Strong alternative: no routine cap, and you can talk to it

What is Strong?

Strong is a workout tracker for iPhone, Android and Apple Watch, built by Strong Fitness. It is deliberately plain: you build routines, you log sets, it charts your progress and stays out of the way. No AI, no social feed, no generated programming. That restraint is exactly why experienced lifters like it, and why it holds 4.86 stars from 108,489 ratings in the US.

The free version saves unlimited workouts — your training history is never held back — but is limited to 3 custom routines. Strong PRO removes that at $4.99 a month, $29.99 a year, or $99.99 once for lifetime access, and adds further PRO features.

Its Apple Watch app is the most established of any app in this comparison, and Superset has no watch app at all. If you log from your wrist, this page probably ends here.

Why look for a Strong alternative?

• Three routines on free. An upper/lower split is two. Add a deload variant or a travel-day session and you are done, permanently, unless you pay.
• Every set is a tap. Strong's logger is clean but it is still a form you fill in between sets, with chalky hands and a running rest timer.
• It will not tell you what to lift. Strong records and charts. Deciding whether to add weight this week is entirely your job — by design, but it is arithmetic you do in a rest period.
• PRO is $99.99 for lifetime. Fair for what it is, but a large one-off for removing a cap on routines you created yourself.
• No exercise instructions to speak of. Strong's library is functional; it is not where you learn how to set up an unfamiliar machine.

Superset vs Strong

Where the two actually diverge

Strong's philosophy is that a tracker should be a notebook: fast, silent, and yours. It does not have opinions about your training. For a lifter who already knows what they are doing, that is a feature, and it is why Strong has survived a decade of flashier competitors.

Superset's bet is that two specific jobs should not be manual. The first is data entry — you speak the session once at the end rather than tapping after every set, and an AI turns "squat five by five at 225, RDL three by ten at 155" into structured sets with a review screen before saving. The second is the arithmetic — the coach reads your logged history and returns one instruction per exercise, with the weight to use, rather than leaving you to work it out mid-rest.

The third difference is what free means. Strong gives you unlimited history but three routines. Superset caps nothing you create at any tier: routines, custom exercises, history, the progress dashboard, the coach, all 873 exercises and cloud backup are free, and only the microphone is paid.

• One spoken sentence instead of a tap per set.
• No routine ceiling — build as many splits and variants as you want, free.
• Next-session weights calculated for you, free, and offline.
• 873 exercise guides with photos that work with no signal.
• Paste your existing program rather than rebuilding it by hand.

Where Strong is stronger

• The Apple Watch app. Strong's is the best here and Superset has none. For wrist-logged training this is decisive.
• 108,489 ratings at 4.86 stars. Superset has none at all. A decade of refinement against a few months.
• Android. Superset is iPhone-only.
• Unlimited workout history on the free tier, explicitly promised. Superset matches this, but Strong committed to it first and has kept it.
• Simplicity as a virtue. No AI, no coach, nothing to second-guess. Some lifters actively want a notebook and Strong is the best one.
• Offline logging with a long track record. Superset also logs offline, but Strong has been proving it for years.

Who should switch

Choose Superset if you have hit the three-routine wall and resent paying to organise your own training, or if the tapping is what makes you stop logging. It also makes sense if you want progression advice without the $12.99-a-month tier other apps charge for it, or if your gym has no signal and you want exercise instructions that still load.

Stick with Strong if you log from an Apple Watch, you are on Android, or you want the proven option. Strong's track record is a real asset and a new app cannot manufacture one. If three routines is enough for how you train — and for a lot of people running one program it is — the free tier is excellent and costs nothing.

They are aiming at different lifters. Strong is the best notebook. Superset is trying to remove the writing.