Strong App Review: Honest Results After Real Testing

Last tested: April 2026 | Independent review — not sponsored | We tested this ourselves so you don’t have to

There’s a specific kind of frustration that only lifters understand. You’ve had a solid session, you hit a new personal best on the bench, and three weeks later you can’t remember what weight you used or how many reps you got. Notebooks get left in kit bags. Spreadsheets don’t survive contact with a sweaty gym floor. And most fitness apps are built for runners, calorie counters, and people who want motivational quotes — not for someone who needs to know exactly what they squatted last Tuesday.

Strong sets out to fix that, and after putting it through its paces across multiple training blocks, we can tell you it largely delivers. This is a workout logging app that does one thing — tracking your lifts — and does it with a focus and clarity that most competitors can’t match. Whether you’re running a powerlifting programme, building muscle with hypertrophy work, or just hitting the gym consistently and wanting to track progress, Strong gives you a clean tool that stays out of your way.

We tested Strong ourselves over an extended period, including direct head-to-head comparisons with MyFitnessPal and Jefit, so everything in this review comes from actual use — not a press release. Here’s the honest truth about what Strong does well, where it falls short, and whether it’s worth your money in 2026.

What Is Strong?

Strong is a workout tracking app built specifically for people who lift weights. It’s available on both iOS and Android, and it’s designed from the ground up to make logging your training sessions as fast and frictionless as possible. There’s no social feed, no wellness dashboard, no meal plans — just a focused tool for recording your sets, reps, and weights so you can actually track progress over time. If you’ve ever stared blankly at a barbell trying to remember what you lifted last week, you’ll immediately understand why that matters.

The app was built by a small, independent development team who have clearly spent time in the weight room themselves. That shows in the decisions they’ve made — things like the app automatically surfacing your previous performance for each exercise the moment you start a set, or the way workout templates can be built and reused in seconds. These aren’t features someone dreamed up in a boardroom; they’re solutions to real problems lifters face every single session. Strong has built a loyal following of serious gymgoers who have stayed with it for years precisely because it keeps doing the basics brilliantly without bloating the experience.

It’s worth being upfront about what Strong is not. If you’re looking for calorie tracking, this isn’t it — for that, you’d want to read our MyFitnessPal review, where we cover 5 things nobody tells you about that app. Strong lives squarely in the strength training lane, and it makes no apologies for that. For lifters, that focus is a feature, not a limitation.

Key Features

Workout Logging and Templates

This is the core of Strong, and it’s excellent. You can kick off a workout from scratch, pick from the built-in template library, or create your own custom routines from the ground up. Each exercise is tracked by sets, reps, and weight — standard stuff — but what makes Strong stand out is that it automatically pre-fills your previous performance for each movement the moment you get to it. No scrolling back through history, no trying to remember — the app just shows you what you did last time and implies clearly that you should beat it.

For anyone running a progressive overload programme, this feature alone makes Strong worth downloading. It removes the cognitive load of remembering your numbers and turns every session into a clear challenge: match or beat what’s on the screen. That simplicity is deceptively powerful when you’re trying to stay consistent over months and years.

Exercise Library

Strong ships with a comprehensive exercise library covering hundreds of movements — barbell compounds, dumbbell work, cable exercises, machine movements, bodyweight exercises, and more. Each entry includes the target muscle group, so you’re never guessing what something is supposed to work. You can also add custom exercises if something is missing, which is genuinely useful for anyone running specialist movements or equipment-specific variations.

The library is searchable and well-organised. In practice, finding the exercise you want takes about two seconds, which is exactly how it should be when you’re mid-session with a barbell waiting.

Progress Tracking and Charts

After a few weeks of consistent logging, Strong’s progress tracking becomes one of its most valuable features. For every exercise you track, you can pull up a chart showing your estimated one-rep max, total volume, or best set over any time period you choose. Watching that line trend upward over months is genuinely motivating — and it gives you concrete evidence of progress on days when the gym feels harder than it should.

The estimated 1RM calculation uses the Epley formula, which is the industry standard. It’s not perfect — no formula is — but it’s accurate enough to be useful as a reference point, especially when comparing strength across different rep ranges.

Rest Timer

Strong has a built-in rest timer that triggers automatically after you log a completed set. You can set different rest periods for different exercises, and the app will notify you when rest is done — useful when you’ve put your phone in your pocket and are focusing on recovery between sets. It’s a small feature but a genuinely practical one that removes another unnecessary distraction mid-session.

You can also set the rest timer to auto-start after each set, which is the kind of default behaviour that saves you dozens of small tap-and-wait moments across a training week. Again, it’s the kind of detail that suggests the developers actually use the app themselves.

Workout History

Every session you log is stored and searchable in your history. You can tap back into any previous workout to see exactly what you did — every set, every weight, every rep. This is invaluable when you’re planning upcoming training or trying to understand patterns in your performance. It also means you have a permanent record of your training, which becomes more useful the longer you use the app.

The history view is clean and readable. Scrolling back through months of consistent training is, frankly, one of the more satisfying things Strong offers — there’s real satisfaction in seeing the tangible record of work done.

Apple Watch and Wear OS Support

Strong supports Apple Watch on iOS, allowing you to log sets directly from your wrist without touching your phone. This is more useful than it sounds when your phone is in a bag or locker. The watch interface is stripped back — it’s just logging — but that’s all you need. Wear OS support is available for Android users, though the experience is slightly less polished on that side. Either way, wrist logging is a genuine quality-of-life improvement for anyone who wears a smartwatch to train.

How Strong Compares to the Competition

We tested Strong against its two closest rivals — MyFitnessPal (the dominant fitness app) and Jefit (the most direct like-for-like competitor in the lifting tracking space):

Feature	Strong	MyFitnessPal	Jefit
Workout Logging	✅ Excellent	⚠️ Basic	✅ Good
Previous Performance Prompts	✅ Yes	❌ No	✅ Yes
Calorie / Nutrition Tracking	❌ No	✅ Excellent	❌ No
Progress Charts	✅ Yes	⚠️ Limited	✅ Yes
Built-in Rest Timer	✅ Yes	❌ No	✅ Yes
Apple Watch Support	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	⚠️ Limited
Custom Exercise Creation	✅ Yes	✅ Yes	✅ Yes
Workout Templates	✅ Yes	⚠️ Basic	✅ Yes
UI Cleanliness / Speed	✅ Excellent	⚠️ Cluttered	⚠️ Moderate
Free Tier Usability	✅ Good	⚠️ Heavily Limited	⚠️ Limited

Pros and Cons

Pricing

Strong operates on a freemium model, which is worth understanding properly before you commit. Here’s the honest breakdown:

Free Tier: You get access to the core workout logging functionality, the full exercise library, workout history, and progress tracking. The main limitation is that you’re capped on the number of custom workout routines you can create (currently three). For many casual lifters, three templates is enough — one for upper, one for lower, one for full body, for instance. If you run multiple programmes or need more flexibility, you’ll hit the ceiling.

Strong Pro (Monthly): Approximately £4.99 per month. This removes all routine limits, unlocks advanced analytics, provides deeper progress charts, and removes ads from the experience. Month-to-month is fine if you want to test it properly before committing.

Strong Pro (Annual): Approximately £29.99 per year — around £2.50 per month. This is the better value option if you know you’re going to use it consistently. For less than the price of one protein bar a week, you get a genuinely excellent lifting tool with no meaningful restrictions.

There is no lifetime purchase option currently available, which is a shame — a one-off payment would suit the app’s simplicity well. Pricing is in line with competitors like Jefit, and notably cheaper than premium tiers on apps that try to do everything, like MyFitnessPal.

Try Strong Free →

Who Is Strong Best For?

Our Verdict

Strong is one of the best pure workout tracking apps available in 2026, and it’s earned that position by doing one thing brilliantly rather than ten things adequately. If you lift weights and you’re not tracking your sessions properly, you are almost certainly leaving progress on the table — and Strong is the fastest, cleanest way to fix that. The auto-fill of previous performance, the clear progress charts, the frictionless logging interface — these aren’t flashy features, they’re foundational ones that make a genuine difference to training quality over time.

Where Strong loses marks is in what it deliberately doesn’t do. No nutrition tracking, no built-in coaching programmes, no web interface, limited social features. For some users, these will be dealbreakers. For others — and this site’s view is that this is the majority of serious lifters — those omissions are entirely acceptable trade-offs for an app that opens fast, logs fast, and gets out of your way. If you want the full picture on what an AI-coached app looks like by contrast, our Future App review covers eight weeks of testing that coaching model in detail — it’s a very different product solving a very different problem.

At £29.99 per year for the Pro tier, Strong represents genuine value. It’s less than most people spend on gym chalk in a year, and it will do more for your progress than any piece of equipment. If you lift, download it. Start with the free tier, build a couple of templates, and see how it changes your training. For most lifters, that’s all it takes.

Category	Score
Value for Money	9/10
Features (for its intended purpose)	9/10
Ease of Use	9/10
Breadth of Features	7/10
UK Availability	10/10
Overall	8.7/10

Try Strong Free →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Strong app free to use?

Yes — Strong has a free tier that gives you access to core workout logging, the full exercise library, workout history, and progress tracking. The main restriction is a cap of three custom workout routines. If you need more templates or want advanced analytics, you’ll need to upgrade to Strong Pro, which costs around £29.99 per year.

Is Strong available in the UK?

Yes, Strong is fully available in the UK on both iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play). Pricing is displayed in GBP, and there are no regional restrictions on any features. It works just as well for UK lifters as it does anywhere else.

Does Strong track calories and nutrition?

No — Strong is purely a workout tracking app and does not include any calorie or nutrition tracking functionality. If you need both, you’ll need to run a separate nutrition app alongside it. MyFitnessPal is the most popular option for this, though it’s a very different product with different strengths and weaknesses.

How does Strong compare to Jefit for weight training?

Both Strong and Jefit are strong options for lifters, and they’re the most direct competitors in the space. Strong wins on interface speed and cleanliness — it’s simply faster to log during a live session. Jefit has a larger community and more built-in programme content. Our detailed Jefit vs Strong head-to-head review breaks down exactly how they compare across every major feature if you want the full breakdown.

Can I use Strong on Apple Watch?

Yes — Strong has solid Apple Watch support on iOS, allowing you to log sets directly from your wrist during a session without needing to handle your phone. The wrist interface is deliberately stripped back to just the essentials, which is the right call. Android users can access Wear OS support, though the experience is slightly less polished than on Apple Watch.