How it works
In Kudos, a session is an ordinary task. Tick it off and it appears on the Home feed of the people who follow you, where they can send a kudos, one tap of applause. If you've gone quiet, a friend can send you a nudge.
- Add your sessions as a routine, such as Gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with a reminder if you want one.
- Tick the session off when it's done.
- Add a photo or a caption when there's something worth showing.
- Follow your training partner, or make a group for everybody you train with.
What a session is worth
Every task earns XP by its size, and each size is worth double the one below. Kudos reads the size from the title, and you can change it if it guesses wrong. Here's how the sizes work.
| What you did | Size | XP |
|---|---|---|
| A 20-minute walk | Short | 4 |
| A gym workout or a 5k run | Session | 8 |
| A long hike | Big | 16 |
| A marathon | Feat | 32 |
A gym crew in one group
A group holds up to 50 people, with a chat, a feed of what everybody finished, and a ranking for the week. The ranking runs on XP earned from Monday to Sunday, so a missed Monday costs you some ground and not the whole race. Because every task counts, you can also put the rest of your day on it. How to run an accountability group that lasts covers setting one up.
Sessions aren't the only thing you can race on, either. A group can be a running club, a couch-to-5k pair, or two friends who said they would both start in January.
Why it helps to have friends in on it
The research on this is more encouraging than most. In a 1999 weight loss trial, people who joined with friends and got social support finished the programme more often and kept more of their loss than people who joined alone. In a later exercise study, 90 adults holding planks beside a software partner set to be 40 percent more capable lasted about 14 percent longer than people exercising by themselves.
That second finding is a reason to pick your people with care. Somebody a little ahead of you gives you something to reach for. What an accountability partner is actually for goes through the rest of it.
Rest days don't break anything
A Kudos streak counts the days you open the app, not the days you train, so a rest day can't end it. You can also skip a single day of a routine without touching the others, and an injury or a holiday doesn't have to cost you a run you worked for.
What Kudos doesn't do
Kudos doesn't log sets, count reps or map a run, and it doesn't connect to Apple Health, Strava or a watch. You tick a session off yourself. If you want the numbers, keep your tracker and use Kudos for the turning up.
| If you want | Look at |
|---|---|
| Sets, reps and weights, with friends following along | Hevy, a workout log with a follow feed |
| Runs and rides, with clubs and challenges | Strava |
| One weekly workout goal shared with your partner | Sweatmates, built for couples |
| Workouts on the same list as the rest of your day, with friends who can see it | Kudos |
Common questions
- What is the best workout accountability app?
- It depends on who you want watching. Hevy and Strava suit people who want their numbers logged and shared. Sweatmates suits couples. Kudos suits people who want friends to see whether they turned up, without logging a thing.
- Does Kudos connect to Apple Health or Strava?
- No. You tick a session off yourself, and nothing is imported from a watch or another app.
- Can I share a photo of my workout?
- Yes. Add a photo or a caption to any finished task and it appears with that task on your followers' Home feed.
- Does a rest day break my streak?
- No. A streak counts the days you open the app, so a rest day costs you nothing as long as you look in.
- Do my friends have to see every workout?
- No. Mark a task Private and people see "Private Task" instead of its title, or stop sharing completions to the feed in Settings.
- Is Kudos free?
- Yes. Kudos is free on iPhone and Android, there is nothing to buy inside the app, and you can start without an account.