Alternatives
Products that do what RowBetter does
Built by a rower. Finally.
- 11M
I am a software developer and in the last few months after recently becoming a father I was barely finding time for a proper workout. Recently I was reading about new research on Snack Exercises and how beneficial mini workouts of less than 2mins every so often, during the day are to our body. So, I decided to build an iOS App for me and others to help with this. The app generates a list of exercises that I need to tick to complete daily or loose my streak. The algorithm takes into account muscle groups and balancing the exercises to hit most main muscles. I also stayed going through all…
2025 · shortreps.com
- 2MA
Hello, For quite some time, I've been unsatisfied with the built-in timers on both Android and iOS; especially for workouts, when I needed to set up a configurable number of series with rest periods in between. That's when I started thinking about building something myself. It was just a timer and I said to myself "how hard could it be?", I had no idea. The first iteration of the project worked "just fine", but the UI was an eyesore (even more than it is now), and the UX was quite awful as well. As you can probably guess, I'm not versed in design or front-end development. In fact, my last…
Nov 2025 · mytimers.app
- 3IS
i built a heart rate zone training app for runners. ios + apple watch. custom zones, real-time haptics, post-run graphs. all the “smart” stuff you’d expect. but i never talked to a single runner before building it. not even myself lol. started as a thesis → kept building → added features → added a paywall (€4/month!) → launched it → and yeah… no one cared. zero feedback. zero users. just code in the void. i recently made the whole thing free. not trying to “sell” anything now — just seeing if it’s actually useful, and listening this time. curious how others handle this. ever build…
2025 · basamasa.github.io
- 4IM
Hello there, When I started training for the first marathon in my life, I download a 6 months training plan, printed it, pinned it to my fridge, and started circling each completed training day. Sadly, I would often get injured during my runs, which would lead to days or weeks without running, and a lot of changes to the plan I had printed. All running apps that I tried either forced me to follow their plan from the start (which I didn’t want to do because I was already in the middle of training) or made it extremely slow and difficult to add a custom plan. So I decided to create my own app,…
2023 · weeklyruns.web.app
- 5DA
Hey HN'ers! If you sit around a computer all day and are looking to be more active, or are just active in general, check out our app! https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id903459923?pt=265797&ct=hn&mt=8 or https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.activityclub We have been hacking on this for 2 years and it's finally nearing a state where we are stoked about! Launched last Aug (2015) to the public. Coming up on our 1 yr anniversary and starting to get some traction. Two of us have _each_ lost about 70lbs while building the app…
2016
- 6IB
I am not from North America, and moved there a couple years ago. After being invited to the first fantasy league and seeing the platform they were using, I couldn't bring myself to check it every day. An excel sheet would have been more appealing to use than this. So I decided to create my own. But on the side? This would take ages. I am very confident with Rust and JavaScript, but it still takes ages to build something like that. Good prompts, and a few long nights later, and I could create something fun and easy to use. Have a look: https://fantasy-frontend.fly.dev/ The…
2025
- 7
- 8AA
Im a triathlete and the data for my training lives in 6 apps: Garmin, Strava, WHOOP, Intervals.icu, Wahoo, Withings, Apple Health, sometimes Hevy. Every morning Id eyeball a few of them and make a call on whether to do the planned session. For the past month I have been building a thing that does this for me, and got it to the point where I use it myself every day. It OAuths into whatever platforms you connect, reconciles the activities (tbh harder than it sounds — same ride shows up in Strava, Garmin, and Wahoo with different timestamps and rounding), computes daily load and readiness, and…
Apr 2026 · athletedata.health
- 9IM
I got tired of posting on r/fitness and getting unclear feedback, so I built an app that analyzes physique photos with AI. It started as a weekend project after I couldn't get good advice on my lifting progress. Upload a few pics and the AI tells you: Where you rank compared to others (using a gaming-style tier system) Scores for each muscle group with actual numbers Body proportions and balance issues Body fat estimates and body type I also added some fun stuff like matching you to a "warrior type" based on your build (turns out I'm built like a Viking, not the Spartan I was hoping…
2025 · aestheticrank.com
- 10VA
I've just launched this little iOS app as an alternative to Apple Fitness, which is cluttered and chaotic when it comes to visualizing basic workout stats and metrics. The idea is to focus on a clean, minimalistic design and only show high-level metrics that are actually useful, e.g. how often did I work out this week/month/year, cardio vs strength vs mobility, surf session count in February, etc. It's free and offline. Also, no signup, no ads, no data sharing, no social feeds, and no notifications. Just open it and get a quick glance at the state of your workout game within 2s.…
Mar 2026 · apps.apple.com
- 11GO
I built an app where you LITERALLY have to do push-ups to use Reddit (or whatever app). My guy, this is the summer you get SWOLE! Build a massive chest instead of doomscrolling on Hackernews. Also, it's FREE. You can set it on a schedule. You can set it on a time limit. You can set it after X opens. Or even after you come home from work. The apps will remain blocked until you do your push-ups! The app is built natively on SwiftUI. I use Apple's native Vision API to detect body parts and joints. I use Apple's Screen Time API for app blocking. I don't know what else to say so go on now and get…
2025 · timm.so
- 12MA
Hi HN, My motivation for this came from frustration with existing workout trackers. Most felt clunky, hid core features like performance graphs behind a paywall, or forced a native app download. A few people close to me who take their training seriously shared the same sentiment, so I decided to build my own. I'm working on mTOR, a free, science-based workout tracker I built to automate progressive overload. It's a local-first PWA that works completely offline, syncs encrypted between your devices using passwordless passkeys, and allows for plan sharing via a simple link. The core idea is to…
Oct 2025 · mtor.club
- 13IA
Hi! I've been building this app over the course of the last year or so, and we've finally gotten it polished and cleaned up to the point where we feel pretty good about it. The goal of this app is to replace the lists that people keep of all the places they want to go, movies they've had friends mention, and books they want to read. Our goal is to try and make those lists a lot more actionable so people will actually do these things instead of just writing them down. Would love any feedback! https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/onmylist/id561225528?ls=1&mt=8
2012
- 14FA
Me and some friends just released a new app. It is matchmaking tool for thinkers and makers. It's a MVP(Native iOS - https://itunes.apple.com/app/id883667173) We would love some feedback on the app before launching and going into the growth state. You can also read more about our vision here: http://www.makemove.se/ Have a nice one!
2014
- 15MW
Hey HN A little over four years ago, I built a weightlifting app for 5/3/1 with the goal of making $1000 total. Five months later I had reached that goal and made it to the top of HN [0]. It’s been earning between $1000 - $1300 every months since. After that a lot happened. I got a job, then had kids, so I put the project on ice. When I grew too disappointed with my job, I decided to try to raise some money and build on the success of my 5/3/1 app by addressing the main feedback I kept getting: the ability to create your own programs. Thus, Vis was born. The initial idea…
Nov 2025 · vis.fitness
- 16IM
I just launched my first-ever mobile app. It’s called STEPRACERS, a game where you compete with friends by tracking your steps. The idea came from someone close to me who completely changed their life by focusing on their health. Every night, they’d send me their step count - a small, daily ritual that became a powerful reminder of progress. So I turned it into a game. It’s fun. It’s simple. And it might just push you to hit your 10k steps a day.
2025 · stepracers.com
- 17MF
Hello, I have just finished my second app, which is also my first ever pay to download app. It's called StreamClock, It's like a radio alarm clock, but uses a Last.fm radio station, or Spotify Track chosen by the user. It took me 1 month of evenings and weekends, and I fell like I have learned a lot. I am particularly proud of the logo... To find it just search "StreamClock" in Google Play. I would really appreciate any feedback, comments, questions or suggestions. Thanks.
2013
- 18BF
Grooovy is a bootstrapped app in its 11th week. We came from a non-technical background and about to launch Grooovy as our first iPhone App. Would like to get all the support and feedback we can get. What would you change about the landing page? Thanks HN! link: www.grooovy.me
2011
- 19IR
I was going through my app subscriptions and realized I was paying $15 for a pretty good workout app, which seemed a bit high to me. As a software engineer who is also well versed in claude code, I realized that I could likely vibecode a very similar app, or even build something more to my liking. I challenged my self to build something roughly equivalent this afternoon. Workflow was: start with a detailed spec from Claude code describing many of the features common in workout apps. Then paste this into lovable to have it build out the initial mvp. Once that was built, I used claude code…
Dec 2025 · strengthquest.lovable.app
- 20OI
I'm trying to get the motivation up to actually finish building out a "real" product, and I found myself needing a "win" to keep my momentum up. So, I hacked out a little one sentence journal app last night. I experimented with a few UI things (e.g.., the autosaving of the sentence for today and so on), so it was a good learning experience also. You can check it out at: http://osod.im
2012
- 21SR
After talking to a lot of people about their exercise habits, we realized that one of the most popular apps for tracking workouts is actually the Notes app. Because most people’s interests and hobbies change, it’s very hard for a single type of exercise app (running, lifting, CrossFit, etc.) to remain useful to people over the long run. So we built Steddy: an exercise app with no videos, fitness models, or made up weight loss projections. Instead, planning and check-in is as simple as a well-designed todo app. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to “deposit” your exercise each time…
2022 · steddy.health
- 22IM
Hi HN, I am a solopreneur in the evenings and a software engineer during the day. In the past, I have created lots of calculators for my web projects and freelancing friends. These were pretty basic, but users always welcomed them. I also used currently available builders, but the problem was that they were either slow, broke on mobile devices, had nonsense page view limits, or were expensive. Some even ticked all those boxes. So I have decided to create my own, with a simple interface, and called it Creative Widgets (if it ever takes off, I plan to add more exciting stuff like charts, etc,…
2024 · creativewidgets.io
- 23VC
I spent a month to put together a workout app without writing a single line of code by hand. It's on par with many apps like Fitbod or Fitness AI. Got approved on iOS App Store. Let me know if you want free access, only thing I ask is to give me genuine feedback and one feature you would like to see. I will be asking Codex/Claude to rank the top features and implement it.
Feb 2026 · apps.apple.com
- 24LU
Our first iPhone app is finally out: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slimkicker-calorie-counter/id512812753?ls=1&mt=8 . We also got a website: slimkicker.com for those without iPhones. As the title suggests, we try to apply gamification for people trying to lose weight. We use a points system similar to Weight Watchers, except in reverse (the more healthy the food, the more points). Some people have commented we're similar to another site: Fitocracy (their app also is out today). But we're reaching a different audience: people who want to lose weight or live healthy, but don't know…
2012
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