Two free apps, free at completely different things

Most comparisons of free fitness apps are really arguments about whose trial ends soonest. This one is not. Planfit and ftns.ai both have real free products, so the interesting question is what each one is actually free at.

Is Planfit really free?

Yes, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Planfit's store listing lists free-for-life features: a personalised workout planner with reps and weights for your goals, a machine and equipment guide, a workout log and tracker, and a community. Premium, with a seven-day trial, adds real-time voice coaching that counts your reps and manages rest, recovery tracking, deeper performance analysis and Apple Watch integration.

That is a strong free tier for a gym app, and Planfit has grown to millions of users on the back of it. If your only criterion is a free workout plan, Planfit is one of the best answers to that question and this post will not change that.

So what is actually different?

Planfit is free at the gym hour. ftns.ai is free at the other twenty-three.

Planfit's job is to answer what should I do at the gym today? — sets, reps, loads, form videos, and a log to record it all in. It is a gym product and it is unembarrassed about that.

ftns.ai will plan a session for you too. Its coach builds one from your goal, your pace, the equipment you have and the exercises you have ruled out, and you can ask it in plain words to swap a movement you hate. What it does not do is the load science: no one-rep-max estimates, no plate maths, no rep counting in your ear, no fatigue model. If managed progressive overload is the thing you want, Planfit and the apps like it are built for it and ftns.ai is not.

What ftns.ai does that a gym app does not is turn what you actually did into a full-colour 3D character built to your own proportions. Your twin. Workouts feed it, but so do sleep, steps, water, meals, weight, mood, alcohol and caffeine. All of it rolls into one number — your Life Score — and the Life Score is what drives how your twin looks. The full breakdown of that number is here.

Your twin updates weekly, not daily. If one skipped session visibly changed your character, the model would be lying to you and you would stop believing it by week two. Bodies move on trends. So does your twin.

Does ftns.ai have a community like Planfit?

No — and that is a design decision, not a missing feature.

Planfit includes a community where people share training journeys. That is a proven retention mechanic and plenty of people find it motivating.

ftns.ai has no social feed, no friends list, no leaderboards and no follower count. There is no screen anywhere in the app where your twin or your score appears next to anyone else's, because there is no such screen to build one into. This is not a privacy setting you have to go and find. It is an absence in the product.

Sharing exists as exactly one thing: you export a score card or a Future Self image yourself, to wherever you choose, when you feel like it. The app never posts on your behalf.

The trade-off is real. Social accountability works. If a community is what gets you out the door, an app with nobody in it is worse for you than one with people in it. We built the other one for the people who quietly deleted a fitness app the week their progress became visible to someone else. The longer argument is here.

Side by side

Planfit details per its App Store and Google Play listings and planfit.ai, checked 24 August 2026. Planfit premium pricing is shown in-app in local currency and varies by region, so it is not quoted here — check your own checkout.

What ftns.ai is not

Stated plainly, because the category invites the assumption:

• Not a training-optimisation engine. The coach plans sessions. It does not estimate your one-rep max, do plate maths, model fatigue or periodise a block. Apps built for that do it better, and this post says so out loud.
• Not a health intelligence. The .ai is a domain. Your coach is a game feature, and it makes no medical claims and promises no results.
• Not a medical or assessment product. ftns.ai is a game in the Health & Fitness category. It doesn't diagnose anything, doesn't give clinical advice, and doesn't tell you what any of your numbers mean about your health.
• Not social. No social feed, no friends list, no leaderboards, no follower count. Sharing means you export a score card yourself, to wherever you like, when you feel like it. The app never posts on your behalf.

The thing no table row captures

Future Self. Your twin projected across six horizons and three timelines — Current Pace, On Plan and Coasting — rendered as a character, free and unlimited, never behind gems.

It is a game feature, not a forecast. It does not predict anything about your health, it guarantees nothing, and it does not tell you what will happen to your body. It shows you a version of your character built from the way you are currently playing, which turns out to be a much more motivating thing to look at than a chart.

We put it in the free tier on purpose. Paywalling the most aspirational thing in the app would have been the obvious move, and we are not making it. How the projections work.

So which one

• Use Planfit if you want a free plan for the gym, you like having a video guide for every movement, and a community helps rather than hinders.
• Use ftns.ai if the plan is not really your problem, you want your sleep and steps and water to count as much as your lifts, and you want your progress visible to precisely nobody.
• Use both if you want a free plan for the hour and a free character for the week. Neither costs anything, so there is no reason to choose on price.

If you are working through the whole category rather than these two, the map of care-loop apps covers the rest.