WODrounds
CrossFit EMOM & interval timer, no subscription.
Quick follow-up to my For Time post. I run a small portfolio of pay-once Apple apps, and two of them are fitness apps: WODrounds (interval timer for CrossFit and HIIT, $2.99) and Anvil Workout (strength log, $2.99).
I pulled the numbers this week to decide where to spend marketing effort, and the interesting part was about the pair:
WODrounds is my revenue leader (about $170 gross since March). Steady, but site traffic dipped 15% last month. Anvil is my momentum leader: two thirds of its lifetime downloads landed in the last 30 days and its site traffic grew 59%. A big chunk of that came from this community, so thanks.
My first instinct was "same audience, cross-sell hard". Looking closer, that is wrong. A 5/3/1 lifter logging sets does not want a WOD timer, and a CrossFitter mid-metcon does not want a barbell log open. What the two apps share is not the workout, it is the buyer: someone in the Apple ecosystem who would rather own a small focused tool than rent a platform.
The overlap is also asymmetric. CrossFit already includes barbell work, so a WODrounds user plausibly wants a strength log. The reverse is much weaker.
So instead of merging the marketing, I paired them: each site now points to the other in one honest sentence ("log your lifting there, time your conditioning here"), and I will let App Store source data tell me whether trust actually transfers between the two.
I promised a pay-once numbers retrospective in the For Time post. Still coming this fall, with before/after data. Curious if anyone else runs sibling products and has seen maker-trust carry a buyer from one to the other?
A few weeks ago I posted here about WODrounds, my minimal pay-once CrossFit timer, and someone made a sharp point in the comments: the interesting question isn't whether pay-once "works", it's whether pricing is actually why people choose the app over the alternatives. It stuck with me, because it's really a question about the wedge: what is this app actually for, and what does it refuse to be.
So here's a good test of that. I just shipped 1.5, and it adds For Time: a count-up timer for classic "finish the work as fast as you can" CrossFit WODs. It's on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Apple TV.
The thing is, in my launch post I explicitly listed For Time as something I would NOT build, right next to AMRAP, workout tracking and social features. So why did this one earn its place when the others didn't?
Because For Time is still just a clock. It counts up instead of down, you press Stop when you finish, and it saves your time. That's it. No reps, no logging, no account, no history. It fits the wedge ("minimal, private, Apple-first timer") instead of stretching it. AMRAP would pull me toward rep counting. Tracking would pull me toward a database and a backend. Social would pull me toward accounts. For Time pulls me toward nothing new. That was the whole test, and it's the test I'll keep using.
The build had one genuinely interesting wrinkle. The timer engine was written around a fixed total with count-down math. For Time inverts that: the headline is elapsed time, and the uncapped variant has no total at all. The naive version finished instantly, because every "elapsed >= total" check is true when total is zero. So the uncapped mode had to short-circuit those checks everywhere, and I added an explicit "finish" that freezes the final time so the Done screen and Apple Health don't keep counting after you stop. Small feature, a few real landmines.
One product decision I like: instead of a separate "cap on/off" toggle plus a value picker, there's a single stepper where the zero position reads "No cap" and steps up to 60:00. One control, both cases. Fewer things on screen is the whole point of the app.
Pricing hasn't changed: still a one-time 2.99, no subscription, no ads. And to close the loop on that comment: I still don't think pricing is why people pick WODrounds. I think it's the product being narrow and native and quiet, and pay-once is just the same promise applied to the wallet. For Time is me betting on that wedge again rather than on feature count.
I'll come back in a few months with actual numbers on whether adding a long-requested mode moves downloads, or whether the minimal crowd was always going to be a minimal crowd. Curious either way.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/wodrounds/id6759229877
Site: https://wodrounds.iamjarl.com/for-time-timer.html
Every workout timer I tried as a CrossFitter wanted something from me. An account. An ad break. A subscription. A pop-up asking for a review mid-WOD. I just wanted a timer, so I built one.
WODrounds does two things well: EMOM and interval timers. Nothing else. It's native on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Apple TV. Start a workout on iPhone and the Watch picks it up in real time via WatchConnectivity. Finished workouts save to Apple Health as HIIT sessions.
The build:
- Pure SwiftUI, one shared target for iOS/iPadOS/macOS/tvOS, separate watchOS target
- A Date-based timer engine (no frame timers, so it's deterministic and stays correct even when the app is backgrounded)
- HKWorkoutSession on Watch to keep the app alive through a workout
- No third-party dependencies except Sentry for opt-in iOS crash reporting
- Built nights and weekends
The pricing bet is the part I'm most curious about. WODrounds is a one-time $2.99 purchase. No subscription, no ads, no in-app purchases, no tracking. In a market where everything is $2.99/month, I wanted to find out if "pay once, own it" still works for a small, focused utility.
The constraint that mattered most was resisting scope creep. I could add AMRAP, For Time, multi-stage intervals, workout tracking, Android. I won't. The wedge is "minimal, private, Apple-first", and every feature I add weakens it.
So far it's been on Product Hunt, TinyLaunch, and a handful of directories, with no paid ads and no big launch sequence. Curious whether pay-once plus word of mouth still gets you anywhere in 2026.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/wodrounds/id6759229877
Site: https://wodrounds.iamjarl.com
Happy to answer questions about SwiftUI multi-platform, WatchConnectivity gotchas, HealthKit, or pay-once vs subscription economics for indie apps.
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One thing I'd be careful with:
The interesting question may not be whether pay-once still works.
It may be what role the pricing model is actually playing in the decision to choose WODrounds over the alternatives.
Those can look like the same question while leading to very different conclusions.
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Good distinction, and I think you're right that I was blurring the two.
Honestly, I doubt pricing is the deciding factor for most people who pick WODrounds. What seems to actually win is narrower: it's native across iPhone, Watch, Mac and Apple TV with real-time sync, it's minimal, and it asks nothing of you (no account, no ads, no tracking). Pay-once fits that same "asks nothing of you" promise, so I suspect it works more as a trust signal that removes a reason to say no, than as the reason people say yes.
The hard part is that I can't cleanly separate the two with App Store data. I see the sale, not the why. So "pay-once works" really just means "the app sells and the price wasn't a blocker", which is a much weaker claim than "people choose it because it's pay-once".
Curious how you'd try to measure the role of pricing here, when the App Store gives you no funnel and no attribution. That's the part I haven't cracked.
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Possibly, but that's exactly why I stopped short earlier.
I don't think the interesting part is measuring the role of pricing.
I think it's the decision that measurement is being used to make.
I'd be careful answering that casually in a thread.
If you'd like the tighter version, drop your email and I'll put it together properly.
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