Most exercise APIs answer one question: "what does this exercise look like?" An app has to answer harder ones: what can this person do with the gear they have, what replaces the exercise that hurts their knee, what should the AI coach pick. That is what ExerciseBank is built for.
| ExerciseBank | MuscleWiki API | YMove | ExerciseDB (two sellers) | Free datasets (wger, free-exercise-db) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Filmed video of real people | Yes: 1,484 looping clips and 1,491 stills across 1,492 exercises, one studio, one framing | Yes | Yes | Animated GIFs; one seller lists videos on its larger paid tiers | wger: video on 46 of 903 exercises. free-exercise-db: stills only |
| Filter by the joints an exercise loads ("sore knee") | Yes, on every record, checked by a coach | Not listed in their docs | Not listed in their docs | Not listed in their docs | No |
| Substitutes with a score and a reason, from the API | Yes: 6,102 links, filterable by gear and joints | Not listed in their docs | Not listed in their docs | One seller: only in its $599 download. The other: related-exercise ids | No |
| Classification checked by a coach watching the clip | Yes: muscles, equipment, pattern, difficulty 1–5, joints, impact, unilateral | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated | Community-contributed |
| French on the records | Names, descriptions and cues on 591 exercises, more being added | Yes (14 languages) | Not listed | English only today; French "planned" at one seller | wger: community French on 582 |
| Keep your own copy of the catalogue data | Yes, encouraged: one call, ETag, changelog | Not stated | Not stated | One seller forbids storage and limits caching to an hour | Yes |
| Credit line or their branding in your app | None required | Required: a credit line, and their branding stays in the video | Watermark on the $19 plan | One seller watermarks its free tier | Attribution and share-alike (CC-BY-SA) on wger media |
| What a plan is measured in | People: $29, $79 or $199 a month for 500, 3,000 or 15,000 monthly end users, all 1,492 exercises on each. Plays are not metered | Plan tiers, $10 to $199.99 a month | Video minutes watched: $19 (watermarked), $29, $79, $299 a month | Requests and bandwidth; or 500 exercises for $100 a month | Free |
Facts about other products come from their own public pages, read on 2026-09-18; sources at the bottom. "Not listed" means we did not find it in their documentation, not that we tested for it. Tell us if something changed.
Two unrelated sellers use this name. One sells a one-time download of 1,394 exercises as animated GIFs that you host yourself; its FAQ says the visuals are generally male only and paced step by step rather than as smooth motion, and its substitution data comes only with the $599 tier. The other runs an API: a free tier of GIFs, and paid plans that give 500 exercises for $100 a month, with terms that forbid storing the data and limit caching to an hour.
ExerciseBank is filmed video of real people on every plan, all 1,492 exercises from $29 a month, substitutes and joint filters in the API itself, and a catalogue you are encouraged to copy into your own database.
MuscleWiki has filmed video too, with several angles. It requires a MuscleWiki credit line in your product and its branding stays embedded in the videos, which matters if your app carries your own brand or your clients'. Its documentation lists no substitute map and no joint or injury fields.
ExerciseBank asks for no credit line, and gives your app the data to decide: what this user can do with their gear, what to swap when something hurts, and why.
YMove streams HD video and bills by video minutes watched, with a watermark on its entry plan and offline caching only on higher plans. Every replay counts against the plan.
ExerciseBank does not meter plays. A plan covers a number of people per month, however often they watch; clips are about 120 KB and loop instantly on a phone connection, with HD renditions on higher plans. Its documentation lists no substitutes or joint filters either.
wger and free-exercise-db are generous projects and a fine way to prototype. wger has video on 46 of its 903 exercises and images on 273; free-exercise-db has two stills per exercise; API Ninjas documents no media at all. If the product shows people how to move, the gap is the video, and then the consistency: ExerciseBank's clips share one studio, one framing and one length, so a workout screen looks like one product.
A language model plans well and remembers badly: it invents exercises, guesses at what is easy on a knee, and cannot swap for missing gear. ExerciseBank gives it facts to call: structured search, loaded joints, and substitutes with reasons. The guide builds a workout generator where every item is a real, filmed exercise.
If free and open source is a requirement, use wger. If you want to buy files once and host them yourself, the ExerciseDB download does that. If several camera angles per exercise matter more than the data around them, look at MuscleWiki.
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Sources, read 2026-09-18: wger README and live API (github.com/wger-project/wger, wger.de/api/v2); free-exercise-db repository (github.com/yuhonas/free-exercise-db); exercisedb.io pricing, FAQ and terms; AscendAPI documentation (docs.ascendapi.com) and its RapidAPI listing and pricing; api.musclewiki.com and its FAQ; ymove.app/exercise-api and its pricing page; api-ninjas.com/api/exercises. Product names belong to their owners; we have no relationship with any of them.