Who wrote this: we're The Big Head, an app studio in Edmonton. We make Brolic - Gym Leaderboard, which is listed first below. We've flagged it clearly and written its drawbacks the same way we wrote everyone else's — you can judge it against the rest on the details, and the other 9 are here because they're genuinely good.
This guide is for lifters who already log their training and want that log to be social — a feed friends actually see, a leaderboard worth chasing, or a private group that keeps four people honest. Every app here is live on the US App Store and runs on iPhone.
Every App Store link below was fetched and confirmed to resolve to the app it claims to be. Features were read off the listings and release notes rather than marketing sites. You won't find star ratings or price tags here: both drift week to week, so pricing is described as a model instead.
Full disclosure: Brolic is our app, and it goes first because it's the one we can describe in the most detail — not because it beats the others. It's new, it has no Apple Watch app, and its leaderboards are thinner than the established names below. It is, however, the only app on this list that is genuinely free with no in-app purchases at all.
The ten are ordered roughly from leaderboard-first to programming-first. Most readers will end up with one logger and, at most, one social layer — the FAQ at the end covers how to pick which is which.
At a glance
| App | Best for | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
| Brolic - Gym Leaderboard (ours) | Lifters who want a public, rankable number attached to their lifts — local, national and global leaderboards rather than a scrolling friend feed. | Free |
| Hevy - Workout Tracker Gym Log | The best-balanced pick for most people here — a fast logger with a genuine friend feed attached. | Free tier plus subscription |
| Strong Workout Tracker Gym Log | Barbell purists running 5x5 or Starting Strength who want the fastest possible logging and don't actually want a feed. | Free tier plus subscription |
| Liftoff - Ranked Gym Workouts | Lifters motivated by ranks, streaks and Duolingo-style pressure more than by clean training data. | Free with in-app purchases |
| Arrow: Social Workout Tracker | People who want the social feed to be the primary feature, with XP and trophies layered on top of ordinary logging. | Free with in-app purchases |
| JEFIT Workout Plan Gym Tracker | Lifters who want the deepest exercise library and a large forum-style community rather than a close-friends feed. | Free tier plus subscription |
| Strava: Run, Bike, Walk | Lifters whose friends are already on Strava, or who also run and cycle and want one feed covering everything. | Free tier plus subscription |
| Boostcamp: Workout Programs | Anyone who wants proven programming handed to them — nSuns, GZCLP, 5/3/1, Reddit PPL, PHUL, PHAT — instead of building their own. | Free tier plus subscription |
| Caliber: Strength Training | A small crew who want to train the same program in a private group rather than broadcast to a public leaderboard. | Free tier plus subscription |
| Gym Workout Alpha Progression | The lifter who cares more about hitting the right weight on the next set than about who sees it. | Free tier plus subscription |
The apps in detail
Brolic - Gym Leaderboard
Our app- Best for
- Lifters who want a public, rankable number attached to their lifts — local, national and global leaderboards rather than a scrolling friend feed.
- Highlights
- Logs strength, cardio and rep-based work plus 50+ named WODs including Fran, Murph and Grace
- Leaderboards filterable by exercise, timeframe, location and gender, plus relative-strength boards that rank by strength-per-bodyweight
- Video proof: attach a YouTube link to a lift so a claimed PR can actually be checked
- Rest timer with a Lock Screen Live Activity, plate calculator, per-exercise 1RM and PR charts, and offline logging that syncs when you're back online
- Pricing
- Free
- Watch out
- There is no Apple Watch app — the listing names no watchOS requirement — so logging happens on your phone between sets. Video proof also has to be a YouTube link, meaning you publish the clip first, and as a recently released app its leaderboards are far more thinly populated than Liftoff's or Hevy's communities.
Hevy - Workout Tracker Gym Log
- Best for
- The best-balanced pick for most people here — a fast logger with a genuine friend feed attached.
- Highlights
- Follow friends, see their lifts and copy their routines straight into your own plan
- Public or private profile toggle
- Warmup, drop, failure and superset set tags, per-exercise rest timers and 1RM estimation
- Apple Watch app with live phone sync, Live Activity and Dynamic Island, plus HealthKit export
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- The listing places unlimited routines, unlimited graph history, unlimited custom exercises and advanced measurements under Hevy Pro, so the free tier is capped in exactly the places a committed lifter tends to care about — losing older graph history is the one people notice most.
Strong Workout Tracker Gym Log
- Best for
- Barbell purists running 5x5 or Starting Strength who want the fastest possible logging and don't actually want a feed.
- Highlights
- Fully-featured Apple Watch app that logs workouts with or without your iPhone present
- Plate calculator and warm-up calculator
- Supersets plus warm-up, drop and failure set tags, with volume and 1RM graphs
- CSV export of your history to Notes or email
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- It is not a social app: no feed, no following, no leaderboards — sharing is a share sheet and nothing more. The free tier is also capped at three custom routines, stated outright in the description, which is tight for anyone running an upper/lower or PPL split.
Liftoff - Ranked Gym Workouts
- Best for
- Lifters motivated by ranks, streaks and Duolingo-style pressure more than by clean training data.
- Highlights
- Ranked performance feedback across 400+ exercises (the figure in the App Store description; current release notes say 500+)
- Global leaderboards and community challenges
- Follow friends and share wins, with progress charts and bodygraphs
- Custom exercises you can illustrate with your own images
- Pricing
- Free with in-app purchases
- Watch out
- A heavy game layer sits on top of the training log — an in-app shop with daily deals and bundles, quests, and an earned currency spent on cosmetics, gear and workout plans. If you want a log rather than a game it gets in the way, and Liftoff Pro appears in so many term and promo variants that the real cost is hard to pin down before you commit.
Arrow: Social Workout Tracker
- Best for
- People who want the social feed to be the primary feature, with XP and trophies layered on top of ordinary logging.
- Highlights
- Real-time feed of friends' workouts, including the ability to remind them to train
- EXP, trophies and PR unlocks
- Arrow Score and an AI-powered Arrow Coach
- Muscle recovery chart and a muscle growth chart built from weekly set counts
- Pricing
- Free with in-app purchases
- Watch out
- The App Store description carries a consent clause: using the app and making in-app purchases means agreeing to have usage and consumption data shared with Apple for refund handling — worth knowing if you're privacy-conscious. The listing is also marketing-heavy relative to its concrete feature detail, so it's hard to tell exactly what the free tier covers until you install it.
JEFIT Workout Plan Gym Tracker
- Best for
- Lifters who want the deepest exercise library and a large forum-style community rather than a close-friends feed.
- Highlights
- 1,400+ exercises with HD video demonstrations
- Download routines built by the JEFIT community
- 1RM estimation with progressive-overload tracking and advanced analytics
- Connect with friends, share logs and compare progress, with Apple Health sync and smartwatch support
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- It carries a 16+ age rating for frequent medical treatment information — the strictest on this list. Its social layer is also community-and-forum shaped rather than friend-shaped, so if what you want is three training partners watching your PRs, this is more app than you need.
Strava: Run, Bike, Walk
- Best for
- Lifters whose friends are already on Strava, or who also run and cycle and want one feed covering everything.
- Highlights
- Strength activities carry exercises, sets, reps, weights and a muscle map
- 50+ sport types in a single feed
- Monthly challenges with digital badges
- Syncs with Apple Watch, Garmin, Fitbit and thousands of other devices
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- It isn't built to be used between sets. Strength work arrives automatically from a connected device or a dedicated lifting app, or gets added manually after the fact — so for most lifters Strava becomes the second app, the place a Hevy or Strong session gets posted, not where it's logged. Its social gravity is still overwhelmingly running and cycling.
Boostcamp: Workout Programs
- Best for
- Anyone who wants proven programming handed to them — nSuns, GZCLP, 5/3/1, Reddit PPL, PHUL, PHAT — instead of building their own.
- Highlights
- 130+ expert programs with built-in progressions, periodization and deload weeks, plus 10,000+ community programs
- RPE and 1RM logging with auto-progressions that fill in your target weights
- Muscle volume tracking that shows which groups you're neglecting
- Works offline, with a custom program builder and a Community feed to follow friends and share workouts
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- The social feed is a recent addition and clearly secondary to the programs library — this is a run-someone-else's-programming app first. If the point is friends watching your PRs, the community side here is shallower than Hevy's or Liftoff's.
Caliber: Strength Training
- Best for
- A small crew who want to train the same program in a private group rather than broadcast to a public leaderboard.
- Highlights
- Workout Groups — private groups where your workouts and personal bests are shared automatically with the members
- Free tier includes unlimited workouts and 600+ exercises with tutorial videos
- Apple Health sync
- Caliber Plus adds 60+ coach-designed plans, a Strength Score, Strength Balance analysis, supersets and progress photos
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- Nearly everything a competitive lifter would want — Strength Score, Strength Balance, custom exercises, supersets, exercise swaps, progress photos — sits behind Caliber Plus, which leaves the free tier as a plain logger with a private group attached. The separate 1-on-1 human coaching product isn't priced on the App Store listing at all, so you can't judge that commitment before signing up.
Gym Workout Alpha Progression
- Best for
- The lifter who cares more about hitting the right weight on the next set than about who sees it.
- Highlights
- Per-set weight and rep recommendations derived from previous performance and how hard those sessions actually were
- Plan generator built around your goal, experience level and available training days
- 795 exercises with videos, each rated for muscle-building potential
- Multiple gym profiles with their own equipment and plates, automatic scaled warm-up sets, and periodization with planned deloads and week-by-week RIR ramps
- Pricing
- Free tier plus subscription
- Watch out
- The listing describes no social feed, no following and no leaderboards — the only sharing mentioned is one-directional, sending a plan to a friend or coaching client. For a reader who came here to train alongside people, it's the weakest social pick, and the features that justify it (plan generation, progression recommendations, periodization) are the paid ones.
What's still missing
No app on this list does all three of the following well at the same time: a public leaderboard, a real friends feed, and full Apple Watch logging. Hevy and Strong own the Watch, Brolic and Liftoff own the leaderboard, and the honest outcome for most readers is still running two apps. Worth noting in the piece rather than pretending one pick covers everything. Two editorial flags carried over from research: Brolic's App Store description marks "Create your own challenges" as "(Pro)" while the listing shows no in-app purchases and the privacy policy says there is no paid tier — fix the listing before publishing the "free, no IAP" positioning, or the article contradicts the page readers click through to. Also, brolic.io's "#1 Social Fitness App" line and its "compete for prizes" language were not used as sources here and should not be repeated anywhere in the article.
Common questions
What actually makes a workout app "social"?
Three different things, and they suit different people. A feed shows you friends' sessions as they happen (Hevy, Arrow, Boostcamp). A leaderboard ranks you against strangers as well as friends (Brolic, Liftoff). A private group shares your workouts and PRs with a closed set of people and nobody else (Caliber's Workout Groups). Decide which of those would actually get you to the gym before you pick an app — several of these do only one of the three well.
Which of these apps work on an Apple Watch?
Hevy, Strong, Strava and JEFIT all name watchOS in their App Store requirements, and Strong's listing specifically says its Watch app logs workouts with or without your iPhone nearby. Brolic, Liftoff, Arrow, Boostcamp, Caliber and Alpha Progression do not list Watch support. If you log on your wrist between sets, that alone narrows the list to four.
Are any of them genuinely free, or is it all free trials?
Brolic's listing carries no in-app purchases at all, and its privacy policy states it is currently free with no IAP and stores no payment information. Every other app on this list is freemium — a usable free tier with a paid upgrade. Arrow and Caliber advertise the most capable free tiers; Strong's free tier is explicitly capped at three custom routines.
Can I use Strava as my lifting app?
Not really as the app you open between sets. Strava does support strength activities with exercises, sets, reps, weights and a muscle map, but those arrive automatically from a connected device or a dedicated lifting app, or you add them manually afterwards. In practice Strava is where the session gets posted for friends to see, and something like Hevy or Strong is where it gets logged.
Do my friends and I all have to use the same app?
For feeds and private groups, yes — a Hevy feed only shows Hevy users, and Caliber's Workout Groups only work between Caliber accounts. Leaderboard apps are slightly more forgiving, since you're competing on a public board rather than needing your specific friends there. Several of these apps sync to Apple Health, so you can keep one logger and mirror the data, but the social layer itself never crosses app boundaries.
What's the difference between a tracker and a program app?
A tracker records what you decide to do (Hevy, Strong, Brolic). A program app decides for you and then records it — Boostcamp hands you nSuns or 5/3/1 with progressions and deloads built in, and Alpha Progression generates a plan and tells you what weight to put on the bar next. If you already know your programming, a tracker is enough; if choosing the next session is the thing that stops you training, start with the program apps.