Fitbod and Hevy both help you lift, but they answer a different first question. Fitbod decides what you do today: which exercises, how many sets and how much weight. Hevy starts from a routine you choose and makes it easy to run, log and share, with an optional paid feature, Hevy Trainer, that builds a program and raises the weight as you earn it. If you already know which of those you want, the choice is easy. If you do not, the details below should settle it.

Everything here comes from each company's own website and its US App Store listing, checked in September 2026. Prices and features change, so check the listings before you subscribe.

The short answer

• Pick Fitbod if you want the app to choose your exercises each session, balanced around which muscles are recovered, with weights set from estimated maxes, and you are happy to pay for that.

• Pick Hevy if you want to run your own program, or one fixed generated program, with a strong free logger, an Apple Watch app, a social feed and a much cheaper upgrade.

• If you are a few years in and follow a program you trust, Hevy's model usually fits better, because progress on a specific lift is easier to see when that lift shows up every week.

How Fitbod builds a workout

Fitbod publishes a detailed description of its algorithm, which has two parts.

Choosing the exercises

Each time it builds a session, Fitbod scores the exercises in its library and ranks them for you. The score weighs how recovered each muscle group is (each gets a recovery percentage based on your recent training), how suitable the exercise is for your goal and experience, what you have swapped in, removed or favourited before, the split you follow, and the equipment you have. If you connect Apple Health, Health Connect, Fitbit or Strava, Fitbod counts outside activity towards muscle fatigue, and you can also adjust fatigue by hand.

Choosing sets, reps and weight

For strength goals, Fitbod programs mostly 1–6 reps at roughly 85–100% of your one-rep max, with 3–5 minutes of rest. For muscle growth it programs mostly 6–12 reps, with some heavier and lighter work, and aims for 10–20 working sets per muscle group per week. It also alternates heavier and lighter days rather than repeating one scheme.

Weights come from an estimated one-rep max, calculated from your logged sets with standard prediction equations and updated as you train. Every few workouts, a "Max Effort Day" asks for as many reps as possible on the last set of one or two exercises to sharpen that estimate. You can also log reps in reserve after each set, which Fitbod says affects how hard it loads your next session.

The strength of this approach is that the app does the thinking. The cost is repetition. When the exercise list changes from session to session, you get fewer exposures to the same lift in the same rep range, and "is my incline dumbbell press going up?" becomes a question about an estimated max rather than something you can read off your last three sessions. Fitbod lets you save your own workouts and mark exercises you want to see more or less of, which narrows that gap.

How Hevy handles progression

The free logger

On the free tier, Hevy is a logger. You build routines, log sets, see your previous numbers beside each set, and follow each lift on graphs of volume, best weight and total reps. The next weight is your decision, with the "Previous" column as the number to beat. Per-set RPE tracking can be switched on in the workout settings.

Hevy Trainer (Pro)

Hevy Trainer asks about your experience, goal, equipment, how often and how long you train, and which muscle groups you want to prioritise. It then builds a complete program with exercises, sets, target rep ranges and rest times, and suggests a starting weight for any exercise you have logged before. Its progression rule is published in Hevy's FAQ: you have to hit the top of the rep range with a given weight on all prescribed sets before Trainer increases it. That is double progression. Hevy also lists automatic weight adjustments, reminders to push when progress stalls, a program-variety setting that controls how often exercises change, optional cardio, and an injuries setting that swaps out exercises it considers high-risk. Hevy says plainly that this is not medical advice.

The key difference from Fitbod is that a Trainer program repeats. The same bench press comes back on the same day each week, so you can watch it climb.

The same session in both apps

Say you train three days a week for muscle growth, and last Monday you did barbell bench press for 3 sets at 70 kg (154 lb), getting 10, 9 and 8 reps.

• Fitbod may or may not put bench press in this Monday's session. If your chest still reads as recovering, it may lead with a pulling or leg exercise instead. When bench does come back, the weight is based on your estimated max, and the rep scheme may be heavier or lighter than last time.

• Hevy Trainer gives you bench again on the planned day. You stay at 70 kg until all three sets reach the top of the range, and then the weight goes up.

• Hevy's free logger shows you 10, 9 and 8 at 70 kg and leaves the next number to you.

Price

From the US App Store listings in September 2026:

• Hevy Pro: $2.99 a month, $23.99 a year, or $74.99 once for lifetime access. A second monthly option at $3.99 is also listed. Hevy's FAQ confirms Trainer is part of Pro. The free tier carries no ads and covers logging.

• Fitbod: a 7-day free trial, then a monthly or yearly subscription. The listing shows monthly plans at $12.99 and $15.99 and yearly plans at $79.99 and $95.99, alongside several legacy tiers, so the price you are offered can vary. Fitbod's site also says US subscribers may be able to pay with HSA or FSA funds.

Hevy is several times cheaper and is the only one of the two with a one-time purchase. Fitbod's in-app free option is the trial, so from the second week you are paying for the programming.

Everything else

Devices

Both run on iPhone and Apple Watch, and both are on Android. Hevy's listing adds a full iPad app. Fitbod's current listing requires iOS 18 or later; Hevy's requires iOS 15.1.

Exercise library

Fitbod's listing describes more than 1,000 exercises with multi-angle videos, searchable by muscle group and equipment. Hevy lists hundreds of exercises with videos. If you are still learning movements, or you train at home with limited equipment, Fitbod's library and equipment filtering are the stronger offer.

Social features

Hevy is partly a social network: you can follow friends, copy their routines, like and comment, and keep a public or private profile. Fitbod is built around your individual plan. If training alongside other people keeps you consistent, Hevy wins clearly.

Languages and ratings

Hevy lists English plus 15 other languages; Fitbod lists English, Spanish and Portuguese. Both are highly rated on the US App Store: Fitbod at 4.8 from about 285,000 ratings, with an Apple Editors' Choice award, and Hevy at 4.9 from about 93,000.

Which should you choose?

Choose Fitbod if you do not want to think about programming at all, if your training setup changes a lot (home one day, a hotel gym the next), or if you value video demonstrations and exercise variety. Of the two, it is the more complete "just tell me what to do" option, and it is priced accordingly.

Choose Hevy if you already follow a program, or want one fixed program that progresses by a rule you can read. The free logger is excellent, Pro is cheap, and the Apple Watch app and social features are genuinely good. For most lifters past their first year, it is the better value.

If you are weighing Hevy's paid coaching against a set-by-set recommender instead, our comparison of Alpha Progression and Hevy covers that choice.

Where Adensa fits

Adensa takes a third position. As with Hevy, the routine is yours: you choose the exercises and each one's rep range, and Adensa never swaps them out. As with Fitbod, it tells you what to lift, prescribing the weight and rep target for every exercise in that routine, and that coaching is free.

The method is double progression, with the step published. Once every working set reaches the top of the range, the load goes up 5% on compound lifts or 2.5% on isolation work, rounded to the smallest weight jump you set for that exercise. Below that, the weight holds and you work on reps. Before each session you choose Recover, Steady or Push. Recover runs 90% of the load at about 60% of the sets and never moves your progression. After the session you can rate the effort from 1 to 10, and a hard session with missed targets pre-selects Recover for next time. If you connect Apple Health, Adensa reads your other workouts without storing them and shows them beside your lifting.

What Adensa does not do matters as much. It is iPhone-only, with no Apple Watch app, no social feed, no plan generator and no exercise rotation. It imports history exported from Hevy or Strong, so your last sessions become the starting point for your next prescription, but it cannot import Fitbod history. It exports your data as CSV files in Hevy's column layout. History beyond 30 days, the reasoning behind each insight, per-exercise progression tuning, the recap archive and iCloud sync are part of Pro.

If you want to keep your own program and have the next weight worked out for you, see how Adensa plans your next session.