Kriterion vs Hevy
Hevy is a genuinely excellent lifting log, and this page is not going to pretend otherwise. The two apps log a set much the same way. The difference is what each one asks you to pay for: Hevy has to charge for the logger, because the logger is the whole product. We don’t, so more of ours is free, and what we charge for is something Hevy does not sell at any price.
Its free tier is properly usable rather than a demo, and it was built by a small team who got it right, which is exactly why it is worth measuring against. It set the bar for how a lifting log should feel, and Kriterion's logger is built to clear it. This page is about what sits around the log: food and recovery as part of the same picture as the sets.
Why more of ours is free
Hevy monetises the logger because the logger is the entire business. Every limit they set has to sit somewhere inside training, which means the good parts of a training app end up behind a subscription by necessity rather than by choice.
Our subscription sits somewhere else entirely, so the logger does not have to carry it. Without paying anything you get the rest timer that runs off the clock rather than off the app being awake, so locking your phone mid-set does not stop it. Plate maths per side, with your own bar weight rather than an assumed one. Warm-up sets marked as warm-up sets, so they stop contaminating your volume and your PRs. Reps in reserve on every set. The muscle coverage map. Importing a routine somebody sends you, as an offline code with no account and no server in the middle. And the standard programmes, uncapped.
None of that is a trial, a teaser or a countdown. It is the app.
And what the subscription actually buys
Not more logging. A maintenance figure measured from your own intake and weight trend rather than assumed from your height and age, published with the margin of error it deserves and graded afterwards against what the scales actually did. A weekly check-in that proposes a plan and waits for you to accept it. A session recommendation that has read your sleep, your recent load and whether you have been eating enough to support the work.
Hevy does not sell any of that, because Hevy is not trying to. That is not a criticism of them; they have spent years polishing a training log, and it shows. It is the honest shape of the comparison: their subscription buys more of the logger, and ours buys the part a logger cannot see.
Readiness, before the session Kriterion checks sleep, recent load and fuelling before it suggests what to train, with your cycle phase shown beside it as context. Hevy's own Trainer adjusts weights from your logged performance, but does not take HRV, sleep or readiness as inputs, so a week of bad sleep looks the same to it as a good one. The figures shown are from a seeded demo account.
| Kriterion | Hevy | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifting log | Sets, reps, RIR, warmup sets, supersets, plate calculator, rest timer, previous best in front of you, estimated 1RM, DOTS, PRs, muscle coverage map | Sets, reps, RPE, previous best, 1RM estimates, PRs, plus years of polish on exactly this |
| Food and calories | Built in, with a measured maintenance figure from your own intake and weight trend | Not offered. Hevy is a training app |
| Recovery as an input | Readiness (sleep, plus HRV and resting heart rate from a watch or ring), recent load and fuelling shape the session, with cycle phase shown alongside as context | Progression comes from logged performance; HRV, sleep and readiness are not inputs |
| Menstrual cycle tracking | Built in, shown beside readiness as context for training | Not offered |
| Free tier | Unlimited logging and your full history, never truncated | Unlimited workout logging, but 4 routines, 7 custom exercises, and graph history capped at 3 months |
| Web app | None | Yes. Log and review in a browser |
| Social | None | A feed, follows and PR sharing, which folds away if you would rather it did |
| Watches | Apple Watch and Wear OS | Apple Watch and Wear OS |
Kriterion is new, and it was built to do the thing it thinks is missing: food, training and recovery reasoning about each other instead of sitting in three apps, and to be judged on whether that works.
The join is the point
Plenty of people run a lifting app and a food app side by side, and it works fine right up until the two disagree. A hard week of training and a fortnight of under-eating are the same problem, but neither app can see it, because each holds half the picture.
Kriterion's coach is what that join looks like in practice: your readiness (sleep, plus HRV and resting heart rate if you wear a watch or ring), recent training load and whether you actually fuelled yesterday, resolved into one honest read before it suggests a session, with your cycle phase shown beside it as context. When it trims your volume it tells you which of those caused it. That is a different job from logging sets well, and it is the reason to have both halves in one place rather than the reason Hevy's log is worse.
What Kriterion does not do
No web app. No social feed, no follows, no sharing a PR to a timeline. Kriterion is built to be used on your own phone and watch, around your own data, and we would rather you knew that here than three weeks in.