Gravl vs Fitbod, an honest comparison in 2026

Years ago, a friend of mine was using Fitbod and showed it to me. I liked the idea straight away, an algorithm that decides your workouts for you, but the workouts it was generating didn't make much sense. The closer I looked, the more the flaws showed, and at some point the obvious move was to build the thing properly ourselves. That's how Gravl started.

Our first product goal was simply a better algorithm than Fitbod's: proper progressive overload and better exercise selection. Once we got there, we kept going, and today Gravl is ahead on customizability, settings and features overall, with a whole ecosystem around it that Fitbod never built: nutrition^*, a web dashboard, social features, a developer API, even an MCP server. Both apps still set out to do the same thing; Gravl just does far more of it, while staying just as easy to use. In 2026, I think the choice between these two is obvious.

^* Gravl Macros launches in early August 2026. At the time of writing it is in TestFlight beta.

So yes, this is our own comparison, and you should read it knowing where we stand. But every Fitbod claim below comes from fitbod.me as of July 2026, so you can check each one yourself. Where Fitbod is better, we say so.

The short version

Head-to-head scoring

7 wins out of 8 categories

Overview

Gravl is a training system: it generates your plan, recalculates it after every session, and learns your progression per lift. Around the workouts: Strength Score analytics, real coaches in chat, AI form rating, and a social layer with friends and levels. Full feature parity between iOS and Android.

Features

• 9 preset splits plus a custom split builder, with deloads, set counts and rep ranges.
• Weight progression learned per user and per lift; PR detection.
• AI imports: machines from a photo, exercises by name, programs from PDFs or social posts.
• Exercise history with 1RM, Strength Score, progress photos.
• Real coaches in chat plus AI form rating.
• Friends, feed, levels and XP.
• Apple Watch, Wear OS and Garmin watch apps; web dashboard; Developer API and Gravl MCP; 9 languages.

Who's it for?

Lifters of any level, beginner or experienced, who want to take their training a bit more seriously: plenty of settings to control, and the most modern tooling and features there when you need them.

Head-to-head scoring

1 win out of 8 categories

Overview

Fitbod is a resistance-training session generator: it builds one workout at a time from muscle freshness and your available equipment, backed by the biggest exercise library in the category. Updates ship regularly, but new features are scarce: about 10 announced in the last 12 months, and none of them in the App Store release notes.

Features

• 1,600+ exercise library with video demos and form cues.
• One session at a time, generated from muscle freshness.
• 4 preset splits; circuits supported.
• Apple Watch and Wear OS companion apps.
• Syncs with Apple Health, Health Connect, Fitbit, Garmin and Strava.
• HSA/FSA eligible in the US.

Who's it for?

A beginner who goes to the gym occasionally and wants a decent session decided for them, with plenty of exercise variety and no plan to maintain.

1. Workout planning

Fitbod generates one session at a time from muscle freshness, choosing from 4 preset splits. There is no custom split creation: if you want to run your own structure, you can't.

Gravl plans the whole week, not just today, and recalculates it after every session you log. It ships 9 preset splits plus a custom split builder, and the structure is genuinely yours to control: how often you deload, how many sets per exercise, which rep ranges, whether you superset or dropset. Warm-ups and cool-downs are written by certified PTs. And if you already have a program you love, you don't rebuild it by hand: point AI at the PDF or the social post it came from and it imports for you.

	Gravl	Fitbod
Preset splits	9	4
Custom splits	Yes	No
Deload periods	Yes	No
Sets and rep ranges, predefined by you	Yes	No
Supersets and dropsets	Yes	Partial
AI import of programs from PDFs or social posts	Yes	No
Circuits	No	Yes

2. In the gym

Both apps suggest weights and apply progressive overload, though Fitbod's own subreddit questions how well theirs works. Gravl runs double progression: first you earn reps, and once you complete every target rep the weight goes up. The thresholds that decide when you get 2.5 kg more are per user and per lift, learned from what happened after every previous bump. If an exercise keeps progressing well for you, the next increase comes sooner. If an increase costs you reps, the algorithm waits longer before trying again. It also accounts for exercise variety, counting the related exercises you did in between sessions, so recommendations stay realistic even when you rotate movements.

You also never have to trust a number blindly. Every exercise has an Insights pill that explains why today's weight is what it is: what you did last time, where your estimated 1RM is heading, and how much work that muscle has seen since.

Machines get the same personal treatment. Each machine in your gym can have its own weight unit, its own jumps and its own ranges, because the same machine can behave very differently from one gym to another. You can set it all manually or just take a photo of the weight stack and let AI fill everything in. And if your gym has equipment Gravl doesn't know at all, you can create it yourself: upload a photo and our AI does the rest. In Fitbod, equipment is a checkbox: a machine is available or it isn't, and there is no way to tell the app what weights it actually has.

The session itself is built so you touch your phone as little as possible. The workout lives on your iOS lock screen as a Live Activity (interactive notifications on Android), so logging a set never means unlocking and navigating. Rest timers are set per exercise, since a heavy compound needs more recovery than an isolation movement. PRs are detected automatically as you log.

	Gravl	Fitbod
Progression thresholds learned per lift	Yes	No
Insights: explains every weight recommendation	Yes	No
PR detection	Yes	No
Rest timer settings per exercise	Yes	No
Per-machine weight units, jumps and ranges	Yes	No
Machine setup from an AI photo	Yes	No
Custom equipment, created from a photo	Yes	No
iOS Live Activity / Android interactive notifications	Yes	No

3. Analytics

Gravl keeps a full history per exercise with estimated one-rep max over time, and rolls everything into a Strength Score per muscle and overall, adjusted for bodyweight. Fitbod has a strength score too, in a more basic form.

The rest of your progress lives next to those numbers. Progress photos sit beside the charts, so you can see the visual changes alongside the data. Anything you train outside the app imports from Apple Health, Health Connect and Garmin, so a hotel-gym session or a run still counts toward your week. You can also pick which day your week starts on.

	Gravl	Fitbod
Per-exercise history with estimated 1RM	Yes	Partial
Strength score	Yes	Yes
Strength score per muscle and overall, bodyweight-adjusted	Yes	No
Progress photos	Yes	No
Configurable first day of the week	Yes	No

4. Exercise library

Fitbod's 1,600+ exercise library with video demos is the biggest in the category. It is also padded. There are duplicate entries, like three separate variations of barbell rows, and plenty of entries that never actually appear in a generated workout: "Duck Walk", "Foam Roll Hamstrings" and three kinds of bear crawl are all counted as exercises. When entries the algorithm never picks count toward your library size, the number stops meaning much.

Gravl's library is deliberately smaller. It only contains exercises the algorithm actually uses when building workouts, with no duplicates and every movement filmed with real humans. When you want something that isn't included, you create a custom exercise in seconds: type its name, or just share a YouTube, TikTok or Instagram link and AI builds the exercise from it, video and thumbnail included. Custom machines work the same way, and the algorithm treats your custom entries like any other exercise when it plans your workouts. In Fitbod, custom exercises are manual only, and their own banner tells you they won't be suggested in generated workouts.

	Gravl	Fitbod
Library	Only exercises the algorithm uses	1,600+, with duplicates and filler
Custom exercises	Yes	Yes
Custom exercises created with AI, by name	Yes	No
Custom exercises from a YouTube/TikTok/Instagram link	Yes	No
Custom machines, imported with AI	Yes	No
Custom entries used by the algorithm	Yes	No

5. Coaching

Every Gravl plan comes with coaches in chat: you message, a person answers, and the plan updates around their call. AI form rating gives instant feedback on your recorded sets in between.

Fitbod offers video demos and form cues. There is no one, human or AI, looking at your movement.

6. Social

Training sticks better when someone is watching. In Gravl you add friends and family, compare Strength Scores with them, and share sessions to a feed. Levels and XP keep a sense of progress going even in weeks where the lifts stall, and gym profiles are matched to real Google Maps gyms, so the people you see in the app are the people you see at your gym.

Fitbod has no social features at all.

7. Platform

Gravl runs everywhere you train: full feature parity between iOS and Android, watch apps for Apple Watch, Wear OS and Garmin, and 9 languages. It also goes beyond the phone. There is a web dashboard at app.gravl.ai for when you want your training on a big screen, and your data is programmable: a Developer API with personal tokens and OAuth, plus an MCP server so you can connect Claude or any MCP-capable assistant to your training.

Fitbod supports Apple Watch and Wear OS as phone companions, ships in three languages, and has historically lagged on Android.

	Gravl	Fitbod
iOS / Android feature parity	Yes	Partial
Apple Watch and Wear OS apps	Yes	Yes
Garmin watch app	Yes	No
Web dashboard	Yes	No
Languages	9	3
Developer API	Yes	No
MCP server for AI assistants	Yes	No

8. Price

Fitbod runs $15.99/month or $95.99/year with a 7 day trial, and is HSA/FSA eligible in the US. Gravl costs less. Nutrition^* lives in its own companion app, and even both together come in under Fitbod, with human coaching included.

	Gravl	Fitbod
Price	Less than Fitbod, free trial	$15.99/month or $95.99/year, 7 day trial
Human coaching included	Yes	No
Nutrition*	Companion app	Not offered
HSA/FSA eligible (US)	No	Yes

^* Gravl Macros launches in early August 2026. At the time of writing it is in TestFlight beta.

What happens when you ask for a feature

There is one more comparison that matters, and it is hard to put in a table: what each team does with user feedback.

We build Gravl in public. We announce a release on r/Gravl every few weeks, and the roadmap is shaped by the people replying to them: the Wear OS app was the most requested Android feature, so we built it. Per-machine weight jumps and the photo scan for weight stacks came straight from subreddit threads. Most requests that make sense ship within a release or two of being asked, and when something is a bad idea we say so and explain why. Our users seem to notice.

On r/fitbod, the same requests have stayed open for years:

• Dropsets, requested since 2023, and still only partially supported.
• Deload weeks, requested since 2021, and still not a feature.
• Custom splits, requested since 2023, and it is still 4 presets.
• A Garmin watch app, requested since 2021, and there is still nothing on the watch.
• Rest timer control, requested for years, where an update actually made things worse.

Every feature on that list is in Gravl today.

The full feature list

Every feature in one table. Both columns filled in honestly. Fitbod gets its checks.

Feature by feature

Feature	Gravl	Fitbod
Algorithmic workout generation	Yes	Yes
Weekly plan, recalculated after every session	Yes
Preset splits	Yes	Yes
Custom splits	Yes
Deload periods	Yes
Sets-per-exercise control	Yes
Custom rep ranges	Yes
Muscle focus	Yes	Yes
Supersets and dropsets	Yes	Partial
Circuits		Yes
Warm-ups and cool-downs	Yes	Yes
AI import of programs from PDFs or social posts	Yes
Muscle recovery model	Yes	Yes
Recovery adjusts working weights	Yes
Weight recommendations	Yes	Yes
Progression thresholds learned per lift	Yes
Insights: explains every weight recommendation	Yes
PR detection	Yes
Rest timers	Yes	Yes
Rest time settings per exercise	Yes
Per-machine weight units	Yes
Per-machine jumps and weight ranges	Yes
Machine setup from an AI photo	Yes
iOS Live Activity	Yes
Android interactive notifications	Yes
Multiple gym profiles with equipment	Yes	Yes
Exercise video demonstrations	Yes	Yes
1,600+ exercise catalog		Yes
Custom exercises	Yes	Yes
AI import of custom exercises, by name	Yes
Custom machines	Yes
Custom entries used by the algorithm	Yes
Smart exercise replace	Yes	Yes
Per-exercise history charts	Yes	Yes
Estimated 1RM tracking	Yes	Partial
Strength score	Yes	Partial
Progress photos	Yes
Configurable first day of the week	Yes
Import external workouts	Yes	Yes
Human coaches in chat	Yes
AI form rating	Yes
Friends and social feed	Yes
Strength Score comparison with friends	Yes
Levels and XP	Yes
Gym search	Yes
Apple Watch app	Yes	Yes
Wear OS app	Yes	Yes
Garmin watch app	Yes
Fitbit sync		Yes
Strava sync	Yes	Yes
iOS / Android feature parity	Yes	Partial
Web dashboard	Yes
9 languages	Yes
Developer API	Yes
MCP server for AI assistants	Yes
HSA/FSA eligible (US)		Yes

Summary

Seven categories to Gravl, one to Fitbod, and Fitbod's win is the category defined a decade ago. Everything that has been added to training apps since then goes the other way: learned progression, coaching, social, watches, a web dashboard, an API.

The last 12 months tell the same story. Both apps ship updates constantly, but what arrives in them is very different. Fitbod went from version 7.13 to 8.26, and every App Store release note along the way says the same three words: "Bug fixes and improvements." The features they do announce live in quarterly Reddit recaps, and counted generously they add up to about 10 for the whole year: a swap menu, custom barbells, two new languages, Strava on Android. Gravl shipped over 40 in the same window, including entire new platforms: the Wear OS app, the Garmin app, Gravl Macros^*, the MCP server, the web dashboard and the developer API.

Already on Fitbod? Gravl can import all of your Fitbod workouts. Just email us at support@gravl.ai and your history comes with you.

1. Workout planning

Custom splits, deloads, rep ranges vs 4 preset splits

2. In the gym

Learned progression, PR detection, live lock-screen workout

3. Analytics

Exercise history with 1RM, Strength Score, progress photos

4. Exercise library

1,600+ exercises is the biggest catalog in the category

5. Coaching

Real coaches in chat plus AI form rating

6. Social

Friends, feed, levels. Fitbod has none

7. Platform

iOS/Android parity, web dashboard, Garmin watch, Developer API + MCP

8. Price

Costs less than Fitbod

Which app is right for you?

Honestly, at this point we struggle to find a reason to recommend Fitbod over Gravl. The one objective case is HSA/FSA eligibility in the US, and even then the two apps end up costing almost the same. If price is the thing holding you back, write to support@gravl.ai and we're always happy to discuss a discount. The other reason is simply preferring Fitbod's UI, which is fair. Taste is personal.

Everything else points to Gravl: a plan you control, weights that learn you per lift, a workout on your lock screen, and a coach one tap away, on either platform, for less money.

Switching is also risk-free. We'll import your entire Fitbod history so you don't lose a single workout, and you get a trial to decide for yourself.

And if what you're really weighing is a different kind of app altogether, like Hevy's logging, Ladder's coach-built programs or MacroFactor's workouts, that's a genuinely different conversation. Those apps are pushing on tech too, but they offer a different product, and choosing between them and Gravl is more a matter of taste than of which app is better. We're writing honest comparisons with each of them as well. Gravl vs Fitbod isn't that kind of choice: same product, ten years apart.

The best test is the same for both: take the free trial, run it for two weeks, and compare the workouts you get.