---
title: "Every Bouldering App, Compared"
description: "A practical comparison of bouldering apps for logging climbs, training, and building a wall of your own."
date: "2026-08-28"
slug: every-bouldering-app-compared
published: true
highlighted: true
---

# Every Bouldering App, Compared

There is no shortage of apps for recording a session. The harder question is what
happens when your wall is not already in a route database: how do you turn a photo
of a spray wall or home wall into something you can climb, share, and improve?

This is a comparison of the jobs bouldering apps do today, and the gap that remains
for climbers who set their own problems.

## What the current apps do well

Most bouldering apps fall into a few useful groups:

- **Training logs** record sessions, exercises, and progress over time.
- **Climb logs** keep a history of problems, grades, attempts, and sends.
- **Gym databases** provide routes for a particular gym or board and let climbers
  log feedback.
- **Board tools** focus on repeatable layouts such as Kilter and MoonBoard setups.

Apps such as KAYA, Stōkt, Crimpd, Redpoint, Griptonite, and LogSent show how much
value a good log can provide. They make it easy to remember what you climbed and
see patterns in your training.

## The home-wall problem

A personal wall does not come with a route database. Holds move, lighting changes,
and a single photo can contain dozens of possible starting points. Manually marking
every hold before setting a problem is slow; asking an app to guess a route without
seeing the wall is worse.

The useful middle ground is to detect the holds first and leave route setting to the
climber. A detector can turn a wall photo into scored hold polygons. The climber can
then choose the holds, name the problem, and share the result without pretending that
an image model understands the intended sequence.

## A better comparison question

When choosing a bouldering app, ask which part of the workflow it owns:

1. Can it record what happened in a session?
2. Can it show the wall or board the climb belongs to?
3. Can it help you create a route on a wall that is not in its catalogue?
4. Can you export or share the result with a friend?

The first two answers are common. The last two are where photo-based tools can help.

## Where OwnClimb fits

OwnClimb is a climbing-hold detection API. It turns a wall photo into scored hold
polygons so a developer can build the route database, editor, or home-wall app that
fits their own workflow. It does not assign grades or suggest a sequence: the person
setting the problem stays in charge.

Try it with a wall photo in the [public demo](/demo/upload-wall-image), or read the
[API documentation](/docs) if you are building a bouldering tool of your own.