Strong vs Fitbod: three times the monthly price does not lift the bar

You are comparing two screenshots in the gym car park, trying to decide which subscription is the grown-up one. The reasonable assumption is that the dearer app is the better logger. It is not. Fitbod costs more because it generates the workout. Strong costs less because it refuses to. Neither number on the pricing page is a kilogram on the bar.

The research is plainer than the paywall. Logging the work is associated with actually doing the work. The size of the work, counted as sets per muscle per week, is what tracks with muscle gain. An app that picks today's exercises does not get to skip that arithmetic.

Our bias, stated first

We make Pocket Fit. We would like you to buy it instead of either of these. Read the product claims below with that bias in the open.

The prices are not ours to invent. Fitbod's FAQ and membership page list $15.99 a month or $95.99 a year on its own website, with a seven-day trial, and they warn that App Store and Google Play prices can differ by region. Strong's US App Store listing lists Strong PRO at $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year, and the listing text says the free version logs unlimited workouts but saves only three custom routines. Other Strong price points appear on the same listing, including a six-month option and a one-time unlock, so confirm the button you are about to tap.

We have not run a trial of Strong against Fitbod. We will not pretend a feature table is one.

The short answer

Strong is a notebook that stays out of the way. Fitbod is a workout generator you mostly cannot use without paying.

Choose Strong if you already have a programme, from a coach, a book, or your own notes, and you want the cheapest serious log. Three custom routines are free. Unlimited routines are the PRO upsell.

Choose Fitbod if you want the app to build today's session from your equipment and your recent work, and you will pay roughly three times Strong's monthly price for that.

Choose Pocket Fit if you want the week decided in advance, with a published rule for when the weight or the reps go up, and a scheduler when you miss Wednesday. The wider comparison is best workout tracking app. The closer cousins are Hevy vs Fitbod and Pocket Fit vs Strong.

Strong vs Fitbod side by side

Three times the monthly price is the whole argument, if you already know what you are training. If you do not, the generator is the product, and Strong's cheap log will sit empty.

Strong: a notebook with a three-routine fence

Strong's free tier is more generous than most of this category, and more annoying in one specific way. You can log as many workouts as you like. You can only keep three custom routines unless you pay. For a person running one programme, three routines is enough. For a person who saves a push day, a pull day, a legs day and a fourth template "just in case", the fence is the sale.

PRO at $4.99 a month, or $29.99 a year, removes that fence and unlocks the extra charts. It still does not write the programme. If your plan is bad, Strong will record the bad plan with great fidelity. That is the correct job for a notebook, and it is why people who already trust their programme stay.

Fitbod: you pay before the session exists

Fitbod's product is the opposite shape. The session is the thing it sells. The FAQ describes an algorithm that builds the workout, talks about recovery and progressive overload, and puts full access at $15.99 a month or $95.99 a year on the website. New accounts get seven days, and the help centre says you opt into a plan before the trial, with the charge at the end if you do not cancel.

That is a coherent product. It is also a product whose main claim, that its choice of today's exercises beats the programme you would have written, is not a published training study. You are paying for a generator. You should judge it by whether you train on the days you would have skipped, not by the exercise count on the marketing page.

What the evidence says the bar actually responds to

Michie and colleagues ran a meta-regression in Health Psychology on techniques inside healthy-eating and physical-activity interventions. Self-monitoring of behaviour was one of the techniques with clear support. A log that you fill in is not decoration. Strong sits on that finding. A generator that you obey can sit on it too, but only if you do the session it wrote.

Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger pooled 15 studies for the Journal of Sports Sciences and found a graded link between weekly resistance-training volume and muscle growth: about 0.37% additional gain for each extra weekly set per muscle group. The dose is sets per week, not the cleverness of a single generated workout. A beautiful session you skip on Wednesday is a smaller week than three ordinary sessions you logged in Strong.

Put those together and the pricing page looks different. The $11 a month between $4.99 and $15.99 does not buy the 0.37%. It buys a different answer to "what should I do today?" If you already have that answer, you are paying Fitbod to repeat it. If you do not, Strong's notebook cannot invent it.

Where the evidence and our claims run thin

Michie's paper is about intervention techniques in general, not about a gym-log app from 2011. Schoenfeld's 0.37% figure is a pooled association from studies, not a promise that your next set is worth a third of a percent. The studies are mostly short, often in young adults, and they do not contain Strong or Fitbod as arms.

Fitbod does not publish the generator as a methods paper you can audit. Strong does not publish a progression rule because it does not have one. Our claim that a printed rule beats both is a product argument, not a head-to-head trial. We also have not tested whether Fitbod's seven-day trial converts the people who would have quit a blank log. It might. If a blank page is why you stop, the generator is worth the money and this article should not talk you out of it.

What to change before you pay

• If you already follow a named programme, start on Strong's free tier. Pay $4.99 only when the three-routine fence is actually in your way.
• If you open the app and feel stuck on a blank workout, Fitbod's trial is the experiment. Cancel before day seven if you are not training more often than you were.
• Do not pay both. A generator plus a notebook is two places for one week of sets.
• Count sets per muscle per week for a fortnight before you blame the app. That is the dose the volume paper measured.

Where Pocket Fit fits: the scheduler puts a missed session back into the remaining days, the AI coach can change a workout from a sentence, and Body budget keeps the session next to sleep and Fuel, the nutrition log, with no red numbers and no shame. The programme updates week to week from what you log. That is a third job, closer to a plan than to either of these two. Pocket Fit vs Fitbod is the direct version of that argument.

Put it together

**Strong is the cheap, honest notebook, fenced at three routines until you pay $4.**99. Fitbod is the $15.99 generator, with a seven-day trial and no published proof that its choice of exercises beats a programme you already trust. The bar moves when the weekly sets happen. The app that gets those sets done is the one to keep.

Georgi built Pocket Fit after going from 122 kg to first place at The Yard Games, 38 kg down. The bad weeks are the reason the scheduler exists. Read that at our story.

Strong vs Fitbod: common questions

How much does Strong cost compared with Fitbod?

On the pages we read, Strong PRO is $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year on the US App Store. Fitbod lists $15.99 a month or $95.99 a year on its own website. That is about three times the monthly price. Both companies say store prices vary, and Strong's listing also shows other price points, so check the button.

Is Strong free?

The free version logs unlimited workouts and limits you to three custom routines, according to the App Store listing. Unlimited routines and the extra PRO tools are the subscription. Fitbod's help centre describes a seven-day trial that needs a plan selected up front.

Does Fitbod programme better than a log?

It programmes at all, which Strong does not. Whether that programming is better than the plan you already have is not something either company has published as a training study. Schoenfeld, Ogborn and Krieger tied extra muscle gain to extra weekly sets, about 0.37% per additional weekly set per muscle in their pooled estimate, not to which app picked the exercise.

Can you use Strong and Fitbod together?

You can. You should not pay for both unless you enjoy typing the same set twice. The weekly dose is the sets you did, and Michie's review supports self-monitoring, not two monitors.

What if you want a plan and a log in one app?

That is the gap between these two. Pocket Fit writes the week, logs the sets, and moves a missed day with the scheduler. Membership is £9.99 a month or £59.99 a year on our pricing page, free to start with no card.