Trainerize Review (2026)Add-Ons Cost More Than the Plan
By Daan Haket · Tested hands-on · written with an AI assistant · who does what
The client-count ladder looks gentle, but most add-ons are flat and they land hardest on the smallest coach: at five seats a $23 Pro plan dressed with nutrition, payments and video is $63, while the same three turn the $225 two-hundred-client row into $290.
- Best for Personal trainers coaching clients through an app
From $9 · per month billed annually (2 clients) · read 2026-10-22
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Is Trainerize right for you?
Your pain“I send programs through WhatsApp and sheets, and clients see a spreadsheet, not a coaching product.”
Does Trainerize solve it?YesBuyer reports (Capterra, GetApp, August 2026): reviewers say clients get an app that feels like a finished product, with workouts, meals and video in one place.
Your planPro with 5 client seats, $23 a month billed annually
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Your pain“The $23 headline looks fine, but the add-ons I need push the real monthly cost far above it.”
Does Trainerize solve it?PartlyBuyer reports (Capterra, August 2026): real setups land between $100 and $200 a month once branding, payments and nutrition are added.
Your planPro 5 seats plus the three add-ons, $63 a month billed annually
Try Trainerize →
Your pain“I build my own exercises, and I need photos, my own tags and a way to export them.”
Does Trainerize solve it?PartlyOur test (30 Oct 2026): a new exercise needs a video, tags come from a fixed list, and we found no export for the library.
Your planAny paid plan; the 30-day trial needs no card
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- you coach a handful of clients over WhatsApp and sheets happily, or you want one flat price without add-on shopping.
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Which Trainerize plan do you need?
4 plans, 2 questions, no signup.
Answer two quick questions to see your plan.
Your plan
Grow
$9 a month billed annually or $10 month-to-month
2 clients
Your plan
Pro
From $23 a month billed annually for 5 client seats; $225 for 200 seats
Priced by client seats; month-to-month about 10% more
Your plan
Studio Plus
$248 a month per location billed annually ($275 monthly)
500 client seats; all add-ons included
Prices as we read them on 2026-10-22; check the checkout before you pay. The plan button is an affiliate link: we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you.
Exit test (measured 2026-10-30)
- Export route
- No exercise export or import control found in the library and inspected Business menu
- Formats
- Not tested
- Attachments included
- Not tested
- Re-import tested
- No
- Lost on export
- Not tested
Formats describe this export route; offered formats may not have been inspected. Full exit test and scope ↓
Tested by our team on 30 October 2026 on the free trial: Daan created the account and our AI assistant ran the test in Daan's browser. We set up the account without claiming to be a coach, added two made-up exercises to the library and looked for an export.
How we tested
- Went through the setup choosing neutral answers
- Added two made-up exercises without video
- Looked through the library and menus for an export
- The trial runs 30 days, as advertised, with no card. Setup asks what kind of coach you are, and 'Other' is an option. A phone number becomes required once you have answered.
- A new exercise is built around a video (an mp4 or .mov file, or a YouTube link). You cannot add an image, and saving silently did nothing until we switched to 'No Video'.
- Tags come from a fixed list (muscle, equipment, movement, level); you cannot make your own.
Pricing (2026)
✓ Pricing re-verified 22 Oct 2026
“$248 / month”Source: trainerize.com/pricing, read 22 Oct 2026
Basic is free for 1 client. Grow is $9 a month billed annually or $10 month-to-month, for 2 clients. Pro is priced by client seats: 5, 15, 30, 50, 75, 100 and 200 seats cost $23, $45, $71, $122, $162, $203 and $225 a month billed annually, or $25, $50, $79, $135, $180, $225 and $250 month-to-month. Studio Plus is $248 a month per location billed annually ($275 monthly) for 500 client seats and $342 ($380) for 1,000; 5+ locations are quoted.
Annual billing saves 10% and there are no long-term contracts. Add-ons on Grow and Pro: Advanced Nutrition Coaching $20 a month on Grow, Pro 5 and Pro 15 and $45 from Pro 30 to Pro 200; Business $25; Stripe Integrated Payments $10; Video Coaching $10; and on Pro a Custom Branded App at a one-time $169, which also needs your own $99-a-year Apple Developer Account, charged by Apple.
Studio Plus includes all of them. FitMetrics is a separate add-on from $6 per client. A 30-day trial with unlimited clients needs no card; add-ons are not included in it. Plans change, so check the live price on their site before you buy.
Category context: Operations & Workflow. Across the 53 tools in this category that we researched with a public US-dollar price, the median entry price is $25 a month (lowest paid plan as listed, per seat where the vendor prices per seat). Trainerize’s entry price of $9 a month sits below that median. Compare pricing conditions in the Software Cost Atlas →
What the pricing page doesn’t say
Price the stack you'll actually coach with, and note that the branded app is $169 to Trainerize plus a $99/year Apple Developer Account billed by Apple. That said, the client experience and the ABC platform are mature; churn-prone coaches lose more to a clunky app than to a fair subscription.
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What Trainerize does
Personal training and fitness-coaching platform. Deliver workout and nutrition plans, message clients and take payments from one branded app, so trainers can coach more clients online.
What buyers report about Trainerize
Hands-on: tested 2026-10-30Reported by buyers: Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice, read August 2026
Themes from the buyer-review sites listed at the foot of this page, read in August 2026. We tested Trainerize ourselves on 2026-10-30, but one test is a narrow sample, so here is what other buyers report. We summarise it here because the complaints are usually the part a vendor page leaves out.
- • The most well-rounded coaching platform in the category: AI workout builder, meal planner and video coaching in one place.
- • Clients get an app that looks like a real product rather than a spreadsheet.
- • The $23 headline is not what solo coaches pay. Real setups land at $100-$200 a month once custom branding ($169 one-off on Pro), Stripe Payments ($10/month) and Advanced Nutrition ($20-45) are added.
- • Price increases trigger automatically when you cross a client threshold: growth costs you before it pays you.
- • Building and editing workouts is confusing and slow, and the exercise library is thin with some outdated or unsafe entries.
- • Crashes and glitches are reported.
The add-ons weigh most on the smallest coach
The client ladder looks gentle: free for one client, Grow $9 a month for two, and Pro from $23 at five seats to $225 at two hundred, all billed annually; month-to-month is about 10% more ($10, and $25 to $250). Studio Plus is $248 a month per location for 500 client seats. Prices are in USD before tax (re-verified 2026-09-27). A correction first. We earlier put the 200-client end of Pro at $275 and nutrition at a flat $45 on every Pro plan.
Operating each seat selector in both billing modes, Pro 200 is $225 annually or $250 monthly; $275 is Studio Plus billed monthly. And nutrition is now $20 a month on Grow, Pro 5 and Pro 15, rising to $45 only from Pro 30. The add-ons are still where the real bill lives. Business is $25 a month, Stripe payments $10 and video coaching $10, the same at five clients as at two hundred; the branded app is a one-time $169 plus your own $99-a-year Apple Developer Account.
At five seats, $23 plus nutrition, payments and video is $63: $40 of add-ons on a $23 plan. At two hundred the same three turn $225 into $290, about 29% more. Watch the step between 15 and 30 clients: the plan goes from $45 to $71 and nutrition from $20 to $45, so that stack jumps from $85 to $136. Measure it against what you bill. A coach charging $100 a month per client bills $500 at five clients and pays $63, about 13%; at two hundred the $290 sits inside $20,000, under 2%.
Early on, run without the add-ons you do not yet charge for. What no upgrade changes: add-ons are not included in the 30-day trial, and there are no refunds for the unused part of a subscription, so a year paid up front is spent. Studio Plus is the one tier where all add-ons are included.
What we found running Trainerize ourselves
The first findings are at the top of this page. The rest:
- The instructions kept our line break, accents and quotes.
- The library already holds hundreds of stock exercises with videos.
- We found no export for exercises in the library or business menus.
Claim vs. what we measured
We set a claim from Trainerize's own pages next to what we saw in our test, on the plan named. The status says whether the two describe the same thing and match; it is not a verdict on the product. Confirmations are listed too.
| What the vendor says | What we measured | Status | What it means if you buy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enjoy 30 days freeSource: trainerize.com, read 30 Oct 2026 | Measured 2026-10-30: The account announces a thirty-day Free Trial, with thirty days remaining.Our test, 30 Oct 2026; 30-day trial; tier not inspected | ConfirmedThe public thirty-day offer matches both the trial-start dialog and remaining-days banner; the subscription tier is unknown. | A phone number is required in setup; the tested subscription tier was not established. |
| Enjoy 30 days freeSource: trainerize.com, read 30 Oct 2026 | Measured 2026-10-30: No checkout opened. The plan overview or free editing route does not establish a tax-inclusive payable total.Our test, 30 Oct 2026; 30-day trial; tier not inspected | Not testableTrainerize Upgrade Now was not followed to an order summary, so no final amount can be compared with a price rule. | Final currency, tax, term, seats, fees and payment total remain unverified. |
| No credit card required.Source: trainerize.com, read 30 Oct 2026 | Measured 2026-10-30: No card was entered during the observed post-signup route. Daan handled signup; its individual screens were not counted.Our test, 30 Oct 2026; 30-day trial; tier not inspected | ConfirmedTrainerize’s post-signup setup and exercise creation proceeded without a payment card; the mandatory phone field is a separate setup requirement. | The observed route proceeded without card entry; billing later remains untested. |
Exit test: can you take your data out?
Created two custom exercises in Master Libraries > Exercises during the thirty-day trial. Test date: 30 Oct 2026. We describe the friction rather than score it; this is one run with synthetic records, not a verdict on Trainerize.
| What we checked | What we saw |
|---|---|
| Fields offered by the export dialog | |
| Not offered in the field selector | None noted. |
| The exported file | We did not inspect the file, so data retention and loss remain unverified. |
| Awkward but not lost | Setup required a phone number. Exercise media accepts video rather than the kit PNGs, and tags come from a fixed list; Beginner was selected. Saving gave no visible result with Custom Video selected. Selecting No Video allowed both exercises to save, with names and multiline instructions intact in the UI. These are input observations, not export preservation results. |
| Export route | No exercise export or import control found in the library and inspected Business menu. This limited search does not prove that export is unavailable throughout the product. |
| Export format | No exercise export file obtained. |
| Re-importing the export | Exercise restoration was not tested; no export was available for a round trip. |
| Cancelling | Cancellation, expiry and account deletion were not tested. The control date, where recorded, is planning only. |
What the exit test does not show:
- Full signup screen count and first-result setup speed.
- Actual cancellation, expiry and deletion.
- All kit fields that were not entered.
- Application reimport or restoration.
Kit check counts
Kit learning-users 1.0.0; run trainerize-2026-10-30; observed 2026-10-30.
- export / AIBM-001: Of 10 checks: 0 kept, 0 changed, 0 lost, 0 not offered, 10 not tested
- export / AIBM-002: Of 10 checks: 0 kept, 0 changed, 0 lost, 0 not offered, 10 not tested
- reimport / AIBM-001: Of 10 checks: 0 kept, 0 changed, 0 lost, 0 not offered, 10 not tested
- reimport / AIBM-002: Of 10 checks: 0 kept, 0 changed, 0 lost, 0 not offered, 10 not tested
Each record and phase uses this kit’s checks. Counts describe this run; they are not a score or a comparison between kits.
How this compares: across our exit tests of 102 tools, 57 gave us an export file. For Trainerize no usable export file reached us during the test session. Report 08: can you get your data out?
Mail in the first 14 days
11 emails in the 14-day window; first email after signup: unknown (exact signup time not recorded); 0 with an explicit offer.
Retained inbox and junk only; removed or archived mail is outside this observation. Ambiguous supplier attribution is excluded. Day numbers use elapsed 24-hour periods since the recorded signup date at midnight Europe/Amsterdam; the signup hour is unknown. Offer flags quote literal subject/body text. Replies in our own correspondence (support tickets, our comment requests) are excluded; one-time codes, our own address, our account name and our name are replaced in brackets.
| Day | Time (UTC) | Sender | Literal subject | Folder | Offer evidence |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Day 0 | 2026-10-30 12:58:08 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerize.com | Welcome to ABC Trainerize! | inbox | |
| Day 0 | 2026-10-30 13:12:48 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | Let’s get started 💪 | inbox | |
| Day 0 | 2026-10-30 13:27:05 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | Welcome to ABC Trainerize! Let's get started. | inbox | |
| Day 1 | 2026-10-31 13:18:06 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | Verify your email to start your free trial 🙌 | inbox | |
| Day 2 | 2026-11-01 00:49:22 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerize.com | Weekly client summary | inbox | |
| Day 3 | 2026-11-02 13:18:17 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | Take a peek inside your trial 👀 | inbox | |
| Day 3 | 2026-11-02 15:27:10 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | Build your personalized workout plan in minutes 💪 | inbox | |
| Day 4 | 2026-11-03 00:09:02 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | Your account is waiting! ⏱️ | inbox | |
| Day 7 | 2026-11-06 17:05:47 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | How to Automate Your Personal Training Business (and Save Hours Every Week) | inbox | |
| Day 8 | 2026-11-07 14:27:13 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerizemail.com | Nutrition habits that actually work + healthy meal guide [BONUS RESOURCE] | inbox | |
| Day 9 | 2026-11-08 00:49:06 UTC | Trainerize team / trainerize.com | Weekly client summary | inbox |
Screenshots from our test (click to enlarge)
What this test does not show:
- Adding clients and programs
- The mobile app
- Paid plans
- Contacting support
Most of our reviews are researched rather than run. How we review explains which is which, and why we do not pretend otherwise.
How to actually use Trainerize
Price the stack, not the tier. The plan scales with client count, but most add-ons are flat: Business $25, payments $10 and video $10 a month cost the same at five clients as at two hundred, and nutrition is $20 up to 15 clients and $45 from 30. At five seats a $23 plan with nutrition, payments and video on it is $63, nearly three times the sticker. Turn on only what you charge for.
If nutrition planning is not part of your package yet, do not subscribe to it; add each module the month it starts appearing on a client invoice. That single discipline is the difference between about 13% of revenue and a few per cent. Use the free single-client tier or Grow to test the part that actually keeps clients: the app they see. Put one real client through a full week (programme, check-in, message, progress photo) and watch it from their phone.
Leave the branded app until the numbers justify $169 to Trainerize plus the $99-a-year Apple Developer Account it requires, which Apple bills you for directly.
Where this section comes from: our research notes (258 words)
www.trainerize.com/pricing read on 9 September 2026, the four plan cards with their client-seat selectors and the ADD-ONS block of the 'Compare all plans and features' table, which prices each add-on per tier, together with www.trainerize.com/features/custom-branded-fitness-apps, whose FAQ states that the $99/year Apple Developer Account is charged by Apple and that the Pro-level branded app is a one-time $169 on top of the subscription. www.trainerize.com/llms.txt returned 404. Re-read 26 and 27 September 2026: the served HTML of www.trainerize.com/pricing by plain fetch (add-on rows, the pricing FAQ) and the rendered page in the browser pane on 27 September with the billing switch in both positions and each client-seat button pressed in turn.
Annual: Grow $9, Pro 5/15/30/50/75/100/200 at $23/$45/$71/$122/$162/$203/$225, Studio Plus $248 (500) and $342 (1,000) per location. Monthly: Grow $10, Pro $25/$50/$79/$135/$180/$225/$250, Studio Plus $275 and $380. The comparison table's header figures ($10, $79 for up to 30 clients, $275 for up to 500) are monthly rates; our earlier '$275 at the 200-client end' read Studio Plus as Pro and is corrected. Advanced Nutrition Coaching is now '$20 USD/mo (Grow, Pro 5, 15)' and '$45 USD/mo (Pro 30 to Pro 200)'.
The FAQ gives the 30-day trial (unlimited clients, no card, reverts to the free plan, add-ons excluded), upgrades immediate and downgrades at the end of the cycle, no refunds for unused portions, and Basic clients that do not count against the seat limit. Re-read 22 October 2026 on https://www.trainerize.com/pricing/ (default annual view): Basic free, Grow $9, Pro 5 $23 and Studio Plus $248 a month, unchanged.
The natural comparison is TrueCoach or Everfit: the coaching-platform peer set: all use client-tiers plus add-ons; compare your fully-dressed stack price, not entry rows.
Frequently asked questions
Can you export your data from Trainerize?
Exit check 2026-10-30; route excerpt: No exercise export or import control found in the library and inspected Business menu; came along (excerpts): not tested; lost (excerpts): not tested; re-import: not tested.
What happens when my Trainerize free trial ends?
Nothing is charged. The pricing FAQ (read 27 September 2026) says the 30-day trial, which has unlimited clients and needs no card, reverts automatically to the free plan with one coaching client, and you do not need to cancel. Add-ons are not included in the trial, so you cannot test nutrition, payments or video before paying; upgrading is possible at any time, before or after the trial ends.
Do clients who only book sessions count toward my Trainerize seats?
No. The FAQ (read 27 September 2026) distinguishes coaching clients, who get programs, tracking and messaging, from Basic clients, who can only book appointments and make purchases. Basic clients do not count against your plan's client limit, so every paid plan can carry an unlimited number of them; only coaching clients push you up the Pro ladder from $23 at five seats to $225 at two hundred, billed annually.
Can I get a refund if I downgrade or cancel Trainerize?
Not for time already paid. The FAQ (read 27 September 2026) says you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time, but downgrades apply at the end of the current billing cycle and Trainerize does not refund unused portions of a subscription. Annual billing is about 10% cheaper - Pro 5 is $23 a month against $25 - so it pays only if you expect to stay on that seat count for the year.
Is this a hands-on review of Trainerize?
Yes. We tested Trainerize ourselves on 2026-10-30; the section above says what we tested, what we found and what we did not test, and where a figure comes from the vendor's own documentation instead. Most of our reviews are researched rather than run; we say which is which. We name what each tool is good and bad at, and we earn a commission only if you sign up, at no cost to you.
- Buyer reviews on Capterra, GetApp and Software Advice, read August 2026.
- Re-verified 2026-09-27 on www.trainerize.com/pricing in the browser pane, both billing toggles and every seat selector operated; prices in USD and subject to applicable taxes, annual plans billed once a year.
- A dated screenshot of that pricing page, kept on this site as the receipt.
- Our own hands-on session with Trainerize (2026-10-30), written up in full further down this page.
Bottom line
Best for: personal trainers coaching clients through an app.
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