What's free, and what won't be

Plenty of apps launch free, wait for people to build a habit, and then put a price on the habit. That's the thing we don't want to do to you, and the only way to promise it credibly is to say where the line is before there's anything to buy.

Free is everything you need to train and track. Pro is everything you need to progress. You never pay to see your own training — logging it, your whole history, your plan and your group are free for good. A subscription buys the intelligence built on top of your data, never access to the data itself.

1. At a glance

The rest of this page is the same thing said properly: what each line means, why the limits are where they are, and what we're promising not to do.

2. Free, permanently

The whole thing you'd actually call the app:

• Logging workouts, personal bests, weighted holds, the rest and hold timers, and your full training history
• Logging runs and boxing rounds too — it isn't only for lifting, and they count toward your streak and weekly target the same way a session at the rack does
• Your training plan — building it, editing it, the ready-made programmes, supersets, per-person assignment, and sets and rep targets read from what you already lift. Not a lifter? The plan is optional — running and boxing need none of it
• Exercise demonstrations and instructions, and a searchable library to build a plan from
• A group of up to five, with the shared plan, live feed, reactions, comments and real-time group chat (with @mentions)
• Check-ins, check-outs and spotter requests
• Catching up on days your group trained without you, and planning a session together
• Progress charts, streaks, body tracking — weight, plus body fat and muscle if you track them, with a tape-measure estimate when you've no scale — the trophy case, and shareable images for a personal best
• Notifications, nudges and your group's weekly recap
• Emergency contact, medical notes and the emergency alert — safety is never behind a price
• Importing your history from a spreadsheet, exporting all of it whenever you like, and printing your plan

Import and export stay free for a specific reason: you should be able to bring your training in from wherever it currently lives, and take it back out again, without either direction costing you anything. An app that holds your data hostage has stopped competing on being good.

3. Free, with a limit

Four features call a language model every time they run, which means they cost us real money per use. Those have an allowance rather than a hard door:

• AI Coach — a fresh read of your training once a week. Your existing insights stay readable any time, as often as you like.
• Asking the coach — ten questions a month. Unlike the others, this limit is meant to be noticed: a conversation costs us more the more you have of it, so it's the one place where the price and the cost actually track each other. Everything you've asked stays readable whether or not you have questions left.
• Drafting a plan — three drafted programmes a month. Anything already added to your plan stays yours.
• Home-workout alternatives — five a month, and anything already generated stays on your plan.

The first, third and fourth are set so that a normal solo lifter never notices them. Asking the coach is the exception, and deliberately so: it is the only one whose cost rises with every use, so its limit is the only one you are meant to feel. If you're hitting any of them, you're using the expensive parts hard enough that a paid plan is genuinely worth it to you — and if we've set them badly, tell us and we'll move them.

4. What a paid plan will add

None of this is something you have today on the free plan, and none of it ever was:

• Adaptive progression — your plan sets sets and reps; this decides the weight. Hit the top of your rep range and next session's target goes up; sit at the same load for three sessions and it drops back so you can build into it again. Per person, so two people following the same day keep their own numbers.
• A weekly training review — a Sunday email covering which of your working weights moved that week, which eased back and why, and what's stuck. Progression happens one set at a time while you're busy; this is where you can actually see whether it's working.
• Deeper analytics — long-range strength trends, volume by muscle group, an estimated 1RM projection, and plateau and deload detection. The intelligence built on your training, rather than a chart of it.
• No limits on any of the four metered features above

All three exist now, and they have only ever been on the paid side — no free account has had them taken away.

Progression is the part a solo lifter feels every session: it's the difference between a plan that records what you did and one that tells you what to do next. The analytics deepen that — they read your training and tell you where it's working and where it's stuck.

The line under all of it: a subscription sells what SetBuddies works out from your training, never the training itself. Your logs, your history and your plan stay free and exportable whether you pay or not — we'd rather you told a friend than paid us for access to your own data.

5. Coaching, for trainers

Everything above is for training yourself. If you coach other people — a personal trainer, a class instructor, a small gym — there's a separate Coach plan for running them.

It gives a coach a cross-team dashboard (who's training, who's drifted), the ability to write and adjust each client's plan, a class schedule their members see, private per-client notes, a direct line to message each client, and — since the coach is the one carrying it — a Pro-level read on every client's progress and the AI features to work with, per client and per team. A gym can group several coaches under one organisation and see the whole thing roll up.

The coach pays, per client, so it scales with the roster rather than a flat fee. Clients join free — a coached member never has to pay to be coached — and a client who wants the live Pro features in their own app can add them for a reduced price, since their coach already covers the heavy part. Body composition stays private to the client unless they choose to share it.

Coaching works today, and founding coaches use it free while we finish billing — the same promise as Pro: we set the line before charging, and nothing you rely on gets taken away. Want to coach on SetBuddies? Tell us and we'll set you up.

Questions, or think we've drawn the line in the wrong place? Tell us — while it's still easy to change.