Strongbro vs Hevy (2026): Voice Logging vs the Social Log

Hevy is free until you want a fifth routine, an eighth custom exercise, or last spring's numbers. Then it is $23.99 a year. Strongbro has no free tier at all: three days, then $14.99 a year or $19.99 once. That is the money. The rest of the difference is that Hevy is built around taps, an account and other people's training, and Strongbro is built around a sentence spoken into a phone that keeps everything locally.

Every Hevy fact below comes from Hevy's own website, App Store listing, help center or privacy policy, read on 11 September 2026. Where those pages do not settle a question, the answer here is "unverified" rather than a guess.

Two ideal users

The Hevy user trains with friends, or would like to. Copying a routine straight off someone's profile is part of the appeal, and so is an Apple Watch or an Android phone and an account that carries the log between them. Hevy's free tier covers a simple program: four routines, seven custom exercises, three months of visible history. Pro at $23.99 a year is for the day those caps bite. Hevy has been on the App Store since 2019, describes itself as featured by Apple, and averages 4.9 from roughly 92,000 US ratings. Strongbro has nothing like that track record, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise.

The Strongbro user trains alone and stops logging somewhere around the third set, because typing is the part that gets skipped. They want the app to understand the word they actually use for the lift, in their own language. They want records and ranks to update on their own. And they want the answer to "where is my training history" to be "on this phone", which is why there is no account to make: $14.99 a year or $19.99 once, after a 3-day trial.

Feature table

The language row is not like-for-like. Hevy's 16 is the interface; Strongbro's 30-plus is what the voice model understands, with the interface itself in 31. Hevy's exercise leaderboards and streaks are gamification of a sort, and whether they beat Strongbro's rank ladder is taste, so the table leaves it unscored.

Pricing table

All Hevy prices are the in-app purchase names and amounts shown on the US App Store page, in US dollars, on 11 September 2026. Free-tier limits are from Hevy's own Pro help article.

Some small print worth knowing. Every Hevy workout and routine caps at 150 sets, Pro included. There is no free trial in the App Store description, the purchase list or the Pro help article; what the description offers instead is a 14-day right to withdraw from an initial subscription. Hevy Pro is not in Apple Family Sharing. And if you drop back to free, the routines and custom exercises you made above the cap stay put, you just cannot add more.

Privacy and where your data lives

Rather than characterise either company, here is what each one says about itself.

Hevy keeps your training history on its servers. From the help center: "Your information on Hevy is stored to your profile on our servers, not to your device, so when you uninstall and reinstall the app, all of your information will be safe and available once you are signed back into the app." Change phones often and that is a real benefit. It also makes the account mandatory. Sign-up is email and password, Apple or Google, and the privacy policy adds: "Unless specified otherwise, all Data requested by this Application is mandatory."

That policy is hosted on iubenda and was last updated on 4 June 2026. The controller is "Hevy Studios S.L. Pinetell 10, 17252, Calonge i Sant Antoni, Girona, Spain." On what is collected: "Among the types of Personal Data that this Application collects, by itself or through third parties, there are: Trackers; Usage Data; first name; username; gender; date of birth; various types of Data; email address; password; general activity data; payment info; Contacts permission." On where it ends up: "Some of these services work through geographically distributed servers, making it difficult to determine the actual location where the Personal Data are stored," and "Depending on the User's location, data transfers may involve transferring the User's Data to a country other than their own." Adjust GmbH, Amplitude Inc., Google Analytics and TestFlight are named as processors. The App Store privacy card, declared by the developer and not verified by Apple, lists purchase history, email, name, contacts and product interaction as data linked to you.

Two things in Hevy's favour here: its website banner says it does not use cookies for personalised advertising or advertising profiles, and account deletion is self-service and documented.

Strongbro's privacy policy is short because there is less of it to write. Workouts, records, body measurements and physique scans sit on your iPhone. Turn on iCloud sync and they also sit in your own iCloud account, under Apple's encryption. There is no Strongbro account and no server holding your training. Voice clips and physique photos go to the AI model through a relay that attaches no identity, and neither is kept once the response comes back. Nothing in the app asks for your contacts.

Who should pick Hevy

• You train with friends and want to see their sessions, comment on them, or copy a routine straight from a profile.
• You use Android, a Wear OS watch, an iPad, or the web app, or you switch between them and want one account that follows you.
• You own an Apple Watch and want to log from the wrist, with heart rate and offline sessions.
• You want a library of 26 ready-made programs and 400-plus animated exercises before you have written a single routine of your own.
• Your program fits inside four routines and three months of history, so the free tier is genuinely enough.
• You want workouts pushed into Apple Health or Strava without a second app.

Who should pick Strongbro

• You would rather say "bench, three by ten at eighty" than tap through a routine, and you want that to work in your own language. See voice logging.
• You want no feed, no suggested users and no leaderboard on the Home screen, ever.
• You want your log on your phone, with no account to create and no servers to trust.
• You want records and estimated 1RM to update on every set without marking anything, and a rank ladder that counts sessions rather than likes.
• You want a score out of 100 on a physique photo, with per-body-part notes, repeated every few weeks.
• You would rather pay $14.99 a year or $19.99 once than $23.99 a year or $74.99 once.

If you are choosing a system before choosing an app, the guide to tracking gym progress on iPhone sets out the four numbers that matter regardless of which log you use.

Try one for a week

Hevy is the bigger product by a distance: more platforms, more programs, more exercises, a watch app, integrations and a community, plus a free tier plenty of lifters never outgrow. Its trade-offs are structural rather than bugs. Logging is tap-based, the account comes first, the history lives on Hevy's servers, and the Discover feed stays on the Home screen even after you make your profile private. Strongbro is the smaller product with one idea: a sentence logs the session, the numbers stay on the phone, and nobody else's training ever appears. No watch app, no Apple Health sync, iPhone only.

A week settles it. If you finish the week wishing your friends could see the log, that is Hevy. If you finish it glad that nobody can, that is Strongbro. The Hevy review goes through the free tier and Pro in more detail.

Get Strongbro on the App StoreFree for 3 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.

Get Strongbro on the App StoreFree for 3 days. $19.99 once for lifetime.