Gym Log - Workout Planner
A free, private workout tracker for weight training.
Gym Log started because I was tired of fitness apps requiring accounts and subscriptions for things that felt basic: progress graphs, percentage calculations, PR tracking, and access to your own training history.
At first, I planned to release it commercially. The idea of working on it full-time was appealing.
But the further I went, the more I noticed that building a useful product and building something designed to monetize well were pulling me in different directions. A subscription needs reasons to upgrade. That means deciding what stays free, what gets limited, and what goes behind a paywall.
I didn’t enjoy making those decisions, and they were starting to recreate the exact thing that made me build the app in the first place.
So I shelved the commercial release and kept using Gym Log privately for about a year and a half.
Eventually that felt wasteful. The app was already complete enough that I was using it for every workout, so I decided to release it anyway — just without the business model.
Gym Log is now in open beta. There’s no subscription or paid tier, no required account, and the intention is to keep it that way.
I’m curious whether other indie developers have reached a similar point where monetizing a project started to conflict with the reason they built it.
4 Comments
I really resonate with your post. As someone who’s tried dozens of workout‑tracking apps over the years, I completely get where you’re coming from.
Most fitness apps lock fundamental features behind subscriptions and mandatory accounts. Progress graphs, PR tracking, and reviewing your own training history should be basic necessities for a workout logger, not premium perks. Too many tools deliberately cripple their free versions just to push users into paying, which is frustrating for regular gym‑goers.
It makes total sense that monetization pulled you in a conflicting direction. To build a subscription‑driven product, you have to draw artificial lines: decide which features stay free, which get limited, and which live behind paywalls. Those trade‑offs would defeat the original purpose of building Gym Log in the first place.
Here are a few thoughts from a user’s perspective:
1. Hold onto your core selling point: no accounts, no subscriptions.
Local‑first data storage with zero forced sign‑ups is a huge competitive advantage. Lots of gym users hate handing all their personal training data to third‑party servers. Lean hard into this unique value.
2. Voluntary donations could cover maintenance without ruining the vision.
Keeping the app 100% free takes real time and effort for updates, bug fixes and OS compatibility. You could add optional donation links like GitHub Sponsors or Ko‑fi. Donations stay fully voluntary — no paywalled features, no exclusive perks for supporters. Users who love your tool will happily chip in to keep it alive.
3. Stay focused on core logging features, avoid feature bloat.
Prioritize smooth workout entry, automatic PR detection, training history review and clean progress charts. Skip bloated add‑ons like social feeds or workout courses. Many fitness apps get weighed down by commercial‑driven extra features that most lifters never use. Keep it simple and laser‑focused on logging.
4. Open‑sourcing is worth considering (optional).
If you are comfortable with it, open‑sourcing your code brings community support. Other enthusiasts can help with bug fixes, translations and small improvements, easing your maintenance burden. It also builds extra trust, since users can verify their fitness data stays private. This is totally optional, though.
You brought up a great question for indie creators: many of us build tools to solve our own pain points, yet monetization requirements can warp that original mission. Not every great product needs to be a profitable business.
For fitness lovers, a clean, honest workout tracker with no tricks is incredibly valuable on its own. Really looking forward to seeing where Gym Log goes from open beta!
Love seeing this being built in public. What has surprised you most since you started showing the product to real users — the feedback, the demand, or something completely unexpected?
The part about keeping your own training history without an account or subscription is probably the strongest bit here. A genuinely private workout log feels like it could be getting a lot more organic traffic than it probably is right now. Especially while it’s still in open beta, that seems like a pretty interesting position to be in. Have you noticed how much interest there is from people specifically looking for that kind of app?
I think there’s something refreshing about deciding that a product doesn’t need to become a business. If the monetization model starts undermining the reason you built it, keeping it free can be the more satisfying outcome.