advice any generic article would give, it is worthless. If it reads your actual history and tells you your shoulders gained three sets a week while your legs lost two, it is worth something.

The screenshots. They are built to sell. None of them tells you what it feels like to log a set while sweating, with a loaded bar waiting for you.

The best weightlifting app is the one you reopen

The test that really decides does not happen on your sofa, it happens in the gym. Install two apps, no more, and use them across three real sessions. At the end of the week note just three things: how many times the app slowed you down, whether you found last time's loads without searching, and whether you felt like reopening it the next day to look at your session, which says a great deal about your future consistency. That last question is the most predictive of all.

Then delete the loser without sentimentality. A week of testing costs far less than six months spent working around an app that does not suit you.

Frequently asked questions

Which weightlifting app is genuinely free?

None is entirely free, but several are usable without paying for months. Strong, Hevy and Musku all let you record unlimited sessions on the free tier and impose limits elsewhere, on the number of templates or the depth of history. On Android, FitNotes remains free with no significant limits.

Strong or Hevy, which should I pick?

Strong if you want the leanest, fastest log to fill in. Hevy if the social side motivates you, provided you accept that the free tier keeps only three months of history, which becomes awkward as soon as you want to compare one year with another.

Can you transfer your history between apps?

It depends entirely on what the app you are leaving offers. Some export a CSV file you can read or import elsewhere, others provide no way out at all. None guarantees a clean import from a competitor, so plan on starting with an empty slate and keeping your old export as an archive.

Do you have to pay to track your progress?

Not for the essentials. Logging loads and seeing your previous session is free almost everywhere. What you pay for is analysis, charts and the number of templates. Above all, check whether you keep access to your history the day you stop paying.

Which weightlifting app works with the Apple Watch?

Several logs offer one, Musku included. The question is not whether something appears on your wrist, but whether the watch app genuinely drives the session, current exercise and timer included, without you having to reach for your phone.

Where Musku fits

Musku is a logbook, not a coach. It is built for the first and third categories described above: log fast, then understand. Recording a set takes a few taps, last time's load sits next to every line, and a native Apple Watch app drives the session from your wrist. The free account lets you create three workout templates and record them with no time limit and no cap on sets, while the subscription opens up additional templates and the analysis screens. Your full history stays readable even without a subscription, which is a deliberate choice. If what you want is a ready-made programme with videos, this is not the app for you, and another one on this list will suit you better. That is part of choosing honestly too.