How to choose a weightlifting app

There are dozens of weightlifting apps and they all look the same on their App Store page. Let's be upfront: this article is published by Musku, which is one of them. So you have every reason to be sceptical, and that is exactly why you will not find a ranking here where the house app comes first. Everyone wants the best weightlifting app, and the answer depends mostly on you. What you will find here 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. Three very different needs hide behind the phrase "a gym app", and most disappointments start there.

You want to log your sets. You already have a program, you know what to do at the gym, you just need a reliable place to write your loads and find what you did last time. This is by far the most common need.

You want to be told what to do. You are starting out or coming back, and you want a ready-made plan, Full Body or Push Pull Legs, with progression decided for you.

You want to analyse. You have been training for years and you want weekly volume per muscle group, charts, records, something to adjust your program with actual numbers.

An app that excels at the second need will annoy you if you have the first, because it will impose its structure. Work out where you stand and the rest follows.

The main families, with actual names

Training logs

Strong and Hevy are the two international references. Strong is the plainer of the two, very fast to log into, with a 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. FitNotes is free and brutally efficient but exists only on Android. Musku belongs to this family.

Apps that decide for you

Fitbod is the best known: it builds your session from the equipment you have and the muscles you already fatigued. Comfortable when you would rather not decide anything, frustrating if you already follow a program, because you spend your time overriding its suggestions. Subscription only, with no lasting free tier.

Brand apps

Gymshark Training and similar apps from gym chains are free and well made, but they exist to maintain a commercial relationship, not to be the best possible log. Useful, as long as you know what they are for.

The spreadsheet

Do not dismiss it too fast, it is still the main competitor to every app on this list. Free, endlessly flexible, and the data is genuinely yours. Its single flaw is fatal for most people: it is miserable to fill in standing up, between two sets, with sweaty hands.

What "free" actually covers

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

So the question is not the monthly price, it is what you lose the day you stop paying. Losing charts is survivable. Losing access to your own training history is another matter entirely, since that is exactly what you spent months building. Check that before you commit, it is rarely advertised on the product page.

The criteria that actually matter

How many taps to log one set. This is criterion number one and nobody talks about it. You have fifteen seconds, you are standing, one hand holds 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, no matter how pretty the charts are.

Last time's numbers, right there. A good app shows what you lifted last time on that exercise without you having to look for it. That single feature is what drives progress, because progressive overload assumes you know your starting point. If you have to dig through a history screen, the app is failing at its job.

Behaviour without a signal. Plenty of gyms sit in a basement, and an app that stalls or drops a set because it is 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 rules candidates out.

The business model, stated plainly. Free with ads, subscription, one-off purchase: none of these is dishonourable, but you should know which one you are picking. Be most careful with free and no visible model, which usually means the product is somewhere else. Check what remains usable if you stop paying, particularly whether you keep access to your past sessions.

The watch, if you own one. Pulling your phone out between sets breaks your rhythm and invites notifications. A real watch app that runs the session, not just a timer, changes the experience completely. Make sure it is a standalone app and not a mirrored screen.

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

Bad reasons to choose an app

The 2,000-exercise catalogue. You will use thirty of them. A large, badly organised catalogue mostly slows your search down.

AI on the front page. Ask what it actually does with your numbers. If it produces advice any generic article would give, it is worthless. If it reads your real history and tells you your shoulders gained three weekly sets while your legs quietly lost two, it is worth something.

Screenshots. They are built to sell. None of them tells you what logging a set feels like when you are sweating and a loaded bar is waiting for you.

The best weightlifting app is the one you reopen

The test that decides anything does not happen on your sofa, it happens at the gym. Install two apps, no more, and use them for three real sessions. At the end of the week note three things only: how often the app slowed you down, whether you found last time's loads without searching, and whether you felt like reopening it the next day just to look at your session, which says a lot about how consistent you will be. That last question predicts more than the other two combined.

Then delete the loser without sentiment. 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 of them entirely, but several stay usable for months without paying. Strong, Hevy and Musku all let you log unlimited sessions on the free tier and cap you elsewhere, on the number of routines or on how far back your history goes. On Android, FitNotes remains free with no meaningful limit.

Strong or Hevy?

Strong if you want the plainest, fastest log. Hevy if the social side motivates you, as long as you accept that the free tier keeps only three months of history, which starts to hurt the moment you want to compare one year to the next.

Do you have to pay to track your progress?

Not for the essentials. Logging loads and finding last time's numbers is free almost everywhere. What you pay for is analysis, charts and the number of routines. 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 shows up on your wrist, but whether the watch app actually runs the session, current exercise and rest timer included, without you reaching for the phone.

Where Musku fits

Musku is a log, not a coach. It is built for the first and third needs described above: log fast, then understand. Logging a set takes a few taps, last time's load sits next to every line, and a native Apple Watch app runs the session from your wrist. The free account covers three workout templates, logged as often and as long as you like, and the subscription unlocks additional templates and the analysis screens. Your full history stays readable without a subscription, which is a deliberate choice. If you want a ready-made program with video demonstrations, it is not for you, and another app on this list will suit you better. That is part of choosing honestly too.