Logbook vs Built: open community, or the room you picked?
Built Workout is the social-first gym app marketed as 'Strava for the Gym': feed-centric, community-driven, with a custom ghost-fill keyboard, an interactive body heatmap for recovery, AI coaching, and transformation timelapses. Premium runs $7.99/mo or $44.99/yr (USD, App Store, August 2026). Logbook covers the same logging quality and has its own per-muscle recovery model, but shapes the social layer around clubs you join, invite-only by default, rather than one open community feed. Pick Built if you want a lively public community and its recovery-video and timelapse features. Pick Logbook if you'd rather choose the room your training lands in.
A training record with a club-shaped social layer
"Strava for the Gym": the social-first lifting app
Side by side
Honest dimensions, both products. Every Built Workout row was checked against their own published information on .
On the currencies: Logbook is priced in NZD and AUD above because New Zealand and Australia are our main markets, with USD in brackets. Built Workout publishes US App Store pricing, so that is what their column shows. Don't read the two columns as a direct price comparison: compare the USD figures, or check Built Workout in your own App Store storefront.
Prices and features change. Everything above about Built Workout comes from their own published information, checked on . Check their pages before you decide, and tell us if we've got something wrong and we'll correct it.
Built Workout and other product names on this page are the trademarks of their respective owners. Logbook is an independent product and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by them. They are named here only to compare the products honestly.
Built and Logbook took different forks at the same crossroads
Both products started from the same observation: a lot of gym trackers feel dated, and strength training deserves a modern, beautifully designed app.
Built took the community fork: build the modern app, put an open feed at the centre, lean into people finding each other. Logbook took the club fork: build the modern app, keep the feed, but make it the rooms you joined rather than everyone at once.
Both are honest products aimed at different lifters. The question is what gets you back in the gym tomorrow: a community noticing, or a record you can read like a book and four people who'll ask where you were.
Where Built genuinely leads
Music tagging. Built lets you tag the music you trained to. Surprisingly motivating, and nostalgic later. Not on our roadmap.
Transformation timelapse. Built generates a timelapse from body photos over time. Good feature; not in our v1.0.
Recovery video library. Built's Premium tier includes a stretch and recovery video library. Logbook has nothing equivalent: our recovery feature tells you what's ready to train, it doesn't show you what to do about it.
Community reach. Built's feed is open by design, so if you want an active in-app community to train alongside, that exists there today and Logbook deliberately doesn't offer it.
Built has done genuinely good design work: the ghost-fill keyboard, the body-map recovery view, the transformation timelapse, the recovery video library. Their community is more open than ours by design, and their premium tier includes things we simply don't have. If feed-driven motivation works for you, Built is a real product worth trying.
Lifters who want a modern logging experience without a public community feed.
FAQ
- Doesn't Logbook need an open feed to grow?
- Maybe, and we've decided to find out. Growth from word of mouth between serious lifters is slower than growth from an open feed. An open feed also pulls the product toward being a social platform. We'd rather grow slower and stay a training tool.
- Can I import my Built workouts into Logbook?
- Not today. An importer depends on Built offering a data export, which we're tracking. Treat it as unavailable when deciding.
- If both have recovery tracking, what's actually different?
- Less than the marketing on either side suggests. Built shows recovery on an interactive body heatmap and pairs it with a stretch and recovery video library; Logbook shows a recovery percentage and hours-to-recovered per muscle group, inside its Pro analytics. Similar data, different presentation, and Built does more with it. The bigger difference is the app around it.
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