Strong App Review 2026: The Classic Gym Log Needs an Account

This is a review of a competitor, written by the people who make Strongbro. It is kept to what Strong's own website, App Store listing, help center and privacy policy say, fetched on 11 September 2026, with "unverified" wherever those sources are silent. There is no star rating here; Strong already has 109,000 of those.

What Strong is

Strong Workout Tracker Gym Log, subtitled "Strength Training Planner" on the App Store, is a manual workout log from Strong Fitness PTE Limited. It launched on 15 September 2011, which makes it one of the oldest trackers still maintained; version 6.5.0 shipped on 12 August 2026 and requires iOS 15 or later. It runs on iPhone, Android and Apple Watch, with no iPad entry in the listing.

The pitch is minimalism. The home page headline is "Think less. Lift more.", followed by "Workout. Notebook. Reinvented." The help center describes it as "a place for everyone to record their entire workout history, safely in the cloud." That last phrase is the one to hold onto, because the cloud is both Strong's convenience and its condition.

Strong's own scale figures are inconsistent: the home page says "over 5 million users" in one block and "over 3 million" in another, while the App Store description says 1.2 million downloads. None of it is audited.

Pricing as listed

The download is free. Strong's help center is clear that the free version "can save unlimited workouts, but is limited to 3 custom routines", that "no ads, ever" applies, and that "your workout data will always be available whether you are a Strong PRO user or not."

Strong PRO unlocks, per the help center: Unlimited Workout Templates, Record Body Part Measurements, Access to all Charts, Plate Calculator, Warm Up Calculator, Custom Icons (iPhone) and Themes, and "More Future Features". The App Store description gives the headline price as "$4.99/month or $29.99/year".

The in-app purchase list on the US store is messier than that. It shows nine entries, including duplicates: Strong PRO (1 Month) at $4.99, Strong PRO (1 Year) at $29.99 twice and once at $23.99, Strong PRO (6 Months) at $19.99, a plain "Strong PRO" at $3.99, and Strong PRO Forever at both $79.99 and $99.99. Which lifetime price a new user is offered is not stated. No trial length is published; the listing only refers to a "free trial period, if offered". Subscriptions cannot be shared through Family Sharing, and prices vary by region.

What is genuinely good

The logging model is complete for manual entry. Sets can be tagged as Warm Up, Failure or Drop Sets; exercises can be grouped as supersets; there is an auto countdown timer; assisted-bodyweight and duration exercise types are supported; the home page adds RPE, custom timers, workout scheduling, a muscle heat map and Siri Shortcuts. Units can be imperial, metric or a mix. The listing says the app is optimised for barbell routines such as Starting Strength or StrongLifts 5x5 but adapts to anything.

The Apple Watch app is the standout. The listing calls it a "Fully-featured Apple Watch app to log workouts with or without your iPhone", and the help center describes Live Sync, where the same workout runs on iPhone and watch at once, plus Continuity and Handoff. Version 6.5.0 added Live Activity and Dynamic Island support for rest timers. The help center admits "Not all features of Strong are available on Apple Watch", but for wrist logging this is as mature as it gets.

Integrations are broad. Strong "fully syncs with Apple Health", covering workouts and Activity Rings, bodyweight, body fat and nutrition; on Android it supports Google Fit and Health Connect. Strong Cloud syncs between devices, including between iPhone and Android, which no on-device tracker can offer.

Analytics are solid: personal records and progression, one-rep max and total weight lifted, graphs for volume and 1RM progression, and a Records screen with real-world bests alongside predicted bests per rep value. There is a body measurements tracker, notes and progress photos on workouts, and a library of over 200 built-in exercises with video illustrations, plus your own.

And the free tier is generous. Unlimited workouts, no ads, no lock-out: for a lifter who never needs more than three templates, Strong costs nothing.

What is weak or missing

The account is mandatory. From the help center: "All users will be prompted to sign up for an account before using Strong." Sign-up is via email, Facebook or Sign in with Apple. There is no way to try the app on your own device first. And the account is fragile in one specific way, per the privacy policy: "If you lose access to your email or third party login, you will lose access to your Strong account. We cannot restore or change email addresses for security reasons."

The charts you would want are paid. "Access to all Charts" and "Record Body Part Measurements" are PRO items on Strong's own list. The free version shows records and basic progression, but the full picture costs $29.99 a year.

Records stop at 12 reps. The help center states: "Strong only supports records for sets with 12 or fewer reps." If your accessory work or bodyweight sets run higher, those sets do not earn records.

Export is one-way and partial. The listing offers CSV export to Notes or Email; the help center adds that "exported files cannot be imported back into Strong". A full export of your personal data, including settings, requires contacting support from inside the app, per the privacy policy.

Offline use is undocumented. A help-center search for "offline" returns no articles. The account article warns that unsigned-in iOS users' data "is not yet synced to our cloud server", which implies local storage before sign-up, but Strong makes no offline-use claim we could cite.

No voice, no AI, no camera. Nothing on the site, listing or help center mentions voice logging, camera-based physique assessment or any AI feature, and the help-center search for "voice" returns nothing. Unverified, but consistently absent.

Localisation is limited to eleven App Store languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish and Traditional Chinese.

Privacy, in Strong's words

The privacy policy was last updated 21 May 2026 and names a privacy contact and a Data Protection Officer. The lines that matter:

"We store user information on servers located in the United States and other countries. This means that information may be processed, stored, and used outside of the country in which you are located."

"We retain your data indefinitely in order to provide the Services. However, you can delete your data via the steps below." Deletion is in-app under Profile and removes the account and all related data.

"We use Fathom for tracking website traffic. We use Sentry for bug tracking and debugging. In both cases, we do not send personal information to these services."

On health data, the policy says of Google's Health Connect: "Any data received is stored locally on your device and is not uploaded to Strong servers." No equivalent statement is made about Apple Health data, which we mark unverified.

The App Store privacy card shows only a "Data Linked to You" section: Health & Fitness, Purchase History, Email Address, User ID, Device ID, Crash Data and Other Data Types, for app functionality. Apple notes this information has not been verified by Apple.

That is a responsible policy for a cloud product. It is still a cloud product: your training history sits on Strong's servers, tied to an email address, for as long as the account exists.

Who Strong suits

Strong is the right choice for the lifter who logs by hand and wants that done well; who trains with an Apple Watch; who moves between iPhone and Android; who wants Apple Health carrying workouts and rings to other apps; and who is comfortable with a server-side account. It also suits someone who wants a capable tracker for free and can live with three templates.

It suits less well anyone who stops logging because typing between sets is a chore, anyone who wants their history on their own device, anyone training in a language outside its eleven, and anyone who finds $29.99 a year steep for charts and templates.

How it compares to Strongbro

The two apps disagree on one question: what should logging feel like. Strong's answer is a fast notebook with a watch on your wrist and a cloud behind it. Strongbro's answer is that you should not have to type at all. You say "bench 80, three sets of ten", the sets appear for review, and you tap Done; the model handles slang and plate maths in any major language. See voice logging for the honest limits, including that voice needs a connection.

Strongbro checks every saved set for weight-at-reps PRs and estimated 1RM, with nothing behind a paid tier; the mechanics are on the personal records page. It has no account, stores the log on the iPhone, and costs $14.99 a year or $19.99 for life after a 3-day trial. It has no Apple Watch app, no Apple Health sync and no Android version, all of which Strong does well.

The full side-by-side, with feature and pricing tables, is at Strongbro vs Strong.

The bottom line

Strong is a good app with a long record, and its rating is earned: manual logging done thoroughly, the best Apple Watch experience in the category as far as its documentation shows, wide integrations, and a free tier that never locks your data away. Its weaknesses are structural rather than sloppy: an account before the first set, data on servers abroad, the useful charts behind a $29.99-a-year tier, records capped at 12 reps, and no sign of voice or AI.

If you log by hand and want a watch and a cloud, Strong is a safe pick. If the reason you are reading reviews is that you keep quitting your log, the problem is the typing, and Strong does not change that.

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.