# Compound vs Hevy: a feed, or a number that went up

> Hevy tracks lifts with a social feed of followers and leaderboards. Compound tracks the same lifts with no account, no feed. Here is the honest tradeoff.

**Source:** https://trycompound.cc/blog/compound-vs-hevy/  
**Author:** Scott Shumaker, maker of Compound  
**Published:** 2026-09-05  
**Topic:** The app (app comparison, the app, motivation, privacy)

## In short

Hevy is a workout logger with a social layer: an account, a profile, followers, a feed of other people's sessions, and leaderboards ranking your lifts on 38 exercises. Compound has none of that, on purpose: no account, no feed, no leaderboard, and the only thing that goes up is the number on the bar. Use Hevy if training in front of other people is what gets you back to the gym; use Compound if you would rather nobody was watching.

- Hevy's leaderboards rank your best lift against friends across 38 exercises. Compound has no leaderboard at all.
- Social support is one of the better-documented predictors of exercise adherence, with effects shown in adults 50 to 65 and in college-age exercisers.
- Two 2023 studies on fitness app users found social comparison cuts both ways, lifting some people and draining others depending on self-control.
- Compound's Progress screen shows the gain on four main lifts since day one and a 0-to-100 consistency dial, visible to nobody but you.
- Compound's training history is one file in Application Support on the phone: zero servers, zero logins, and no recovery without your own backup.

---

Hevy is a workout logger with a social layer built in: an account, a profile, followers,
and a feed of other people's sessions. Compound is the opposite bet: no account, no feed,
no leaderboard, no streak badge. Use Hevy if training in front of other people is what
gets you to the gym. Use Compound if you would rather nobody was watching and the only
comparison that matters is the bar four weeks ago.

## What is Hevy?

Hevy is a workout tracker for iOS and Android, free to start, built around logging sets
and sharing them. The logging half is genuinely strong: previous-workout values filled in
automatically, rest timers, a plate calculator, live personal record notifications, and a
routine builder backed by a library of 26 pre-built training programs across three
experience levels, plus HevyGPT, a ChatGPT integration that generates a program from a
prompt and imports it straight into your Hevy profile.

The social half is the point of difference. You follow other lifters and see their
sessions in a Home feed, complete with training volume and personal records. A Discover
feed surfaces workouts from people you do not follow. You can like and comment on a
session, and leaderboards rank your best lift on 38 exercises against your friends. A
profile shows a bio, follower and following counts, a week-to-week activity graph, and
uploaded photos and videos, and a finished workout can auto-post to Strava.

Hevy's free tier covers logging without a time limit. A paid Pro tier, listed in the App
Store on August 22, 2026 at $2.99 a month, $23.99 a year, or $74.99 for a lifetime
unlock, removes caps on routines and custom exercises and extends how far back your
analytics history goes. Pricing varies by region and by store, and changes over time on
both apps.

## Does social accountability actually help people keep training?

Yes, for a lot of people, and it is one of the better-documented levers in exercise
psychology. A 1993 study following adult exercisers found that social support predicted
both exercise adherence and the efficacy beliefs that sustain it over time, tracked with
a growth-curve model rather than a single snapshot. A 1995 study of women and men ages
50 to 65 found that social support, specifically the kind aimed at the exercise itself
rather than general encouragement, was one of the stronger predictors of who kept
training and who dropped off.

This is the honest case for Hevy. A follower who notices you skipped three sessions, or a
leaderboard that shows your bench slipping behind a training partner's, is a real
mechanism, not a gimmick. If that mechanism is what gets you back to the gym on a bad
week, an app built to surface it is doing its job.

## Does comparing your training to other people ever backfire?

Sometimes. The research on social comparison in fitness apps is mixed, not settled. A
2023 study of fitness app users found that both upward comparison, measuring yourself
against someone ahead of you, and downward comparison shape body satisfaction, but the
direction and strength depend on the user's gender and the size of their social network,
not on the app. A second 2023 study found that upward comparison on a fitness app shapes
overall wellbeing, and that people with higher self-control experience it more positively
than people with lower self-control, who are more likely to come away discouraged.

Put plainly: the same feed that motivates one person to add five pounds this week can
leave another person feeling behind before they have racked a single plate. Neither
finding cancels the other. Social accountability works, on average, and it does not work
the same way for everyone it touches.

## What does an account cost that Compound doesn't have?

A server, and a copy of your training data on it. A feed only works if Hevy's servers
hold everyone's sessions, which means an account to attach them to. Hevy's own privacy
policy describes a registration flow that collects your first name, username, gender,
date of birth, email address, password, and general activity data, processed at the
company's operating offices and wherever its service providers are located. None of that
is a criticism. It is what a social product requires: for your training to show up in a
friend's feed, it has to leave your phone.

Compound made the opposite architectural choice, and it costs something too. Training
history is a JSON file in Application Support on the device, with no server and no login,
so there is nothing to sign into and nothing for anyone else to see. The cost runs the
other way: no web dashboard, no cross-device sync beyond a paired Apple Watch, and no way
to recover your history if you lose the phone without a backup of your own. A private
record on one device is exactly as durable as that device.

## What does Compound show you instead of a feed?

Your own numbers, going nowhere. The Progress screen tracks four main lifts, bench press,
back squat, deadlift, and overhead press, each showing the weight gained since your first
session as a staircase you can see climb. Above the lifts sits a consistency dial, a
score from 0 to 100 built from the days you actually trained: it climbs fast, forgives a
short break, and only bleeds points once you have gone well past a normal rest day. A
home screen widget and Apple Watch complication show which of the four days is next, a
small daily nudge with nothing to compare and nobody to post it to.

None of it is a substitute for a follower noticing you were gone. It is a different bet
entirely: that the number on the bar, checked against your own history and nobody
else's, is enough of a reason to come back.

## How do the two apps compare on design?

On opposite sides of nearly every decision: Compound fixes what Hevy leaves open, and
Hevy shares what Compound keeps private.

| | Compound | Hevy |
|---|---|---|
| Where training data lives | A file on the device | Hevy's servers, tied to your account |
| Account required | No | Yes, to register and use the social features |
| What keeps you coming back | Gain since start on four lifts, a 0-100 consistency dial, next-day widget | Followers, likes, comments, leaderboards across 38 exercises |
| Who picks the program | The app: one fixed four-day split | You: write your own, pick from a library, or generate one with AI |
| What happens with no signal | Works fully offline, in a basement with no bars | Needs a connection to sync, follow, and post |
| Cross-device | Paired Apple Watch only | Account syncs across iOS and Android, any device you sign into |
| Data recovery if the phone is lost | Only from your own backup | Recoverable by signing back into the account |

## Who should use Hevy instead?

Anyone whose motivation is social. If you train with friends and want to see their
sessions, if a leaderboard genuinely gets you to add a rep you would otherwise have
skipped, or if you want a public record of your training rather than a private one, Hevy
is built for exactly that, and it does it well. Community is one of the better-evidenced
tools in exercise adherence, and an app that takes it seriously is not a lesser choice.
It is a different one.

## What does Compound do about motivation?

It bets on your own numbers instead of anyone else's. Every lift on the Progress screen
shows what it has gained since you started, the consistency dial only ever answers to
you, and nothing about either one is built to be posted. Compound is a worse app for
anyone whose motivation is social, and it is not trying to be a better one. It is trying
to be the app for the person who wants the bar heavier than it was last month and does
not need an audience to get there.

## Common questions

### Does Hevy require an account?

Yes. Hevy's privacy policy describes a registration flow that collects your name, username, date of birth, email address, and other personal data, and its feed, followers, and leaderboards are all built on top of that account.

### How much does Hevy cost compared to Compound?

Checked in the App Store on August 22, 2026, Hevy Pro is listed at $2.99 a month, $23.99 a year, or $74.99 for a lifetime unlock, on top of a free tier that already covers basic logging. Compound costs $4.99 a month or $29.99 a year after a 14-day trial. Both prices vary by region and change over time, on either app.

### Does social accountability actually help people stick with training?

For many people, yes. Studies on adults age 50 to 65 and on college-age exercisers both found social support to be one of the stronger predictors of whether someone kept training, though the size of the effect varies by study and by population.

### Can comparing your training to other people backfire?

Sometimes. Research on fitness app users finds that seeing someone stronger or leaner than you can motivate or demotivate depending on the person and on their self-control, so the same feed helps one user and drains the next.

### Can Compound sync across devices or back up to the cloud?

No. Training history lives in one file on the iPhone, and the only other device it reaches is a paired Apple Watch. There is no web dashboard and no cloud backup, so losing the phone without your own backup loses the history with it.

### Who should use Hevy instead of Compound?

Anyone who trains with friends and wants to see their sessions, anyone who responds to a public leaderboard, and anyone who wants a social record of their training rather than a private one.


## Sources

- [Hevy: Feature list](https://www.hevyapp.com/features/)
- [Hevy: Social features](https://www.hevyapp.com/features/social-features/)
- [Hevy: Content feed](https://www.hevyapp.com/features/content-feed/)
- [Hevy: Gym workout routine library](https://www.hevyapp.com/features/gym-workout-routines/)
- [Hevy: HevyGPT](https://www.hevyapp.com/features/hevy-gpt/)
- [Hevy - Workout Tracker Gym Log, App Store listing](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hevy-workout-tracker-gym-log/id1458862350)
- [Hevy Privacy Policy](https://www.iubenda.com/privacy-policy/75379905)
- [Duncan & McAuley (1993): Social Support and Efficacy Cognitions in Exercise Adherence](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8315646/)
- [Oka, King & Young (1995): Sources of Social Support as Predictors of Exercise Adherence in Women and Men Ages 50 to 65 Years](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9373378/)
- [Sun, Jiang & Huang (2023): Improving Body Satisfaction Through Fitness App Use, the Role of Social Comparison, Social Network Size, and Gender](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35350945/)
- [Exercise or Lie Down? The Impact of Fitness App Use on Users' Wellbeing (2023)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38269388/)

---

*Scott Shumaker, maker of Compound. Builds Compound, an iPhone and Apple Watch app that runs one lifting program and does the bookkeeping. Trains on the pull, push, legs and auxiliary split, and wrote the progression engine described here.*

*Compound: A workout app with exactly one workout in it. Four days, automatic double progression, warm-up and mobility built in. No account, no cloud. https://trycompound.cc*