Straight answer, both halves: Pushup RPG writes to Apple Health — opt-in, and write-only — and Pushup RPG has no Apple Watch app. If you want a pushup app that covers Apple Health and Apple Watch in one package, we can give you only half of it. Reps are counted by the iPhone's front camera using on-device pose detection; nothing runs on watchOS, and no watchOS version of our app exists.
Disclosure, up front: pushup.quest is published by the makers of Pushup RPG. We are not a neutral review site, so the useful thing we can do is be precise about our own limits and clear about who should install something else. That is what the rest of this page does: it describes exactly what our app writes to Health, states plainly that the watch is a real gap, and points watch-first readers to apps from other developers whose App Store listings show a watchOS app.
Does Pushup RPG sync with Apple Health?
Yes. The sync is opt-in — nothing goes to Health until you grant permission through Apple's standard HealthKit sheet, and you can revoke it later from the Health app's Data Access & Devices settings. If you never grant it, the app still counts reps, still levels your character and still tracks your streak; Health simply stays empty.
The important word is write-only. Pushup RPG requests zero read permissions and makes no health queries at all. Not steps, not heart rate, not weight, not workouts logged by other apps. There is no code path in the app that asks Health for anything, so there is nothing to weigh up at the permission sheet — the read column is empty because there is nothing in it.
What data does Pushup RPG write to Apple Health?
Two things, and only two:
- One workout per session, recorded as an
HKWorkoutof type functional strength training. Consecutive battles are buffered into a single workout rather than landing as a string of short separate entries, so a session made up of several fights shows up as one workout. - A conservative active-energy estimate attached to that workout. Because the app never reads your height, weight, age or heart rate, it cannot personalise the calculation, so the estimate is deliberately conservative. Treat that number as a floor, not a measurement.
That is the whole of it. Your character level, your loot, your Fellowship standing and your raw rep counts — pushups and squats are tracked separately and never pooled — stay inside the app. Nothing from the camera goes anywhere either: no video, image or pose data is recorded, stored or transmitted, and there is no server in the rep-counting loop at all.
One thing we will not overclaim: how Apple surfaces a third-party workout in your Activity rings or the Fitness app is Apple's behaviour, not ours. Do one session, then open Fitness and check for yourself before you build a habit around it.
Can Pushup RPG read my health data?
No. Zero read permissions requested, zero health queries made. This is a deliberate trade, and it costs us something real: an app that could read your weight and age would produce a better calorie figure, and an app that could read your workout history could tell you that you already trained today. Ours cannot do either. If personalised energy estimates matter to you more than a minimal permission footprint, that is a fair reason to prefer a different app.
Does Pushup RPG have an Apple Watch app?
No. There is no watchOS app, no watch complication and no wrist-based rep counting. Pushup RPG runs on iPhone (iOS 17.0 or later) and Android — free on Google Play.
The reason is what the counting is built on. Pushup RPG counts with on-device camera pose detection that measures depth, so only full-range reps register and reps cannot be padded. Wrist motion is a different signal: it can follow your arm through a rhythm, but it cannot see how far your chest actually travelled. A wrist version would not be a port of this app; it would be a different product with different accuracy behaviour. We would rather say we do not do this than ship a weaker version of it.
So if you train with your phone in a locker, or you simply want to leave the phone alone and do pushups, we are the wrong app and you should stop reading here. Pick one from the table below.
Which pushup apps work on Apple Watch?
Everything below was read off each app's live US App Store listing on 27 July 2026. Listings drift, so re-check before you install. We have not independently tested any of these apps for counting accuracy, and we are not aware of any published independent benchmark for this category — read the table as "what the listing says", not "what we measured". Where a column says "not recorded in our check", that means we did not capture it, not that the app lacks the feature.
| App | Apple Watch app on listing? | Apple Health on listing? | How reps are counted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pushup RPG (ours) | No — phone only | Yes, opt-in and write-only | iPhone front camera, on-device pose detection; pushups and squats |
| Push Up Counter & Tracker (Puuush) | Yes — watchOS 10+ | Not recorded in our check | ARKit camera on iPhone; gyroscope and accelerometer on the watch |
| CounterUps: Push-Ups Tracker | Yes — watchOS 10.0+ | Not recorded in our check | Camera, distance sensor, manual tap or voice on iPhone; gravity detection on the watch |
| Rep Up for Watch | Yes — watchOS 10.6+ (with iPhone, iOS 17.6+) | Not recorded in our check | Wrist motion pattern recognition; a general rep counter that names pushups among supported movements |
| pushr – push-up workouts | No — phone only | Yes, listing mentions Apple Health data | TrueDepth facial tracking as you lower toward the screen |
| Top Pushup: AI Push Up Counter | Not listed — iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision | Not recorded in our check | Camera pose detection from a side view, with live audio form feedback |
| Count Pushups with Camera | Not listed — iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision | Not recorded in our check | Camera body-motion tracking, phone about two metres away |
| PushCount – Push Up Counter | Not listed — iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Vision | Not recorded in our check | Front camera measures distance to your face with the phone under your chest; counts aloud, processed on device |
Three of those list a watchOS app. Push Up Counter & Tracker (Puuush) is the closest thing to "both": camera counting on the phone and wrist counting on the watch, with its listing stating that no calibration is required and that it works on either wrist in any orientation. It is free with in-app purchases — the listing showed Pro at $3.99 monthly or $29.99 annually, plus tip purchases from $1.99 to $100.00 (checked July 2026). CounterUps also spans phone and watch and offers four counting modes on the phone, including manual tap and voice; free with in-app purchases, with a $2.99 weekly, $4.99 monthly and $19.99 annual subscription plus other bundles in the $14.99–$39.99 range (checked July 2026). Rep Up for Watch is the most wrist-first of the three — a general strength rep counter driven entirely by wrist motion, which also detects when you stop in order to reset the count; free with in-app purchases (checked July 2026).
The iPhone-only options, for completeness: Top Pushup is free and ad-supported as of version 4.1.0; Count Pushups with Camera is free with no in-app purchases shown on its listing; PushCount is free with in-app purchases from $0.99 to $29.99; and pushr is free with in-app purchases listed at $3.99, $11.99 and $23.90 (all checked July 2026).
The verdict, by reader type
- You want Apple Health entries and a game to keep you coming back, and the phone on the floor is fine: Pushup RPG. Free to download on iOS 17+, with an optional Vigil membership as an in-app purchase — camera rep counting and the campaign are free. Rated 4.8 on the App Store, and the Health write is one functional-strength-training workout per session.
- The Apple Watch is non-negotiable: do not install ours — we have nothing on the wrist and nothing planned that we can promise you. Start with Puuush or CounterUps if you want phone and watch in one app, or Rep Up for Watch if you only ever want to tap your wrist and go.
- You want two-way Health integration — an app that reads your metrics to personalise plans: we are the wrong choice, by design. Our permission sheet has an empty read column and always will. Check the listings of the apps above and grant permissions with your eyes open.
- You are on Android: Pushup RPG is available there, free on Google Play. Every competitor in the table above was checked on the US App Store, so we did not check whether any of them also ship an Android version.
- You care most that a rep is a real rep: camera pose detection is the only method in the table that can measure how deep you went. Wrist motion cannot. That is the actual trade you are making when you choose the watch.
A note on the reps themselves
Whichever app you pick, the counter is downstream of the movement. Depth is what makes a pushup a pushup, and it is also what counting methods disagree about most — our pushup form guide covers what full range actually looks like. If you cannot yet do one clean rep, no counting method will fix that; start with where to start when you cannot do a pushup or the beginner progression. And a boundary that applies to every app on this page: muscle burn and fatigue are normal, but sharp joint pain in a wrist, elbow or shoulder is a stop signal — end the set, and see a clinician if it persists. No leaderboard is worth training through it.
If you want the wider view of how these counting methods compare, we wrote that up separately in apps that count pushups, and you can read who is behind this site on our about page.
