The best Fitbod alternatives, from free workout logs to a trainer that plans your whole week

The short answer

Pick by the part of Fitbod you want to replace. If you mostly want to log your sets, Strong and Hevy do it brilliantly, for free or close to it. If you want an app that keeps planning and progressing your lifting, Hevy Trainer and JEFIT’s Adaptive Plan do that for less than Fitbod. If you’d rather follow a person, Ladder gives you a coach’s weekly plan with a team, and Future gives you a coach of your own. If Fitbod already works for you, it’s still one of the best at what it does. And if what you really want is training that fits the rest of your life, your sleep, your plans and your meals, that’s what we’re building Retenna’s personal trainer to do, as one of a team of experts in one app.

Why people look for Fitbod alternatives

Fitbod is good, and very popular: it says it has passed 15 million downloads. People look elsewhere for a handful of reasons, and most are about fit rather than fault.

• The price. After a free trial, Fitbod is $15.99 a month or $95.99 a year. If you mostly want to log your sets, free and cheaper apps do that well.
• Wanting more say. Fitbod chooses your workout for you. Some people would rather follow a set programme, or build their own.
• Wanting a person. Fitbod is an app, and its App Store listing offers its trainers by email for strength questions. Some people want a coach who writes the plan and checks in.
• Wanting to talk to it. A June 2026 TechRadar interview (third party) described Fitbod’s chat coach as still to come.
• Wanting more than the workout. Fitbod’s recovery is an estimate from your workouts, and it doesn’t say it reads your sleep or your calendar. So it can’t fit your training to the week you’re actually having, or your runs, meals and rest to your training.

What Fitbod still does well

Cost

Free trial; $15.99 a month or $95.99 a year

Where

iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, Wear OS

App Store

4.8 from 288K ratings

Best for

A fresh strength workout every day, chosen for you

Fitbod calls itself an “AI Personal Trainer”, and for strength training it earns the name. It builds each workout for you, choosing the exercises, sets, reps and weights from your goals, your experience, what you’ve logged and an estimate of how recovered each muscle is, from a library of more than 1,000 exercises. It learns from your edits, and you can change the length, the equipment, the muscles or the split, which helps when you’re travelling. It connects to Apple Health, Fitbit and Strava, and Duo and Family plans give each person their own account.

Worth knowingIf you like being told exactly what to lift today, few apps do it as smoothly, so it’s worth being sure what you’d gain before you switch. Its recovery percentages are estimates you can adjust, and they treat a muscle as fully recovered after seven days. Changing your plan around your sleep or your calendar isn’t mentioned.

Fitbod alternatives at a glance

We picked six well-used alternatives that each replace a different part of Fitbod: two workout logs, an app with an AI plan, a coach in your pocket for any place, a coach-led team and a human coach. It’s an editorial pick, not a ranking.

The alternatives, one by one

Hevy

Cost

Free; Pro from $2.99 a month, $23.99 a year or $74.99 once

Where

iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, Wear OS, web

App Store

4.9 from 100K ratings

Best for

Logging fast, with friends

Hevy says more than 17 million people use it, and it’s built for logging: warm-up, drop and failure sets, automatic rest timers, charts, personal records and your full history, from your phone or straight from an Apple Watch or Wear OS watch. A free social feed lets you follow friends and save their routines. In Pro, Hevy Trainer builds a full programme from your experience, goals, equipment, schedule and session length, sets your sets, rep ranges and rest, and raises a weight once you hit the top of the rep range on every set.

Worth knowingHevy Trainer is a Pro feature, and it suggests a starting weight only for exercises you’ve logged at least once. Hevy describes it as an algorithm and doesn’t call it AI, and planning around your sleep or calendar isn’t mentioned. It sends your workouts to Apple Health, connects to Strava, and can import your history from Strong.

Strong

Cost

Free for up to 3 routines; PRO $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year

Where

iPhone, Android, Apple Watch

App Store

4.9 from 109K ratings

Best for

A simple log for a plan you already follow

Strong is the minimalist’s choice, and says “Strong Accounts are Free Forever”. It logs your sets with supersets, a warm-up calculator, effort ratings (RPE), timers and charts, tracks body measurements with Apple Health, schedules workouts and lets you export your data. The free version saves unlimited workouts but only 3 custom routines; PRO removes the limit and adds more charts.

Worth knowingStrong doesn’t plan for you: generating workouts or suggesting weights isn’t mentioned, so you bring the programme. Its App Store release notes mention bringing in workouts from Apple Health, but importing a history from another app isn’t mentioned. Its App Store listing also offers PRO for life at $99.99.

JEFIT

Cost

Free; Elite $12.99 a month or $69.99 a year

Where

iPhone, Android, Apple Watch, web

App Store

4.8 from 47K ratings

Best for

A big library, and a plan that updates every week

JEFIT says it has more than 12 million members, and its App Store listing counts more than 1,400 exercises with videos. You build your own plans, log from your phone or watch and see charts for your lifts and muscle recovery. Elite adds professionally designed plans and its Adaptive Plan, which JEFIT calls AI-powered: it works in repeating four-week blocks that end in a lighter week, and every Monday uses your logged strength and fatigue to decide whether you move on. The listing says its AI also suggests your next weight and reps from past workouts.

Worth knowingThe Adaptive Plan, the ready-made plans, the deeper charts and an ad-free app come with Elite. The plan updates week by week from your logs, rather than changing during a session or around your sleep and calendar.

Freeletics

Cost

Free basics; Coach plans $34.99 to $79.99

Where

iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple Watch

App Store

4.6 from 22K ratings

Best for

Training anywhere, with or without kit

Freeletics says 60 million people use it. Its AI Coach builds your plan from your profile, goal, performance and feedback, and learns from every session you finish. Adapt Session rewrites a workout for no equipment, less time, a space of 2 metres by 2, no running, no noise, sore muscles or a different difficulty. Coach+ adds chat guidance on training and food, and Nutrition Coach is a separate app.

Worth knowingAdapt Session changes one day at a time, not the whole week, and setting your weights or planning around your sleep or calendar isn’t mentioned. Its privacy policy says Freeletics keeps Coach+ conversations to improve the feature.

Ladder

Cost

7-day free trial; $29.99 a month or $179.99 a year

Where

iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, web

App Store

5.0 from 213K ratings

Best for

A coach’s plan, with a team

Ladder takes the opposite approach to Fitbod: its programmes are written by coaches, not generated by an algorithm. A two-minute quiz puts you on a coach-led “team”, in styles from bodybuilding and kettlebells to Pilates or yoga with strength, and each week brings a new 7-day plan. The app calls the moves, pace and rest in your ear, with video demos, while you log reps and weight in the Ladder Journal, and coaches post tips in Team Chat. It has the highest App Store rating of any app here.

Worth knowingThere’s no Android app. The plan is written for the whole team, and suggesting your weights or using AI isn’t mentioned. Monthly covers one team, with up to two changes a month; the annual plan unlocks every team.

Future

Cost

$50 for the first month, then $199 a month

Where

iPhone, Apple Watch

App Store

4.9 from 11K ratings

Best for

A human coach of your own

Future matches you with a real coach, who builds your programme around your goals, fitness and lifestyle, checks in, keeps an eye on your progress and refines the plan over time. You can message your coach, and move workouts or change days whenever you need to. It’s the only option here with a coach all to yourself, at a price to match.

Worth knowingAt $199 a month after the first, it costs more in a month than Fitbod does in a year. There’s no free trial, but Future gives a full refund if you cancel within 30 days. AI isn’t mentioned, and an Android app isn’t listed.

Retenna Ours

Cost

Free early access, with founding pricing for life

Where

Coming to iPhone, Android and the web

Best for

Training planned around your whole week

That’s us, and it isn’t out yet. Retenna runs its own AI, built for everyday life, and its personal trainer is built to plan your sets, reps and weights, as Fitbod does, and then plan around the rest of your life. It brings your workout history over from apps such as Fitbod, Strong and Hevy, and more, so it starts from what you’ve already lifted. It plans every set, rep and weight ahead, and changes them during the workout when a session isn’t going to plan. It reads your health and activity from your phone, your watch and other wearables, through Apple Health, Health Connect, Samsung Health and more, and it connects to your calendars, such as Google and Outlook. And it works with every other expert in one app, so leg day moves for Saturday’s hike, and dinner is ready that night.

Worth knowingRetenna is coming to iPhone, Android and the web. The UK will be one of the first countries, and we’ll confirm the others nearer the time. Fitness is one of its health features, so the trainer is for adults (18+). What we describe is what it’s built to do.

Where Retenna’s trainer goes further

Fitbod and the best of these alternatives plan a very good workout. Hevy and JEFIT raise your weights as you get stronger, Freeletics fits a session to wherever you are, and Ladder and Future put a coach behind the plan. But none of them says it reads your calendar or your sleep, so none can know that you’re away on Wednesday night, that Saturday is a five-hour hike, or that you slept badly on Sunday.

Yes

The maker documents it. For Hevy and JEFIT, it’s in the paid tier.

Partly

A lighter version: one plan written for a whole team; recovery estimated from your workouts rather than your sleep; a change you ask for; days or a schedule you set in the app rather than your real calendar; history from one app only, or workouts read from a health app; or a separate app.

–Dash

Not mentioned in the maker’s own materials. That doesn’t prove it can’t.

That’s the gap. The workout is only half of training; the other half is fitting it to the week, and every app above leaves that to you.

Retenna’s trainer shares one picture of your life with your nutritionist, your wellbeing coach, your planner, your stylist and your personal shopper. So when leg day moves, dinner is ready that night. When you’re away, your kit is on the packing list and the session suits the hotel gym. When a week gets busy, workouts shrink to the 20 minutes you actually do. And if you run as well as lift, it plans both together: it builds your race plan back from race day, records your runs by GPS or from your watch, and changes your pace as you go. See our guide to AI running coaches.

The same week, with Fitbod and with Retenna

Take the week from Retenna’s home page: you’re training for a half marathon, you’ve had two short nights, you’re in Leeds on Wednesday night, and friends have planned a five-hour hike for Saturday.

With FitbodYou’d open the app to a strength workout chosen from your goals, what you’ve logged and how recovered it estimates each muscle is. In Leeds, you’d change the equipment and the length to suit the hotel gym. On iPhone, connecting Apple Health, Fitbit or Strava lets your runs and other workouts adjust its recovery estimate. But it doesn’t say it reads your sleep or your calendar, so fitting the session around two short nights and Saturday’s hike would be up to you.

With RetennaIt plans the week around all of it, and tells you why:

Fitbod would give you a good leg day. Retenna is built to give you a good week, with a good leg day in it.

And on other weeks

How it learns you, and how you shape it

Fitbod learns from your edits. Retenna’s trainer learns from what you do, what you choose and what you tell it, across your whole life, and keeps it in one living model of you that every expert shares.

1. Day one It asks. Your goal, how often you can train, your kit, any injuries or things you won’t do, and what to connect: your calendar, and your workouts, sleep and wearable through health apps such as Apple Health, Health Connect and Samsung Health, and more. It brings your history over from Fitbod, Strong, Hevy and more, so it already knows what you lift.
2. Within weeks It suggests. It has seen that you’re sore for two days after leg day, so before a weekend hike it suggests moving legs to Tuesday, and waits for your yes.
3. In time It decides like you. It sets the weights, moves leg day and shortens the busy-week sessions, then tells you what it did and why, with an Undo.

Over a few months, it learns things like these. Each one shows where it came from, and you can see, change or forget any of it.

• What you lift, and how fast it’s going up. From every set you log, so next week’s weights are already right.
• You’re sore for two days after leg day. From your last 8 leg days.
• Hard sessions leave you flat the next morning. From your training log.
• In busy weeks you keep 20-minute workouts and skip longer ones. 9 of your last 10.
• After two short nights, you cut hard sessions short. 3 of your last 4 times.

You stay in charge. You choose what Retenna simply does and tells you about after, and what waits for your yes.

Your own training · Do it, then tell meLeg day moves to Tuesday, and the weights change mid-session. You see why, with an Undo.

New spending · Ask me firstNew trainers at £120 wait for your yes, however sensible they are.

Friends and family · Always asks firstDinner with your sister, or offering a friend a lift to the gym, always waits for you.

It also notices what you undo, and suggests a rule, so you only have to say it once:

How to choose a Fitbod alternative

If you want a different workout app, one of these will do, and several are excellent. If you want your training looked after as part of your whole life, that’s what we built Retenna for.

For a different workout app

• Stay with FitbodA fresh strength workout every day, chosen for youIf it works for you, there’s no need to switch.
• HevyA fast, free log with friends, and Trainer in Pro to raise your weights
• StrongThe simplest log, free for up to 3 routines
• JEFITA huge library, and an AI plan that updates weekly in Elite
• FreeleticsWorkouts for any place, time and kit
• LadderA coach’s weekly plan, followed with a teamiPhone and web only.
• FutureA human coach of your own$199 a month; no Android app listed.

For training as part of your whole life

Comparing more widely? Our AI personal trainer guide covers Fitbod, Freeletics, Peloton, Apple Fitness+, Strava and WHOOP, and if you’re leaving MyFitnessPal too, see MyFitnessPal alternatives.

How Retenna’s personal trainer works

Questions

Sources

• Fitbod: website and prices, family plans, help, muscle recovery, App Store; third party: TechRadar
• Hevy: website, Hevy Trainer and Pro prices, import from Strong, App Store
• Strong: website, App Store (prices and limits)
• JEFIT: website, Elite, Adaptive Plan, App Store
• Freeletics: website, the Coach, Adapt Session, Coach+, privacy policy, App Store
• Ladder: website, pricing, App Store
• Future: website, App Store

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