6 Best Swim Apps for Smarter Swim Workouts
Olivier Poirier-Leroy
Author, swimmer. Obsessed with helping swimmers level up in the water (and life).
Looking for a swim app to track and log your swim workouts? Here’s a look at the best options on the market right now.
Swim apps are one in a long line of tools that swimmers can use to measure, track, and plot their swim training in the pool.
From logging workouts to analyzing distance per stroke, swim apps can be an excellent motivational addition to your swimming. Set goals, see progress, and get personal insights.
Some apps also feature community features and competitions as well as rewards and achievement badges to add an element of fun and healthy competition.
In this round-up, we will look at the best swim apps for smarter and better swim workouts.
Let’s dive in.
What is a swim app?
A swim app is a mobile application that tracks swim workouts, offers training plans, and otherwise helps swimmers log and plan swim training.
Apps, either native to a device like an Apple Watch, smart swim goggles, or swim-specific third-party apps, can be used to measure distance, pace, splits, heart rate, and even plot open water swims.
Many third-party apps like MySwimPro, DuoSwim, and Swim.com also offer training plans that swimmers can follow along with.
What is the best swim app?
The best overall swim app is the free Workout app on the Apple Watch. It accurately measures all the basics for tracking a swim workout, including distance, time elapsed, stroke counts, stroke type, heart rate, and unlike many swim trackers, logs when swimmers are doing kick with a kickboard.
That said, every swimmer is different and have different needs. We’ve tested just about every tracker and app in the pool over the years.
Below is an expert recommendation on the best apps for swimmers, with key features and pros and cons to help you decide which is best for you.
The top apps for swimmers include:
Next, we will evaluate each swimming app, highlight key features, and compare them so that you can choose the right app for your swimming goals.
Apple Watch
? Best overall swim app
The Apple Watch’s Workout app is the best overall app for swimmers looking for a simple, yet highly accurate app for tracking their swim workouts.
The app has pool and open water modes, customizable dashboards (e.g. view the most important metrics to your swim workout), and you can edit the distance of the pool (in meters or yards) before each swim. Ideal for swimmers who bounce around between short and long course pools.
The Apple Watch itself is also perfect for swimmers. It has a thin casing that reduces drag, is waterproof, and can be used to track pool and open water swims.
The coolest thing I’ve noticed with the swimming app on the Apple Watch is that is accurately tracks when using a kickboard.
This is something not many devices and swim apps are capable of doing (Garmin watches, for example, require you to choose “drill” to manually track kick sets).
The native app on the Apple Watch tracks tons of data in the water, including:
The Apple Watch includes detailed information on most crucial training parameters, including heart rate zone training, active caloric burn, and other key metrics that help swimmers make more informed decisions about their swim training.
The Apple Watch can also be used for other swim apps if you prefer following along with custom training plans and swim workouts.
And, of course, there are no recurring subscription fees associated with the Workout app (although the price of the Apple Watch is another matter altogether, obviously).
FORM 2 Smart Swim Goggles
? Best for real-time training metrics
The FORM 2 Swim Goggles combine a revolutionary heads-up display that shows swim workout metrics with a complimentary swim app for your device that logs and measures all the details of your swims.
As you churn up and down the pool (or during open water swims), the digital display inside the FORM 2 Smart Swim Goggles shows all the metrics of your workout.
Laps swum, splits, distance, time elapsed, heart rate, and more can all be customized and shown in real-time within the lens of your swim goggles.
Once your swim workout is over, the goggles sync with the FORM app on your smartphone or tablet, and you can examine every last meter or yard from your workout.
The app does require a subscription to access more advanced features like custom training plans and workouts (that you upload to the FORM 2 goggles and follow along with in the water), a technique-correction feature that helps you swim with better form, and the SwimStraight feature, a digital compass that helps swimmers swim straighter in open water.
Other premium features include a custom workout builder, perfect for swimmers who like going to the pool with a set or workout in mind.
The subscription for the premium features costs less than $10 per month, but swimmers who want to stick to the real-time workout metrics and the vast amount of data in the swim app can go without the subscription.
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MySwimPro App
? ?Best swim app for community features
MySwimPro is a third-party swim app that is available for Apple and Android devices, including the Apple Watch and Garmin watches. The app can also be synced with various training platforms, including Strava and Training Peaks.
The app is awesome for collecting and monitoring all of the usual swim training metrics like distance, heart rate, splits, average pace, SWOLF, and so on. But what makes it stand out from other apps for swimmers are the community and training features.
The MySwimPro community is huge, with annual events, training camps, leaderboards, and various challenges within the app to help you stay motivated and engaged in the pool.
Unlike a basic swim app (like the Apple Watch’s native Workout app), MySwimPro has a ton of customized training features, with training plans for different goals (e.g. “Swim Your First Mile”) that can be uploaded to your swim watch and followed in the pool.
Swimmers who like the structure of a training plan will appreciate the huge variety of workouts and training plans that can accommodate just about every goal in the pool.
The app also has video tutorials demonstrating stroke technique and drills for newer swimmers looking to up their technique skills.
Subscription costs vary, with a monthly ($19.99) or annual subscription, which brings the monthly cost to under $10. MySwimPro also offers a seven-day free trial to see if the swim app is right for you.
DuoSwim
? Best swim app for guided workout customization
DuoSwim is another third-party swim app for Apple and Android devices.
The app features a huge library of swim workouts, that allow swimmers to choose by goal (e.g. speed, endurance) and build custom training plans by ability, goals, and even injuries or physical limitations.
DuoSwim tracks all of the standard metrics when swimming, including distance, heart rate, splits, and so on.
The custom swim workouts are the best feature of DuoSwim.
Once you’ve settled on your workout of choice (or uploaded your own swim practice), simply follow the cues on the watch, including rest intervals, type of gear to use for the set, target intensity/speed, and more.
DuoSwim is perfect for the swimmer who trains on their own and want the accountability of a structured swim program with the convenience of customizing workouts to your goals, equipment, rest intervals, and distance.
DuoSwim is priced similarly to MySwimPro, with monthly subscription fees going for $19.99. They offer an annual subscription that significantly reduces fees, costing just $84.
FINIS Smart Goggles
? Runner-up swim app paired with smart goggles
We’ve already looked at the FORM 2 Smart Goggles as an excellent data-driven swim app powered by a heads-up display inside the lenses of swim goggles.
The FINIS Smart Goggles are another option for smart goggles with a high-performing swim app. The goggles (and complementary app) have exceptional tracking ability and are priced less than the FORM 2 Swim Goggles.
There are a lot of things to like about the FINIS Smart Goggles, including replaceable goggles (you can swap out the HUD and insert it into a fresh set of FINIS Goggles) and a heads-up display that isn’t always “on” (swimmers need to swing their vision slightly to the side to review swim training metrics).
In terms of the app itself, the FINIS Smart Goggles provide a ton of functionality, including being able to correct mis-tracked sets and editing workouts post-swim. This is handy when doing things in the water that aren’t often tracked properly (e.g. when doing kick or a specialized type of drill).
Being able to edit workouts easily in the swim app is awesome for swimmers who prefer exact metrics and data when tracking their swim workouts.
Swimmers who want smart swim goggles along with a more customizable swim app (along with a less expensive price point) will enjoy swimming with the FINIS Smart Goggles.
Swim.com
? Best free third-party swim app
Swim.com is a swim app for Apple and Android that tracks swim workouts, offers guided sessions, and connects swimmers through a community. It features leaderboards, community challenges, and other tools to motivate users.
The Swim.com app measures your workouts with a combination of proprietary motion detection algorithms from the app and the accelerometer built into swim watches.
The accelerometer detects movement, acceleration, and changes in direction and force, while the app’s algo interprets these signals to log and track stroke, distance, lap count, and so on. ?
While it is fairly accurate when tracking regular swimming, it is not effective at recording kick. During a recent workout I performed with the Swim.com app on my Apple Watch, it didn’t count the 500m of kick on a board I did.
The swim workout in actuality was 2,000m, but the app recorded 1,475 yards. (The app defaults to yards for tracking your swim workouts.)
It also missed a 25 where I switched from freestyle to backstroke mid-length so I could quickly adjust my swim goggles, but besides that, the tracking of full stroke swimming was perfect.
The guided workouts also include the ability to add comments to sets and workouts, which is perfect for swimmers following a coach’s plan or for your own clarification when training.
Add relevant notes and comments to ensure that you are getting the most from your workout in the pool.
The biggest pro to the Swim.com is that it is free. For swimmers who like a mix of tracking and logging with guided swim workouts, and don’t want to pay a monthly subscription, the Swim.com app is your best option.
Wrapping Things Up
Adding a swim app to your training not only gives you a healthy amount of data of what you are doing in the water, but it can also provide real-time feedback, personalized training, and the motivation that comes along with seeing progress happen.
Whether you are simply looking for a way to accurately count your laps when swimming, stay motivated through challenges and community leaderboards, or fine-tune technique and form, there's a swim app that will help you chase down your goals.
Choose the swim app that best matches your goals and needs, take your swim workouts to the next level, and happy swimming!
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