What Zones for Training is
From the developer's own App Store listing, read on 3 September 2026. See the listing →
- Live heart rate zones on Apple Watch during any workout.
- Four zones — Peak, Cardio, Fat Burn, Warm Up — with time in each.
- Over 70 workout types, and a dashboard over everything in Apple Health.
- Recovery heart rate, workout graphs and long-run insights.
- PRO subscription for custom zones and longer statistics.
Where NTRVL differs
They watch. We conduct.
Zones for Training shows you what your heart did during whatever you chose to do. NTRVL decides what you should do — ten minutes of warm-up, four intervals of four minutes, three minutes between them — and counts it out.
Zones are computed differently, and that matters here.
Their four zones are the familiar Apple bands. NTRVL uses five zones from the Karvonen heart-rate-reserve method with a Tanaka maximum, because the 4×4 target of 90–95% is defined against reserve, not against a raw percentage of maximum.
We have far less history than they do.
Ten years and 19,144 ratings against a few months and none. If a long track record is what you are buying, that is theirs, not ours.
An eight-week programme, not a dashboard.
NTRVL schedules 24 sessions and tells you which one is next. Zones for Training is not trying to do that, and does not claim to.
When Zones for Training is the better choice
We would rather you use the right app than ours.
- You do many different kinds of training and want one heart-rate view across all of it.
- You want a mature app with a decade of updates behind it.
- You are not following a specific interval protocol and do not want one imposed.
The numbers
| Fact | NTRVL | Zones for Training |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free · Pro $1.99/mo or $9.99/yr, 7 days free | Free · PRO subscription |
| On the App Store since | 16 May 2026 | 13 September 2016 |
| Latest version | 1.1 — 31 Aug 2026 | 9.0.3 — 26 May 2026 |
| Ratings | No ratings yet | 4.8 ★ from 19,144 ratings |
| Minimum iOS | iOS 17.0 | iOS 17.6 |
Every figure above was read from Apple's App Store listing data on 3 September 2026. Prices and versions change — check the store before you decide.
Verdict
These two are not really rivals. Zones for Training is a dashboard for everything you do; NTRVL is a coach for one thing. Plenty of people should have both — run the 4×4 in ours on the three days the programme calls for, and keep theirs watching the rest of the week.
Try NTRVL freeThe free session is one interval, about twelve minutes, and it does not expire. No heart rate hardware required.