There is no FitNotes for iPhone. The original FitNotes is Android only, its developer says so plainly, and the app carrying the FitNotes name on the App Store is a different company’s rebuild with a paywall. If what you actually logged in FitNotes was bodyweight reps, Kountrain is the free, no-subscription iPhone alternative.
Invert the question before you download anything
The useful move here is not to ask which app to install. It is to ask which mistake to avoid.
There are two available. The first is paying a subscription for an app you believed was the free one you used on Android. The second is moving a barbell training log into a bodyweight rep counter and discovering three weeks later that there is nowhere to write down 100 kilograms.
Both are avoidable in about two minutes if you know one fact about the App Store and one fact about yourself. Here they are.
What FitNotes gets right
The original FitNotes, published on Google Play by James Gay, is one of the few fitness apps that never asks you for anything. It is free to use with no ads, ever, and there is no subscription, no account, and no Pro tier waiting to unlock itself. Your log lives on your phone.
The only way to give the developer money is voluntary. The FitNotes FAQ points you to a separate FitNotes Supporter app on Google Play if you want to fund development, which also unlocks some additional exercise types. That is the whole business model. An app you can use forever and a tip jar next to it.
People do not get attached to workout loggers by accident. They get attached to that arrangement. It is why “FitNotes alternative” is a search people make with a specific meaning: not “another gym app,” but “another app that behaves like that.”
The friction: it was never coming to iPhone
The FitNotes FAQ answers the iOS question directly. FitNotes is only available for Android devices, and there are no plans to develop an iOS or iPhone version at the moment.
This matters most to one specific person: someone who trained on Android for years, switched to an iPhone, and went looking for their log. There is no version to find. There is no beta, no TestFlight, no web app.
The app called FitNotes on the App Store is not that app
Search the App Store for FitNotes and you will find FitNotes 2 - Gym Workout Log. It is published by Ginger Technologies Pte Ltd, which is not James Gay. It is a separate product by a separate company that borrowed a well-loved name.
Be fair to it, because it deserves fairness. FitNotes 2 is a real gym logger with routines saved as templates, automatic personal records, a 1RM and percentage calculator, a plate calculator, progress graphs, rest, EMOM, AMRAP, and Tabata timers, Apple Watch support, and HealthKit integration. It is rated 4.6 stars from 558 ratings on the United States App Store. And to its credit, it says openly what it is: its own listing offers to “import the original FitNotes database and FitNotes CSV files” and to “export back to the original FitNotes. No lock-in.” If you are migrating a real barbell history off Android, that import is a genuinely good reason to pay these people.
What it does not carry over is the pricing. The listing states that “the free version of FitNotes 2 can save up to 12 workouts” and that you delete older workouts to keep using it for free. To save more, you buy. The in-app purchases on the United States store are Unlimited Use at 1.99 dollars, Unlimited Use at 14.99 dollars, and Forever at 44.99 dollars, which is a subscription with two billing periods plus a lifetime unlock.
So the trap is not a scam. The trap is an assumption. You remember FitNotes as the app that never charged you, you see the name on the App Store, and you install it expecting the same deal. The deal is different.
Now the fact about yourself: what were you actually logging?
This is the question that decides your answer, and most alternative posts skip it.
Open your FitNotes history and look at what is in it. If the rows are bench press, squat, deadlift, weights, plate math, and personal records, you need a gym log, and you should stop reading this section as an ad. FitNotes 2 will import your database. Strong and Hevy both have free tiers many lifters never outgrow. Any of those beats what we make, for that job.
If the rows are push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, burpees, and planks, with no weight attached to any of them, something else is true: FitNotes was always heavier than your training needed. You were using a gym-session logger to hold a running tally. That is the mismatch worth fixing on the way to iPhone, and it is the one Kountrain was built for.
Kountrain: a scoreboard, not a program
Kountrain counts bodyweight reps and nothing else, on purpose.
Six exercises are built in and free forever: push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, burpees, and planks. You log reps for five of them and seconds for planks. Set a daily goal, log throughout the day, and the total accumulates. Streaks, progress charts, 56 achievements, form guides for each movement, and rough calorie estimates are all free. So is CSV export of your entire history, any time you want it.
There is no account. There is no internet requirement. Your workouts live in a local database on the device and are never sent anywhere, which is the same arrangement FitNotes users are used to on Android and the reason they trusted it.
One thing costs money. Kountrain Premium is a one-time purchase that unlocks custom exercises: your own name, color, and icon, logged in reps or seconds, each earning its own achievements. There is no subscription version. If the six built-ins cover your training, you never pay anything at all.
It runs on iPhone, iPad, and Android, which solves the original problem structurally. Switch phones again and the app comes with you.
What Kountrain does not do
Naming the limits is the whole point of an honest alternative post, so here they are.
Kountrain has no weight fields. No plate calculator, no 1RM math, no personal record tracking for loaded lifts. It has no routines, templates, or programs, because it does not think in sessions at all. There is no Apple Watch app. There is no social feed, no coaching, and no AI. And it does not import from FitNotes or anything else, so a database of barbell sets has nowhere to go.
If any of those are load-bearing for how you train, use a gym log. We would rather tell you that than sell you the wrong tool.
The three apps, side by side
| FitNotes | FitNotes 2 | Kountrain | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Published by | James Gay | Ginger Technologies Pte Ltd | Paintingstack |
| Platforms | Android only | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Android |
| Cost | Free, no ads, optional Supporter app | Free, then subscription at 1.99 or 14.99 dollars, or 44.99 dollars Forever | Free, optional one-time-purchase Premium |
| Free-tier limit | None | 12 saved workouts | None on the six built-in exercises |
| Built to log | Gym sets with weight | Gym sets with weight | Bodyweight reps and plank seconds |
Moving over
There is no migration in the technical sense, and pretending otherwise would waste your afternoon. Kountrain cannot read a FitNotes database.
Do this instead. Keep your FitNotes backup on the old phone or in a file somewhere as an archive, because it is your record and you should own it. Then open Kountrain, set a daily goal for the one movement you actually do most, and log today. The number starts at zero and that is fine. A rep counter is not a museum of the past, it is a tally of the present, and the streak that matters starts on the day you begin.
If the old history genuinely matters more to you than the pricing model, that is a reasonable position, and FitNotes 2 is the app that imports it. Pay them. The point of this post is that you make that decision knowingly rather than by mistaking a name.
Get started
Kountrain is free on iPhone and iPad and on Android. No account, no ads, no subscription.
If your training is sets scattered through the day rather than sessions, read grease the groove, which is the method that shape of training belongs to. And for why a tally changes the training itself, see why counting reps matters.
