Alternative to Hevy and Strong: When Switching Is Worth It

If you’re looking for an alternative to Hevy or Strong, you usually have a specific reason. A feature slipped behind the paywall. The subscription is running into its third year. Or the free version is starting to feel tight.

Upfront, because it tends to get lost otherwise: Hevy and Strong are good apps. Millions of people train with them, and most of them should stick with it. Switching isn’t worth it because some app is “better” somewhere — it’s worth it when something about your current one keeps bothering you.

How to Tell It Doesn’t Fit Anymore

You’re paying monthly for a logbook. Five to thirteen euros a month adds up to 200 to 400 euros over three years. That can be worth it if you use the app daily and it takes work off your hands. If you mostly use it to look things up, the ratio starts to feel off. What pricing models exist and what they cost over the years is covered in detail here.

You’re calculating your own progression. Many apps only log: you enter what you did, and the app shows it back to you later. What’s due this week, you work out in your head or in a spreadsheet. If you’re following a fixed program — 5/3/1, GZCLP, linear progression — that’s the same math every single week.

You’re hitting a limit that has no technical reason. A cap on routines or a truncated history are product decisions, not server problems. That’s a legitimate business model — just also a reason to look around if it affects you.

None of that applies? Then stay. Seriously. A routine that works is worth more than any app.

Your History Comes With You

The reason most people don’t switch isn’t the new app. It’s the three years of bench press sitting in the old one.

That’s solvable: in Hevy and Strong, you export your history to a file, and in hitPR, you read it back in. During import, you go through the exercise names once — the app suggests a matching exercise for every unfamiliar name, and you confirm or correct it. After that, your history is there, with date, weight, and sets.

FitNotes works the same way. Exports from GymRun, Liftosaur, or Fitbod are usually readable too. Jefit and Boostcamp don’t work currently — their files are structured differently, and the matching piece isn’t built yet.

One detail that sounds like a footnote and isn’t: some apps don’t record in the file whether your numbers are kg or lbs. In that case, you get asked. Otherwise, 100 lbs silently becomes 100 kg, and you only notice weeks later, on a chart that can’t be right.

The same standard applies the other way around: from hitPR, you export your training history in a format other apps can read, plus a full backup with plans and settings. The honest limitation — the portable export contains your sets, not your program logic. If you move on, you take your history with you and rebuild the plans wherever you land next.

What You’ll See Afterward That You Didn’t See Before

The real difference doesn’t show up while you’re logging. It shows up two months in, when you want to know whether your training is actually balanced.

An example: you’ve been running Push/Pull/Legs for four months, and your rear delts aren’t keeping up. In most apps, the breakdown just says “shoulders” — one line for three muscles that are hit by completely different exercises. Incline press, lateral raises, and face pulls all land in the same bucket. That makes the question unanswerable.

hitPR breaks it down across 19 muscle groups and counts front, side, and rear shoulder separately. Same for adductors and abductors, upper and lower back, neck. You see the result as a body map, front and back: the more color a region has, the more sets landed there that week. One look, and the gap is visible — for almost everyone, it’s the rear delts, the lower back, or the calves.

The counting is transparent: if a muscle is primarily involved, the set counts in full; if it’s only secondary, it counts as half. No scoring system, no rating — just sets per muscle.

And if an assignment doesn’t match how you train, you can change it. In the exercise detail view, you set for each individual exercise which muscles are primary and which are secondary. That sounds like a small thing, but it’s exactly where this kind of breakdown usually falls apart: if you do wide-grip pull-ups and the app still logs them as biceps-heavy, your whole weekly picture is off. The database doesn’t know your form — you do.

A Backup That’s Actually Yours

The second reason people stay with an app is the backup. Three years of history is worth keeping — and to keep it, most people accept that it sits on someone else’s server.

It can be built differently. hitPR doesn’t back up to me; it backs up to your own storage: iCloud or Google Drive, depending on the device. Encryption happens first, on the phone, with AES-256-GCM. You see the key once, as a recovery code — it exists nowhere else.

In practice: neither I nor Google nor Apple can look inside your backup. There is no server holding training data for anyone to compromise, and no account with me for anyone to take over. The flip side comes with it — lose the code and the backup can’t be read again. That’s the price of it genuinely being yours.

Progression You Can Actually Follow

Some apps decide for you which weight is due today. That can be convenient, and for a lot of people it’s exactly right — you open the app, do what’s listed, and don’t have to think about it.

If you want to know why it says 82.5 kg today, though, you need a system that shows its rule.

That’s exactly the approach here: there are eight progression systems — linear progression, double progression, AMRAP-based, effort-based, scheme-switching like GZCLP, and the 5/3/1 cycle. You pick one and set its values: how much it goes up by, how many missed attempts are allowed, when a deload kicks in. The app then executes the rule. It doesn’t invent anything, and it doesn’t change anything on its own.

In practice, that means: you’re running 5/3/1 and you’re standing at the bench on Monday. Instead of calculating what 85 percent of your training max means in this cycle week, the weight is already there — rounded to the plates you can actually load. You do your sets and log the reps. Once the cycle is complete, your training max goes up according to your rule, and the next cycle is ready to go.

The difference isn’t that one of these is smarter. The difference is that you can check the math yourself.

Plans That Run Across Weeks

A routine is a list of exercises. A plan is something different: multiple training days that rotate across weeks, with a cycle behind them.

You can build both here. You set up the days, distribute the exercises, define the weekly structure and cycle length — or take one of the built-in programs and adjust it. Around 1,300 exercises with animations are available to choose from; you can add your own.

How to go about that sensibly without getting lost in the details is covered in the article on creating training plans. What progressive overload means in practice, too.

The rest comes without much fuss: everything you need to train is free, there are no ads, and the app runs without an account and without internet. The optional cloud backup uses your own Google or Apple account. Analytics and crash reports are off by default; whether you turn them on is up to you.

Who It’s Not For

If you want a social network. There’s no feed, no followers, no comments. Sharing does work: after a workout you pick one of five ready-made cards — summary, new PR, muscle map, comparison, streak — and post it as an image to your story or status. What’s missing is the social layer inside the app. If your training thrives on friends seeing and commenting on your workouts, Hevy is built for that and this deliberately isn’t.

If you track cardio primarily. You can log running, rowing and cycling, but only with distance and duration. No heart rate, no pace analysis, no route recording. Anyone serious about cardio needs something else for it.

If you’re looking for guided video workouts. Not the focus here.

If you’d rather be told what to do. If the question “which rule am I progressing by?” annoys you more than it interests you, an app that decides that for you is the better choice.

If you’re happy where you are. See above.

Bottom Line

Check three things before you switch: is something actually bothering you, or is it just curiosity? Does your history come with you? And can you get back out of the new app just as easily as out of the old one?

If all three feel right, switching is a twenty-minute job. And if you then see for the first time that your rear delts have been getting two sets a week for four months, it’s already worth it.

If you’re just starting to track your training in the first place, though, start here instead — the app question comes after that one.

Information on other apps: as of August 2026. Features and prices change, so check with the respective provider if in doubt. hitPR is my own app, so this piece isn’t neutral — but you can verify the claims about it yourself by trying it.