FitNotes alternatives, and when to just keep FitNotes

FitNotes is the app people mean when they say they want a workout log that doesn't ask them for anything. No sign-up, no advertising, no subscription screen between you and the barbell. It has been on Google Play since 2013, it's past a million installs, and its rating has stayed where most apps can't keep one.

So the useful question isn't which app replaces it. For a lot of people nothing needs to. The useful question is narrower: which specific things does FitNotes not do, are any of them things you actually need, and what's the cost of moving for them.

What FitNotes Is, Checked Against Its Own Listing

Enough pages describe this app second-hand that the basics are worth stating from the source. It's published by James Gay, it's Android only, and its own FAQ says there are no plans for an iPhone version. Its Play data safety section declares that no data is collected and none is shared.

First released

March 16, 2013

Last updated

October 24, 2025

Version

25.1

Installs

One million and up

Rating

4.8 across roughly 31,000 ratings

Requires

Android 10 and up

Read from the Google Play listing on the date printed at the top of this article. Play changes without notice, so check it yourself before relying on any of it.

The Free App Is Free, With One Footnote

FitNotes carries no advertising badge and no in-app purchase badge on its listing, which is rarer than it should be. There's one thing to buy, and it's not in the app: a separate FitNotes Supporter app at a one-off $6.99, which exists to fund development and unlocks some additional exercise types. Nothing in the main app expires if you never buy it.

It's also not open source, despite a package name containing the word github that has confused a great many articles. There's no public repository, so there are no forks of it either. Apps described online as FitNotes forks are separate projects that were inspired by it, or unrelated apps that happen to share the name.

The Three Things FitNotes Does Not Do

These aren't oversights. FitNotes is a log, and a log that stayed a log is why it still feels fast twelve years in. They're simply the edges of what it was built for, and they're the only honest reasons to move.

It won't tell you what to lift

FitNotes records the session you decided on. Working out whether Tuesday should be heavier than last Tuesday is your job, or your spreadsheet's. FitTrack reads your own personal records and arrives at the gym with the exercise, sets, reps and weight already chosen, and shows the reasoning. If you like deciding that yourself, this is a downgrade rather than an upgrade.

It doesn't model recovery

There's no muscle map and no fatigue model in FitNotes. A rest day is a day you didn't open the app. FitTrack decays each muscle group separately from the sets logged against it, 72 hours for chest and legs, 48 for shoulders and arms, 36 for calves and core, so chest still red on Thursday is an argument against another pressing day.

It doesn't know what you ate

There's no food database and no macro tracking. The Body Tracker will hold a calorie number as a custom metric, but you have to have worked it out somewhere else first, which in practice means a second app. FitTrack's Food Check turns protein, carbohydrate and fat off a label into calories on the free tier, and the daily targets and diary are the parts Pro charges for.

Where FitNotes Beats Us

Twelve years of shipping. FitNotes has been maintained through more Android versions than most fitness companies have existed for, and it has a million-plus installs saying it didn't break along the way. FitTrack is new, and at the time of writing it's not on Google Play yet. That's not a small difference and no feature list cancels it.

Its backups are better than ours, too. FitNotes can write to Dropbox or Google Drive and can do it automatically about an hour after you train, which is a genuinely good answer to the one real weakness of keeping data on a phone. FitTrack relies on Android Backup and on you exporting a file deliberately.

And neither app syncs between devices, so if that's what sent you looking, neither of us is the answer. An account-based tracker is, and the comparison of nine apps covers the ones worth considering.

So, Which One

• Stay on FitNotes

  You want a fast log and nothing else, you already have history in it, you write your own programming, or you want the app with the longer record. All four are good reasons and none of them are consolation prizes.

• Look at FitTrack

  You're running FitNotes next to a macro app, you keep guessing at recovery, or you want the session chosen before you get there. Your logged sets can come with you now, through the FitNotes CSV export, so the years already in the app are no longer the reason to stay.

• Look at neither

  You want your training on a phone, a laptop and a tablet at once, readable from a browser. That needs an account and a server, which is exactly the thing both of these apps decided not to have. FitTrack does reach your wrist, over a direct pairing rather than a server, but it won't reach your desk.