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Gym Journal vs Hevy
Hevy is the workout tracker most people already use, and for plenty of them it is the right one. Here is what each app does, in each app’s own words, so you can tell which one fits how you train.
Checked 25 September 2026 · sources at the bottom
Pick Hevy if
- You want to log from an Apple Watch or a Wear OS watch.
- You want video demonstrations for exercises.
- You want a web app, Strava, or a coach who programs for you through Hevy Coach.
- You want the biggest community. Hevy has 94,201 ratings on the US App Store and says more than 16 million athletes use it.
Pick Gym Journal if
- You want every lift ranked against strength standards for your bodyweight and sex, not only against the people you follow. You can check a set before you install.
- You train in Romanian, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Czech, Greek, Ukrainian or Indonesian. Gym Journal ships all ten; Hevy’s App Store listing includes none of them.
Side by side
Hevy’s column is taken from Hevy’s own App Store listing and website.
Price
- Gym Journal
- Free. Pro is $6.99 a month or $39.99 a year, both with a 7-day free trial, or $79.99 once.
- Hevy
- Free, with no ads. Hevy Pro is a subscription; its price is not given in Hevy’s App Store description or on its feature pages.
Free plan
- Gym Journal
- Unlimited workouts, the full 439-exercise library, the feed, leaderboards and cloud backup. Up to 5 routines, 5 splits and 5 custom exercises; statistics cover the last 30 days, while History keeps every session.
- Hevy
- Hevy Pro unlocks unlimited routines, unlimited graph history, unlimited custom exercises and advanced measurements, so the free plan limits those.
Ranks
- Gym Journal
- 46 lifts ranked against standards for your bodyweight and sex, from Iron to GOAT, with the kilos to the next tier. Global Hall of Fame leaderboards on top.
- Hevy
- Leaderboards on 38 exercises rank your best lift among the people you follow.
Programs and progression
- Gym Journal
- 40+ ready-made routines and splits. With Pro, smart progression suggests the next weight or rep target for each exercise, and the AI Coach drafts routines and splits (one free generation to try it).
- Hevy
- Hevy Trainer builds programs with progressive overload built in and adjusts your working weights as you log. There is also a routine library and a discovery feed.
Social
- Gym Journal
- A feed of your Gym Bros’ sessions with fires and comments, challenges on volume, workouts, hours, sets or PRs, and head-to-head comparison with Pro.
- Hevy
- A feed with likes and comments, copying friends’ routines, comparing performance, and Strava integration.
Watch, widgets and devices
- Gym Journal
- A rest timer on the iPhone Lock Screen. No watch app, no widgets.
- Hevy
- Apple Watch and Wear OS apps, home-screen widgets, Live Activity and Dynamic Island, an iPad app, and a web app at hevy.com.
Exercises
- Gym Journal
- 439 exercises, each with an image and form notes. No video.
- Hevy
- “Hundreds of exercises with free high-quality videos.”
Apple Health
- Gym Journal
- Reads weight, height, body fat and dietary energy, and writes finished workouts. Off until you turn it on.
- Hevy
- Exports Hevy workouts to the Health app, switched on in settings.
Languages
- Gym Journal
- 22: English, Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Indonesian, Turkish, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Polish, Ukrainian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Czech and Greek.
- Hevy
- 15 in its App Store listing: English, Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.
Community
- Gym Journal
- New. It launched in August 2026 and has no App Store ratings yet.
- Hevy
- 4.92 from 94,201 ratings on the US App Store.
Moving from Hevy
- Hevy exports your workout history as a CSV from its settings.
- In Gym Journal, open Settings → Import Data and pick the file. It reads the header and works out which app the export came from.
- Your workouts, sets, reps and body measurements land in your history, so ranks and progression start from your real numbers.
Use the file exactly as it was exported. Opening it in a spreadsheet and saving it again shifts the columns, and the import fails.
More on importingTry it before you decide
Free to download, with no account needed to start logging. You can also rank a set you have already done first.
Sources
- Hevy on the App Store (version 3.1.15, updated 21 September 2026)
- Hevy feature list
- Hevy Trainer
- Hevy leaderboards
Apps change. If something on this page is wrong or out of date, write to contact@gymjournal-app.com and it gets fixed.