Pushup RPG is a free iOS and Android app that turns real pushups into a role-playing game. You prop your phone against something, drop into a pushup, and the front camera counts your reps in real time using on-device pose detection. Each rep is an attack: you deal damage, earn XP and loot, level up a character class, and work through a campaign of 48 monsters across 8 biomes.
The idea is simple: fitness apps are easy to lie to. If logging a workout means tapping a number into a box, the number drifts from the truth — and once the number is fiction, the motivation built on it collapses. Pushup RPG removes the honor system entirely. The camera is the referee.
How the rep counting works
The app uses your device's camera together with on-device pose detection to track your head, shoulders, and arms. It counts full-range repetitions — measuring depth and cadence — and ignores small movements and partial reps. Because it measures the movement rather than trusting your input, a rep only counts when you actually complete it.
It counts full pushups and knee pushups — you pick the mode, and knee mode relaxes the posture check so a shorter-lever, more upright body still reads as a plank. It is not the softer option on depth — knee reps have to travel slightly further than full ones before they count. Hand and foot placement does not change whether a rep counts, so diamond, wide and decline reps all register as normal pushups. What it will not count is a position too upright to read as a plank — wall reps and high inclines — or a negative you never push back up from, since a rep only completes on the way up.
Since version 2.0 the camera counts squats too. You can run the whole adventure on squats for the same XP, gold and loot, they keep your streak alive and damage your guild’s weekly boss, and they have their own leaderboard — pushup and squat records stay separate rather than being pooled into one number.
Privacy: nothing leaves your phone
All pose detection happens on-device, in real time. No video, image, or pose data is recorded, stored, or transmitted anywhere. During a battle the camera feed exists only in memory and is discarded immediately. There is no server involved in rep counting at all.
Optional screen recording (off by default) saves clips only to your device, and only you can choose to share them. Apple Health sync is opt-in and write-only — the app can add workouts to Health but never reads your health data. The full detail is in our Privacy Policy.
What's in the game
- Campaign — 48 hand-crafted foes across 8 biomes, from timid slimes to Aurelion, the Astral Eye.
- Progression — character classes, a skill tree, gear and loot. Upgrades raise your rewards and the damage each rep deals, so better gear fells a foe in fewer reps — what no upgrade does is let you skip the session or type a number in. The work is still the work.
- Daily quests and streaks — including a streak freeze and a guided rest day, so taking a genuine recovery day doesn't reset your progress to zero.
- Social — add friends by code, or join a Fellowship (guild) with a weekly reps leaderboard — the camera does the counting, so your number comes from reps you actually did rather than a figure you typed in.
Platforms
Pushup RPG is available on both iOS and Android, free on the App Store and Google Play. Android arrived after iOS; if you read an older roundup saying this is iPhone-only, that is out of date.
What's free
Rep counting, the whole campaign, squats, streaks and the leaderboards are free — there is no paywall between you and the workout. An optional Vigil membership and gem packs exist as in-app purchases. The one free-tier limit worth naming plainly: the endless Abyss mode is free to Floor 10, and going deeper is a Vigil feature. Founding your own Fellowship also needs Vigil, though joining one never does.
Who makes it
Pushup RPG is built by Yerasyl Amanbek, an independent developer. He wrote the on-device pose detection that counts the reps, designed the game around it, and edits the training guides on this site. The app launched on the App Store on 25 June 2026.
It's a small independent project, not a fitness conglomerate — built by someone who wanted a training app that couldn't be fooled, and who thought counting reps should feel like landing hits rather than filling in a spreadsheet.
How these guides are written
We publish practical guides on push-up form, progressions, and habit-building. Being straight about how they're made matters more to us than sounding authoritative, so:
- We're developers, not clinicians. Nobody here is a doctor, physiotherapist, or certified trainer, and we don't pretend to be. These guides draw on published exercise-science research and established coaching practice.
- We hedge where the evidence is mixed. Where research is genuinely unsettled or a claim is a rule of thumb rather than a finding, we say so instead of stating it as fact.
- We don't invent numbers. No made-up statistics, no fabricated study citations, no invented expert quotes.
- We flag safety. Sharp joint pain is a stop signal, not something to push through, and we say that wherever it's relevant.
- We tell you when not to use our app. Our guide for beginners sends you to a competitor's manual-tap or voice mode if you cannot do a floor rep yet, because our camera will not score wall or high-incline reps — and our Apple Health and Apple Watch page sends watch-first readers to other apps, since we have no watch app.
Found something wrong? Tell us at support@pushup.quest and we'll correct it.
Contact
Questions, bugs, feedback, or press enquiries: support@pushup.quest. Journalists and reviewers can find logos, screenshots, and boilerplate on the press page.