Is Ellim Plus Worth $17.99 a Month? Price, AI, Alternatives

By the Trunk teamUpdated October 3, 202617 min readPrices verified October 3, 2026

Ellim Plus costs $17.99 a month or $99.99 a year, with a 7-day free trial offered on its App Store listing, and it adds an AI coach to an app whose free tier already covers workout logging, unlimited routines, a 3,500-exercise library and meal tracking (verified 2026-10-03 on Ellim's App Store listing and ellim.app). It is worth paying for if you want a coach that reviews every workout and changes your routine without being asked, in the same app as your food log; it is hard to justify if you mainly want an AI to read your training history and write programs, because an assistant you already have can do that for far less. That is the case for Trunk: $9.99 once, against $299.97 for three years of Ellim Plus on the yearly plan.

Disclosure: we make Trunk, a different workout tracker, and it is the alternative this page lands on. Trunk's logger is free, and Trunk+ is a $9.99 one-time purchase (App Store listing) that lets ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini read your logged sets through a private link. Trunk is the smaller app. It runs on Apple devices only, with no Android or Apple Watch app, and it has one App Store rating. It has no exercise library with instructions and no meal tracking, and Ellim gives both away free.

How much does Ellim Plus cost?

Ellim sells one paid tier, named Ellim Plus on the App Store and Premium on its own site, in two billing lengths. There is no lifetime or one-time option.

USD. Plan names and prices from the in-app purchase list on Ellim's US App Store listing; the same prices appear on ellim.app. Trial terms from Ellim's terms of use, which say new subscribers may be eligible. All read 2026-10-03.

The yearly plan is $115.89 cheaper than twelve monthly payments, a saving of about 54%. Six monthly payments come to $107.94, so yearly is the cheaper way to buy from the sixth month on.

Ellim's terms of use (last updated 2026-08-08) add three things worth knowing before you commit to a year. Subscriptions renew unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends, with no refund for a partly used period except where the law requires it. Some features may carry daily or monthly usage caps, and no numbers are published. Ellim can also change which features are free.

The 12-, 24- and 36-month math

Ellim Plus prices verified 2026-10-03 on Ellim's App Store listing. Trunk+ ($9.99 one-time) is our own price (App Store listing). Totals are our arithmetic and leave out the 7-day trial. The Trunk+ row assumes a free assistant plan: ChatGPT Free, Claude Free and Gemini with a Google Account are $0, verified 2026-10-03 (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). USD.

Over three years the yearly plan costs $289.98 more than Trunk+, and the monthly plan costs $637.65 more. Those rows do not buy the same thing, and the rest of this page is about the difference. Look at the top row first. Ellim's free tier is good enough that many people should stop there.

What do you get on Ellim's free tier?

Ellim's free tier covers a great deal. This list comes from Ellim's FAQ, its homepage and its App Store release notes, read 2026-10-03.

• Workout logging with unlimited routines, your own or ready-made.
• A library of more than 3,500 exercises, each with instructions and a muscle map.
• AI routine import: photograph a plan or paste it as text, and Ellim turns it into a trackable routine. Ellim's import guide says there is no daily limit.
• Meal logging with food search and barcode scanning.
• Water logging, weigh-ins, body measurements, and sleep read from Apple Health.
• Workout history, progress charts for every exercise, and a rest timer on the Lock Screen.
• No ads and no card on file.

That is a complete tracker for $0, and it includes two things Trunk does not have at any price: an exercise library with instructions, and a food log. If you only want to log training and meals, you do not need to pay Ellim anything.

The free import matters here. If ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini writes you a program, you can paste it into free Ellim and track it without Plus, as covered in how to import a ChatGPT workout plan into a tracker.

The free tier leaves out the coach, the longer trend views and a few logging features. Ellim's release notes mark custom foods, logging a workout on a past day, and custom exercises (capped at 50, since version 1.0.60 on 2026-09-20) as paid. Older posts on Ellim's blog still list custom exercises as free, so check in the app.

What does the Ellim Plus AI actually do?

Ellim calls the paid AI a coach, and the word fits. It is a group of features that read your log and act on it, some on request and some on a schedule. Everything below comes from Ellim's homepage, AI workouts page and App Store release notes, read 2026-10-03. We have not used Ellim Plus, so this is what Ellim says each feature does, with no claim about the quality of the advice.

Smart Session and the Routine Coach: plans on request

You type what you want in a sentence, with your equipment and time if you like, and Smart Session returns a full workout with exercises, sets, reps and rest, drawn from the 3,500-exercise library. The App Store description puts it at about 15 seconds. The AI Routine Coach does the same job for a full multi-day program. Ellim's comparison pages say this runs on a large language model and contrast it with the rules-based generators in some other apps.

Coach Debrief: after every workout

This arrived in version 1.0.57 on 2026-09-10. When you finish a session, the debrief compares each exercise with the last time you did it, says what moved and what stalled, and checks whether you followed through on last week's suggestion. Then it proposes one or two changes: an added set, a different rep target, more rest, a swap, or a note pinned to an exercise. You approve or dismiss each with a tap. It will not raise the weight on the bar until you allow it, and weight suggestions can be switched off in Settings.

Coach moves: once a week

Each week the coach reads your last 28 days and proposes specific changes, such as swapping a stalled lift, adding a set, or taking a deload week. You accept or skip them one at a time. Ellim states that nothing in your routine changes without your approval.

Insights, meal AI and the rest of Plus

After each workout Ellim flags weight, rep and volume increases, detects plateaus and suggests a next step (Ellim's blog, 2026-04-13). On the food side, you photograph a plate and get calories and macros, and since version 1.0.63 (2026-10-01) you can type or say what you ate. Plus also unlocks things that are not AI: nutrition dashboards, trend charts for water, weight and sleep, logging a workout on a past day, custom foods, and up to 50 custom exercises.

What Ellim does not publish

Ellim's privacy policy names Anthropic, OpenAI and Google as its AI providers. It says relevant content, such as a meal photo or your recent workout history, is sent to them under contractual limits on retention and on use for training. It does not say which provider runs which feature. No page gives a number for usage caps. And no page describes an open chat where you put your own questions to the coach.

Taken together, the coach does two things a chat window does not. It runs without being asked, and it applies changes inside the routine you are about to train. That is what the subscription pays for.

Are you paying twice for AI?

Those three providers are the companies behind Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini. If you already pay for one of those assistants, Ellim Plus is a second AI bill. ChatGPT Plus is $20 a month, Claude Pro is $17 a month billed annually or $20 monthly, and the free plans of all three are $0, verified 2026-10-03 (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini).

Over 12 months, ChatGPT Plus comes to $240. With Ellim Plus on the yearly plan the total is $339.99. With Trunk+ in its place the total is $249.99. On a free assistant plan those two totals are $99.99 and $9.99. There is also a way to pay nothing at all.

Ellim's privacy policy says you can export your data as a JSON file from Profile once every 24 hours, and it does not tie the export to a paid plan. You can upload that file to an assistant and paste the plan it writes back through the free import. It is a manual snapshot each time, and we have not tested how well an assistant reads the file, but it costs $0.

Trunk replaces that routine with one link. There is no file to export, the assistant sees your current log every time you ask, and a program it writes comes back as a link you tap to add.

What your own assistant can and cannot do

Given your actual sets, a general assistant can do most of the reading and reasoning a coach feature does. It can compare one session with the last, find lifts that have not moved in weeks, write a program around the exercises you already do, and answer questions nobody built a feature for. It has real limits.

• It does not start the conversation. Nothing is waiting when you rack the bar. You open the assistant and ask.
• It does not edit your routine in place. Ellim's coach changes a set count after one tap. An outside assistant gives advice, and you make the edit.
• It only knows what your tracker shows it. Ellim describes its coach as reading meals, water, sleep and weigh-ins alongside training.
• It names exercises from its own knowledge. Smart Session builds from Ellim's library.
• It can be wrong, and free plans have limits. Ellim's terms warn that its own AI output may be inaccurate, and that holds for every assistant. No vendor publishes a number for how much a free plan can browse.

Ellim's AI page makes the case against the do-it-yourself route in three words: "ChatGPT outputs text." For a bare chat with no access to your log, that is correct, and what ChatGPT can and cannot do as a workout tracker goes through why. Ellim's answer is to put the model inside the tracker. The other answer is to give your own assistant a way into the tracker.

How to cover the same ground with Trunk and your own assistant

Trunk runs no AI of its own. Trunk+ adds Connect AI, which gives any assistant that can open a web link a private page holding your logged sets.

1. Open Trunk, go to Settings and tap the Trunk+ row to open the Connect AI panel.
2. Tap Generate Key. Trunk creates a random token and a ready-made prompt.
3. Tap Copy Prompt. The prompt contains your private data link and instructions for the assistant.
4. Paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or any other assistant that can open a link. In Claude, turn on web search from the plus button first.
5. The assistant opens the link and reads your logged data. Ask it anything about your training.
6. For a program, ask it to build one. It replies with a single import link. Tap it, review the program on the confirmation page, and tap Add to Trunk.
7. Tap Revoke Key whenever you want to cut off access. Generating a new key also cancels the old one.

The link exposes every program, day and exercise, and every set with its reps, weight, volume, notes, timestamp and plate configuration. Treat it like a password, because anyone who has it can read your workout data until you revoke it. A longer walkthrough is in how to connect ChatGPT to a workout tracker.

Be clear about what comes back into the app. The assistant can create a program, add days to one, or add exercises to a day, and only when you tap to confirm. It never writes sets, reps or weights into Trunk. The targets it recommends stay in the chat, and you log what you actually lift.

Prompts that stand in for the coach

Paste the Trunk prompt first, then use these. The wording is ours, so change the details to fit.

After a workout, in place of a debrief:

Look at today's session. For each exercise, compare weight, reps and volume with the last time I did it. Say what went up, what stalled and what dropped, then give me at most two changes for next time.

Once a week, in place of Coach moves:

Read my last 28 days. List every lift where weight and reps have not changed for three weeks. For each, suggest one move (swap it, add a set, or hold steady) and say why. Tell me if a deload week makes sense.

A workout on request, in place of Smart Session:

I have 40 minutes, dumbbells and a bench. Check what I trained in the last three days and avoid the same muscles. Build one session with sets, reps and rest, and base the starting weights on what I lifted recently.

A new program, in place of the Routine Coach:

Build me a four-day upper/lower program. Keep the lifts I am still progressing on, replace the ones that have stalled, and give me sets and reps for each. When I approve it, send it as a Trunk import link.

A question no feature was built for:

Count my weekly sets per muscle group over the last six weeks. Which muscle groups am I undertraining? Then chart my estimated one-rep max for squat, bench press and deadlift over the last three months.

If your history is long and the assistant struggles with it, ask it to load only the last five sets per exercise, or a single exercise. The link supports both.

Ellim Plus vs Trunk with your own assistant, side by side

Ellim details read 2026-10-03 from ellim.app, its privacy policy, terms of use and US App Store listing, which is the source for its prices. Ratings from Apple's lookup API on 2026-10-03 (source). Trunk details and the $9.99 price are our own. Not stated means Ellim's pages do not say.

Where Ellim wins and where Trunk wins

Two honest concessions about Trunk. First, it is the smaller and newer app. It is Apple-only, it needs iOS 26.2 where Ellim needs iOS 18.6, and it has one App Store rating. It has no exercise library, no food log and no export button, and Ellim has all three.

Second, the AI side of Trunk is manual by design. Nothing runs until you paste the link and ask, and the assistant cannot edit a program you already have or write sets, reps or weights. When it says to go from four sets to five, you have to remember that at the bar. Connect AI is also the paid part of Trunk, where Ellim's routine import is free.

Who should pick which?

Stay on Ellim's free tier

You want a free tracker with a food log and an exercise library. Ellim's free tier does that and Trunk does not. Use the free import for any plan your assistant writes.

Pay for Ellim Plus

You want coaching to happen without starting it yourself, you want training and eating coached in one place, or you do not want to write prompts. The debrief and the weekly changes are the part of Plus that a bring-your-own assistant does not replace. Start the 7-day trial at the beginning of a training week so you see several debriefs before the first charge, and buy yearly if you stay: $99.99 is less than half of twelve monthly payments (verified 2026-10-03, source).

Neither

You are on Android, or you log from an Apple Watch. Ellim and Trunk both lack an Android app and a Watch app. The wider field is in how much AI fitness apps cost.

Pick Trunk and your own assistant

You already pay for ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini, you want to ask your own questions, or you do not want another subscription. What is missing is a way for it to see your sets, and Trunk+ provides that for $9.99 once. Over three years that is $9.99 against $299.97 on Ellim's yearly plan, or $647.64 paid monthly. It is not the only one-time option. Hevy Pro has a lifetime tier at $74.99 (verified 2026-10-03 on Hevy's pricing page) and a free ChatGPT integration. Trunk+ costs less and works with any assistant.