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

Hevy and Strongbro are both gym logs for people who lift, and they disagree about almost everything after that. Hevy is a free, cross-platform tracker with a social layer built in: you tap sets into routines, follow friends, and your history lives on Hevy's servers behind an account. Strongbro is an iPhone-only log you talk to: say the exercise, weight and reps, review the parsed sets, and everything stays on your phone. Pick Hevy if you want a large free tier, an Apple Watch app or a community. Pick Strongbro if you want logging to cost one sentence and your data to stay yours.

Every Hevy fact on this page comes from Hevy's own website, App Store listing, help center or privacy policy, fetched on 11 September 2026. Where their materials do not settle a question, it is marked unverified.

Two ideal users

The Hevy user trains with friends, or would like to. They enjoy copying a routine from someone else's profile, own an Apple Watch or an Android phone, and are happy to keep an account so the log follows them across devices. The free tier covers a simple program: four routines, seven custom exercises and three months of visible history, with Pro at $23.99 a year for the day those caps bite. Hevy has been on the App Store since 2019, describes itself as featured by Apple, and holds an average of 4.9 from roughly 92,000 US ratings, which is a scale Strongbro does not pretend to match.

The Strongbro user trains alone, dislikes typing between sets, and would rather not have a feed at all. They want the log to understand their own language, records and ranks to update without a second thought, and a price that stays small: $14.99 a year or $19.99 once, after a 3-day trial. They read privacy policies, or at least want the answer to “where is my data” to be “on my phone”.

Feature table

Two rows deserve a footnote. The language counts are 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. And Hevy's exercise leaderboards and streaks are a form of gamification, but whether they compare to Strongbro's rank ladder is a judgement call rather than a fact, so this page does not score it.

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.

Three details from the small print. Every Hevy workout and routine has a 150-set limit, including on Pro. No free trial is mentioned 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. And Hevy's subscription is not part of Apple Family Sharing. If you downgrade from Pro, routines and custom exercises above the free cap stay, but you cannot create new ones.

Privacy and where your data lives

This is the widest gap between the two apps, and it is best shown in each company's own words.

Hevy stores 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.” That is a genuine benefit if you change phones often. It also means an account is mandatory: sign-up is by email and password, Apple or Google, and the privacy policy states, “Unless specified otherwise, all Data requested by this Application is mandatory.”

Hevy's privacy policy is hosted on iubenda and was last updated on 4 June 2026. It names the controller as “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 lives: “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.” The policy names Adjust GmbH, Amplitude Inc., Google Analytics and TestFlight as third-party 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.

In fairness, Hevy's website banner states that it does not use cookies to display personalised advertising or build advertising profiles, and account deletion is self-service and documented.

Strongbro's privacy policy is shorter because there is less to describe. Workouts, records, body measurements and physique scans are stored on your iPhone, with optional sync to your own iCloud account under Apple's encryption. There is no Strongbro account and no server that holds your training history. Voice clips and physique photos are sent to the AI model through a relay that adds no identity, and neither is kept after the response comes back. The app never 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 quiet rank ladder that counts sessions rather than likes.
• You want an honest physique score from one photo, tracked over months.
• 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.

The bottom line

Hevy is the bigger product: more platforms, more programs, more exercises, a watch app, integrations and a community, with a free tier that many lifters never outgrow. Its trade-offs are structural rather than bugs. Logging is tap-based, an account is required, your 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 a single clear idea: one sentence logs the session, the numbers stay on your phone, and nobody else's training appears in the app. It has no watch app and no Apple Health sync, and it is iPhone only.

The honest test is a week. If you finish it wishing your friends could see the log, choose Hevy. If you finish it relieved that nobody can, choose Strongbro. For a closer look at Hevy on its own terms, read the full Hevy review.

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.