Lift5x5 vs StrongLifts: an honest app comparison

Let’s get the obvious conflict of interest out of the way first: we make Lift5x5. You’re reading this on our site. We’re not going to pretend to be a neutral third party, and we’re not going to trash a competitor to make ourselves look good.

Here’s what we will do: give you accurate, current facts about both apps - pricing, features, platforms, ratings - and tell you plainly where StrongLifts is better, because in several areas it genuinely is. Then you can decide which one fits.

One more thing for context: StrongLifts is the app that popularized the 5x5 program. The method itself - two alternating full-body workouts, linear progression, five barbell lifts - is decades old and belongs to no one, but StrongLifts deserves credit for bringing it to millions of phones. Any honest comparison starts from there.

The two apps at a glance

	StrongLifts	Lift5x5
Core 5x5 program	Free	Free
Auto weight progression	Free	Free
Warmup calculator	Pro	Free
Plate calculator	Included	Free
Custom routines / per-lift rules	Pro	Pro
Advanced analytics	Pro	Pro (Pro Coach)
Intermediate programs	Madcow + Intermediate (app)	Madcow 5x5 (Pro)
Data export	-	CSV/JSON (Pro)
Platforms	iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Vision, Android	iOS, Android
Languages	English-first	11 languages
Ads	None	None
Pro price (US)	$11.99/mo · $59.99/yr · $199.99 lifetime	Cheaper monthly/yearly/lifetime tiers
Ratings	4.9 stars, ~76,000 US App Store ratings	5.0 stars, but only 11 iOS ratings so far

That table already tells most of the story. The rest of this article is the detail behind it.

What StrongLifts does better

We’ll start here, because this is the part a publisher comparison usually buries.

Maturity and track record

StrongLifts claims over 5 million downloads and more than 30 million logged workouts. It holds a 4.9-star rating across roughly 76,000 ratings on the US App Store. That is an enormous body of social proof, and it reflects something real: the app has been refined over many years, and the rough edges have been sanded off by millions of sessions of actual use.

Lift5x5 is newer. Our iOS rating is 5.0 - but from only 11 ratings, which is a sample size we’d laugh at if a supplement company used it. Take it as “early users are happy,” nothing more.

Platform coverage

StrongLifts runs on iPhone, iPad, Mac (Apple silicon), Apple Watch, Apple Vision, and Android, with cross-platform sync. If you want to log sets from your wrist or review your squat history on a Mac, StrongLifts is the only one of the two that does it today.

Lift5x5 is iOS and Android. Phone-first. If a watch app is a dealbreaker for you, this comparison is already over - pick StrongLifts.

Exercise videos

StrongLifts includes 100+ exercise videos. For a beginner unsure whether their squat hits depth, in-app video reference is genuinely useful. Lift5x5 doesn’t have video; we cover technique in written guides like our squat guide and bench press form breakdown instead, which works but isn’t the same as a video next to your timer.

Built-in program range

The StrongLifts app ships Madcow and Intermediate programs alongside the classic 5x5, so the progression path from beginner to intermediate lives inside one app. Lift5x5 added Madcow 5x5 as a Pro program in 2026, but StrongLifts has been doing intermediate programming in-app for longer.

What Lift5x5 does better

The free tier is the whole classic program

This is the core difference, so let’s be precise about it.

Both apps let you download free and run 5x5. But StrongLifts places its warmup calculator, custom routines, and advanced analytics behind Pro. The warmup one matters most in practice: warmup sets aren’t an optional extra on 5x5 - once your squat passes bodyweight, walking up to your work weight cold is how you get hurt. You can compute warmups yourself on paper, but then you’re doing arithmetic between sets, which is exactly the job you got an app for.

Lift5x5’s free tier includes everything the classic program actually requires:

• Automatic weight progression (+2.5 kg per successful session, +5 kg deadlift, with the standard deload after three failures)
• Rest timer with adaptive durations
• Plate calculator showing exactly what to load per side
• Warmup set calculation - free, not gated
• Progress graphs and full workout history
• Works fully offline
• No ads

The promise is simple: the classic 5x5 experience is free forever. Not free-for-now, not free-with-nags. If you never pay us a cent, you can run the program from your first empty-bar squat to your last linear-progression PR.

Price, when you do pay

StrongLifts Pro in the US costs $11.99/month, $29.99/quarter, or $59.99/year (the 7-day trial applies to the yearly plan only), plus a $4.99 weekly option and a $199.99 lifetime purchase.

Those are premium prices for a training app - similar territory to general-purpose giants with much larger feature sets. They’re presumably sustainable for StrongLifts because the app is worth it to its audience, and that’s fine. But if $59.99/year for a 5x5 app makes you wince, you’re not wrong to wince.

Lift5x5 Pro is priced meaningfully lower across monthly, yearly, and lifetime tiers (we keep exact prices in-app since they vary by region and change over time). And because the free tier is complete, Pro is a genuine upgrade rather than a toll booth: Pro Coach forecasts and plateau warnings, the Madcow intermediate program, custom per-lift progression rules (increment size, progression frequency, deload thresholds), anonymous leaderboards, and CSV/JSON export.

Per-lift progression control

The classic program adds 2.5 kg every session to every lift, which works until it doesn’t - usually on overhead press first. Lift5x5 Pro lets you set different increments, progression frequency, and deload rules per lift, so you can microload your press while your squat keeps charging. If you’ve ever stalled on press at the same weight three times while your deadlift felt easy, you know why this exists.

Your data is yours

Lift5x5 Pro exports your full history as CSV or JSON. If you outgrow the app, switch programs, or want to run your own spreadsheet analysis, you can take everything with you. We think tracking your lifts only counts if the data is portable.

Languages

Lift5x5 is fully localized in 11 languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, German, French, Japanese, and Korean. If English isn’t your first language, this might matter more than anything else on this page.

Where they’re the same

Worth stating clearly: for the core experience - showing up Monday, opening the app, seeing “Squat 5x5 at 82.5 kg,” logging your sets, resting between them, and watching the line on a graph go up - both apps do the job well. Both implement the same alternating A/B structure on a 3-day schedule. Both are ad-free. Both handle the progression math so you never have to think about it mid-workout.

The 5x5 program is the engine; the apps are dashboards. A beginner who runs either one consistently for six months will end up strong. The differences are about money, platforms, and what happens after the beginner phase - not about whether the program works.

Who should pick StrongLifts

• You want an Apple Watch app. Lift5x5 doesn’t have one yet.
• You live across Apple devices - iPad, Mac, Vision - and want sync everywhere.
• You want exercise videos in-app rather than written form guides.
• You value the longest track record. Five million downloads and 76,000 ratings is real evidence, and “the original” carries weight for a reason.
• The subscription price doesn’t bother you. If $59.99/year is a rounding error in your budget, the friction argument disappears.

Who should pick Lift5x5

• You want the complete classic program free - including warmups, plate math, and graphs - with no upgrade pressure.
• You’re price-sensitive about Pro features. Our paid tiers undercut StrongLifts’ across the board.
• You want per-lift progression control once the one-size-fits-all increment stops fitting.
• You want your data exportable as CSV/JSON.
• You train in one of our 11 languages and prefer a native-language interface.
• You’re a complete beginner testing whether lifting sticks - there’s zero financial commitment to find out.

The honest verdict

StrongLifts is a polished, mature, well-loved app with the best platform coverage in the category, and it earned its position. If you compare the two apps purely on breadth - devices, videos, years of refinement - StrongLifts wins, and we’d be lying to say otherwise.

Lift5x5 wins on a narrower, sharper question: what does it cost to actually run 5x5? With us, the answer is nothing, forever, with warmups and plate math included. With StrongLifts, the core program is free but the comfortable version of it sits behind one of the pricier subscriptions in fitness.

Our suggestion is genuinely low-stakes: both apps are free to download, and your starting weights transfer between them in thirty seconds. Run a week in each. The program is identical; pick the one that feels better in your hand on workout three, when the novelty is gone and it’s just you and a loaded bar.

And whichever you choose - consistency with the program matters about a hundred times more than the logo on the app. For the program itself, start with our complete 5x5 guide.

Download Lift5x5 free →