The personal best tracker that tells you while you are still in the gym

The short answer

• Superset — announces the record as you save the set, with the set it came from shown next to it. Free.
• Hevy — keeps PR history per exercise and marks records in the log. Strong social layer if you want other people to see them.
• Strong — clean per-exercise records and one of the best-liked history views in the category.
• A spreadsheet — still the most flexible option, and still the one nobody keeps up for more than a month.
• The real differences are *when* you are told, *what* the app is willing to call a record, and whether it shows you where the number came from.

"Personal best" is at least two different numbers

Lifters use one phrase for two things, and an app that conflates them will lie to you.

Heaviest weight is the simplest reading: the most that has ever been on the bar for that exercise, regardless of reps. It is the number people quote in the gym. It is also easy to game — a grindy single at a weight you cannot control is a record by this definition.

Estimated strength is the honest one: an estimate of what you could do for a single, calculated from a set you actually completed. This is what moves when you do 80 kg for 5 after months of 80 kg for 3. No weight on the bar changed, but you got stronger, and only this kind of record notices.

You want both. Heaviest weight is the one that feels good; estimated strength is the one that tells you the training is working.

What Superset does

Superset tracks exactly those two kinds of record for every exercise, recalculated from your own logged history each time you save a session. When one of them moves, a toast drops in at the top of the screen while you are still standing there: *New record! Bench Press 60 kg*.

The part that matters more than the celebration is that it shows its working. An estimated record is displayed with the set that produced it — *93.5 kg est. · from 80 kg × 5* — so you can see whether the number is real or the product of one ugly set. A number you cannot check is a number you cannot trust, which is the problem with most estimated-max features.

Records need history to exist, so the first few weeks in any tracker are quiet by definition. If you are switching apps, Superset takes a routine pasted in as plain text, but it does not import another app's past workouts — so your record history starts from your first logged session here.

The honest limits. Two record kinds is deliberately fewer than some apps offer. There is no separate table of best-ever sets at each rep range, no bodyweight-adjusted records, and no leaderboard comparing you to anyone else. If you want records ranked against other lifters, Liftoff is built around exactly that and Superset has nothing like it.

How they compare

How to use records without chasing them

A tracker that shouts about every record trains you to test rather than build, which is how people stall. Two rules keep it useful.

1. 1Let records be an output, not a target. Run the programme; the records show up on their own.
2. 2When a heaviest-weight record and an estimated-strength record disagree — the bar went up but the estimate went down — believe the estimate. It usually means the reps came off.
3. 3Ignore records in the first month of a new exercise. Early jumps are mostly learning the movement, not strength.
4. 4After a deload, expect the estimate to dip and come back higher. That dip is the plan working, not a lost month.

How to pick

• You want to be told in the moment, for free — Superset.
• You want your PRs to be a social thing — Hevy's feed, or Liftoff if you want them ranked.
• You want years of history in one place already — whichever app you have been using. Records only mean something with data behind them, and starting over resets that.
• You want records off an Apple Watch — Strong. Superset has no watch app.
• You are on Android — Superset is iPhone-only; the other three all have Android apps.