Coast vs MyFitnessPal vs MacroFactor vs Hevy

There are a lot of fitness apps in 2026. This is an honest look at four of them — what each does well, where each falls short, and who each one is actually for. One of them is ours, so take this with appropriate skepticism — but we'll try to be fair.

The quick version

• MyFitnessPal — best free food database, worst premium value
• MacroFactor — best adaptive nutrition coaching, expensive long-term
• Hevy — best free workout logger with social features
• Coast — best value if you already use AI, completely different model

MyFitnessPal

MyFitnessPal is the app everyone knows. It's been around since 2005 and has the largest food database of any nutrition tracker. For people who just want to log calories and macros, the free tier still works — but it's gotten significantly more limited over the years as features have moved behind the paywall.

The biggest issue is accuracy. Because the food database is largely user-submitted, entries are often wrong — duplicate items, incorrect macros, outdated information. If you're serious about hitting your macro targets, this matters.

Best for: People who just want basic calorie logging with the biggest food database, especially outside English-speaking countries where other apps have limited coverage.

MacroFactor

MacroFactor is the gold standard for adaptive nutrition tracking. Built by Greg Nuckols (one of the most respected researchers in fitness), it uses your daily weigh-ins and food logs to calculate your actual metabolic rate and adjust your calorie and macro targets week by week. It's genuinely impressive technology.

The downside is cost. At $79/year (or $12/month), it's a significant ongoing expense. And it only handles nutrition — if you want workout tracking too, MacroFactor Workouts is an additional $72/year, or $90/year for both bundled. Over two years, you're looking at $160–180.

Best for: People who are serious about body recomposition and want data-driven, adaptive nutrition coaching. Worth the subscription if nutrition tracking is your primary focus and you'll use it consistently for months.

Hevy

Hevy has quickly become the most popular workout logging app, and for good reason. The free tier is genuinely generous — you can log workouts, create routines, and track progress without paying. The UI is polished and the social features add a fun community element.

Where Hevy falls short is that it's purely a logger. It doesn't generate programs for you — you either build your own or follow a template. And there's no nutrition tracking at all, so you'd need a separate app for that.

Best for: People who already have a workout program and just want a clean, free way to log their sessions. Great if you enjoy the social/community aspect.

Coast

This is our app, so we'll be transparent about the tradeoffs. Coast is built for one job: getting your food and training right when you've got a full week, whether you're losing fat, building muscle or both. You answer a few questions, and the app builds your week of meals around your calories and protein, plus a program that runs from a few weeks to a full year.

The tradeoff is that it isn't a calorie counter. If you want to log a meal at a restaurant by searching a barcode database, MyFitnessPal or MacroFactor do that better. Coast plans the food rather than tracking whatever you happened to eat.

If you want something outside our library, you can still send your answers to your own AI (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) and import the plan it writes. The app checks it before it lands.

Best for: Busy people who already train and want their meals and their program planned for them, without a subscription and without turning food into a second job.

So which one should you use?

There's no single "best" fitness app — it depends entirely on what you need and what you're willing to pay. We built Coast because we believed getting your food and training right shouldn't need a subscription or a second job. But we also recognise that other apps do certain things better than we do, and we've tried to be honest about that here.