Gymex vs Hevy: Which Wins in 2026?
Hevy and Gymex both help you train — but they solve different problems. Hevy is a logger; Gymex is a full AI strength coach. Here's an honest head-to-head on programming, coaching, price and who each one is really for.
The short answer
Pick Hevy if you already know how to program your own training and want a free, polished, social place to record it. Pick Gymex if you want the app to do the thinking — write your program, set your weights from your RIR, flag plateaus and handle your nutrition alongside your training.
They aren't really the same category of product, which is why the usual "which is best?" framing misleads. Hevy is one of the best workout loggers ever made; Gymex is coaching software that also logs. The honest trade-off is price: Hevy is cheaper (Pro tops out around £2.99/month against Gymex's £7.50–£20/month), so if a notebook is genuinely all you need, Hevy is the sensible buy. Everything below is about working out which camp you're in.
What is Hevy?
Hevy is a beautifully designed workout logger with the most generous free tier in the category and the best social experience of any lifting app. You build routines, log sets fast, watch your history and graphs grow, and share sessions with a feed of friends and strangers who actually cheer you on. It runs on iOS, Android and Apple Watch, and its routine sharing has made it the default logger for a huge slice of the lifting internet.
More recently Hevy added Hevy Trainer, which can generate a starter program for you — a genuine step beyond pure logging, though as we'll see, generating a plan and coaching one are different things. What Hevy has never tried to do is make training decisions for you: it records what you did, beautifully, and leaves the thinking in your hands.
What is Gymex?
Gymex is a UK-built AI strength coach for iOS and Android (iPhone, iPad, Android and Apple Watch). Instead of handing you an empty logbook, it writes you a multi-week mesocycle, then adapts it week to week: inferring your Reps in Reserve to adjust loads, detecting plateaus and PRs, auto-periodising your blocks and letting you interrogate all of it through a conversational AI coach. Sets can be logged by voice mid-workout, and nutrition — macros, meal plans, barcode and photo meal scanning — lives in the same app, alongside form checks, body metrics and progress photos.
There's a free tier, with paid plans from £7.50/month, and it currently sits at 4.9 on the App Store from its first 12 ratings — a young app, but one built to replace a £100+/month remote coach rather than a notebook.
Who each app is really for
Hevy is for you if:
- You already follow a program — your own, a coach's, or a template like 5/3/1 or a PPL split — and just need somewhere fast and pleasant to record it.
- A free or near-free logger is what you want — both apps now cover iOS and Android, but Hevy's free tier is the more generous if pure logging is all you need.
- The social feed is your main motivator — Hevy's community is genuinely the best in the category.
- Budget is the deciding factor: free, or a couple of pounds a month, is hard to argue with.
Gymex is for you if:
- You've outgrown "log it yourself" and want the app to write and adapt the program, not just store it.
- You keep stalling and want plateau detection and load adjustments instead of guesswork.
- You want to log hands-free by voice and keep nutrition in the same app as training.
- You'd consider a human coach but not at £100+/month — Gymex's whole pitch is coached progression for £7.50–£20.
Pricing: what you actually pay
This is the section where we're blunt: Hevy is cheaper, full stop. Its free tier is famously generous, and Hevy Pro tops out around £2.99/month. If logging is all you want, paying more than that makes no sense — buy Hevy Pro or stay on the free tier and spend the difference on a belt.
Gymex costs more because it's a different product. The free tier covers logging, nutrition tracking, body metrics, the manual program builder, Garmin pairing and offline sync. Paid plans are Core at £7.50/month (power-user data and program analytics, no AI), Premium at £15/month (the AI coach, voice logging, AI program builder and RIR weight intelligence, with usage caps) and Pro Premium at £20/month (uncapped AI plus auto-periodization, plateau detection, photo meal scanner and form check), with 17% off annual billing. You're not paying for a notebook — you're paying for the coaching layer, and it's still a fraction of a human coach. For the wider market picture, see our 2026 workout app pricing breakdown.
Side-by-side comparison
| Gymex | Hevy | |
|---|---|---|
| Category | AI strength coach | Logger |
| Writes & adapts your program | Yes — adapts weekly | Basic (Hevy Trainer) |
| Conversational AI coach | Yes | No |
| RIR autoregulation | Yes | No |
| Plateau & overtraining detection | Yes | No |
| Voice set logging | Yes | No |
| Nutrition tracking | Yes | No |
| Social feed & community | Yes — feed & messaging | Yes — category-leading |
| Garmin integration | Yes | No |
| Free tier | Yes | Generous |
| Price | Free, £7.50–£20/mo | Free–£2.99/mo |
| Platforms | iOS, iPad, Android, Apple Watch | iOS, Android, Watch |
Feature depth: what "AI" actually means in each app
Both apps now use the word "AI", but they mean very different things by it.
Hevy Trainer: program generation
Hevy Trainer answers the question "what program should I run?" by generating a sensible starter plan from your goals and experience. For a lifter staring at a blank routine screen, that's real value. But once the plan exists, Hevy's job is done — it won't read how close to failure your sets were, nudge next week's loads up or down, notice your squat has stalled for six weeks, or answer "should I deload?" The plan is static the moment it's written, and every training decision after that is back on you.
Gymex: ongoing coaching
Gymex's coach is conversational and continuous. It writes your mesocycle, then keeps working on it: inferring RIR from your set history to adjust weight suggestions, auto-periodising blocks, detecting plateaus and overtraining, and spotting PRs across four categories. You can ask it why your bench has stalled and get an answer grounded in your actual log. Voice logging keeps your hands free between sets, and the nutrition side — macros, meal plans, barcode and photo scanning — means your diet and training finally inform each other instead of living in separate apps.
Where Hevy wins
Credit where it's due, because Hevy earns it:
- Price. Free, or about £2.99/month for Pro, against Gymex's £7.50–£20. For a pure logger, Hevy is unbeatable value.
- Free tier generosity. Hevy gives away more for nothing than almost anyone in the category.
- Community. The social feed, routine sharing and comments are the best of any lifting app — if accountability from other humans keeps you training, that's worth more than any algorithm.
- Free cross-platform logging. Hevy runs on iOS, Android and Apple Watch with a generous free tier. Gymex now covers iOS and Android too, so if you're on Android the choice comes down to free logging (Hevy) versus AI coaching (Gymex), not the platform itself.
So we'll say it plainly: if you program your own training and want a great free, social logger, pick Hevy. That's what it's for, and it's excellent at it. Gymex would be money spent on coaching you don't want.
Where Gymex wins
Everything Hevy leaves to you is where Gymex lives. It writes a full adapting mesocycle rather than a static starter plan, coaches you conversationally, reads your RIR to set loads, catches plateaus before you do, logs by voice and joins training to nutrition — plus form checks, 13+ body metrics, progress photos and Garmin pairing. It's the difference between an app that records or suggests training and one that actually programs and autoregulates it for you, for a fraction of the price of a human coach. See the feature-by-feature breakdown on our full comparison page.
Using both — and switching
You don't have to choose on day one. A common pattern is running Hevy for the social side — the feed, the friends, the routine sharing — while letting Gymex run the program: following its session targets and logging by voice. The obvious cost is double logging, and most people find that wears thin within a few weeks and consolidate into one app.
If you're switching properly, Hevy lets you export your workout history as CSV, so your training record isn't locked in, and Gymex's free tier means you can test the coaching without cancelling anything. A sensible trial: run a Gymex program for a full mesocycle (typically 4–8 weeks), keep Hevy for the community if you like, and judge by whether the adapting loads and plateau alerts changed your progress. Gymex now runs on Android as well as iOS, so the trial is open to you whichever phone you carry. And if you're weighing up other options beyond these two, our Hevy alternatives guide ranks the eight best, and Hevy vs Strong vs Fitbod covers the logger head-to-heads.
Bottom line: Hevy wins on free logging and community; Gymex wins on actual coaching. Many lifters use Hevy to log and outgrow it when they want programming. You can try Gymex free on iOS and decide for yourself.
Frequently asked questions
Is Gymex better than Hevy?
Hevy is the best free social logger going — if community keeps you consistent, that is a real edge. Gymex answers a different need: it writes and adapts your program, reads RIR, detects plateaus and tracks nutrition. Hevy Trainer's generated starter plans do none of that, so lifters wanting coached progression get far more from Gymex.
Is Hevy or Gymex cheaper?
Hevy is cheaper in absolute terms — free, with Pro up to about £2.99/month. Gymex is free to start with paid plans from £7.50/month, but those plans include full AI coaching rather than logging conveniences. You are paying for a coach, not a notebook.
Is Hevy Trainer real AI?
Hevy Trainer uses AI to generate a starter program from your goals, which is genuinely useful — but it is generation, not coaching. Once the plan exists it does not read your RIR, adjust loads week to week, detect plateaus or answer questions about your training. Gymex's AI coach does all of that continuously.
Can I use Hevy and Gymex together?
Yes, and some lifters do — Hevy for the social feed and friends, Gymex for the program and coaching. The cost is double logging, though Gymex's voice logging makes that fast, and most people eventually consolidate into one app. There is no technical conflict: both simply record what you lift.
Which is better for beginners, Hevy or Gymex?
If your budget is zero, Hevy's generous free tier and friendly community make it a great first logger. But beginners benefit most from guidance, and that is where Gymex pulls ahead: its AI coach sets your starting weights, progresses them from your RIR and answers the questions a new lifter actually has. AI features start on Gymex Premium at £15/month, with a free tier to try first.
Can Gymex replace Hevy?
For most lifters, yes — Gymex logs your sets too (including by voice), then goes on to program and adapt the training Hevy only records. The one reason to keep Hevy is its social feed and cross-platform support, especially if your training partners all live there.
What does Gymex do that Hevy doesn't?
Gymex writes multi-week programs that adapt weekly, infers your Reps in Reserve to adjust loads, detects plateaus and overtraining, logs by voice and tracks nutrition. Hevy records what you did beautifully — including on Android and Apple Watch — but leaves every training decision to you.