Thru vs Load/Ready
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Thru
Conquer legendary hiking trails virtually by tracking your real-world steps. Progress through illustrated landscapes, collect badges, and check in at landmarks on an interactive map. Every mile walked brings your virtual hiker closer to the finish line.
- Virtual thru-hiking expeditions
- Real-world step tracking integration
- Interactive progress map
- Illustrated landscape representations
- Trail badge collection
- Landmark check-ins
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Ever dreamed of completing a legendary thru hike? Now you can conquer epic trails like the Pacific Crest Trail, Appalachian Trail, Grand Tour des Alpes, and more using nothing but your daily steps! Thru connects your real-world activity to a breathtaking virtual expedition. Whether you're walking the dog, running a marathon, or simply pacing around the office, every single mile moves your hiker further along the virtual trail. See your progress unfold on a beautifully designed, interactive map. As you clock the miles, you'll pass through illustrated representations of iconic landscapes. Stay motivated by collecting unique trail badges, checking in at landmarks, and watching your virtual self complete the journey.
Load/Ready
This app analyzes your personal health data from Apple Health to provide personalized readiness scores. It transparently shows the data and calculations used, allowing you to understand and override its suggestions based on your own body's signals.
- Personalized readiness scores
- Transparent data and calculations
- Automatic training load tracking
- Workout analysis
- Pattern identification
- Integration with Apple Health and gym equipment
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Most readiness apps hand you a score and ask you to trust it. Load/Ready shows its work: every number opens to the readings and the math behind it, measured against your own normal, never an average. It reads your Apple Health data (sleep, heart-rate variability, resting heart rate and workouts), tells you where you stand today, and names a session. Then it gets out of the way. You decide. YOUR NORMAL, NOT A POPULATION'S 50 is your usual. Recovery and sleep are measured against your own last 42 days, and each workout against your own sessions of the same kind. A resting heart rate of 48 means nothing on its own; two beats above your own average means something. A RECOMMENDATION YOU CAN TAKE APART Load/Ready suggests a session for today, with the values that led to it on screen. "Why this?" always opens. "Not today" is always an answer. Your own read of your body outranks the app. EVERY WORKOUT, SCORED AND COMPARED Each session gets a score against your own sessions of the same kind, and a rank you can tap through. Output vs heart rate shows whether the same speed or power now costs fewer beats than it used to: the plainest sign your engine is changing. WHAT'S INSIDE -Recovery and Sleep dials, with readiness read as recovery against training load -Automatic training load from heart rate, no logging, with this week set against the weeks before -Sleep stages, regularity and sleep debt against your own need -Workouts taken apart: heart-rate zones, route and splits -Patterns: which of your own signals move together, with the delay, the strength and whether it could be noise -Aerobic engine, HRV stability, walking heart rate, heart-rate recovery and body composition -"The Science": the method behind every card, in plain words, with the formulas and the research MEASURED, NOT GUESSED Pair a chest strap and Load/Ready finds your thresholds from beat-to-beat data instead of an age formula. Connect FTMS gym equipment (treadmills, bikes, rowers) and it records the machine's own speed, distance, power and incline. APPLE WATCH Record workouts on the watch with GPS, heart rate and time in zone on the face. Fourteen sports, indoor and out, saved to Apple Health. Complications show Recovery, Sleep or readiness, or start a workout in one tap. PRIVATE BY DESIGN There is no Load/Ready server. No account, no sign-up, no analytics, no ads, no third-party SDKs, and nothing sent to the developer. Your data stays on your devices, not in iCloud; a backup is a file you keep. The one request the app makes is to Apple Weather, for an outdoor workout's conditions, with the location rounded to about 1 km. TRY ALL OF IT FREE A free 30-day trial of the whole app, nothing held back, then one purchase to keep it. No subscription. Load/Ready works best with an Apple Watch or another wearable that records sleep and heart rate to Apple Health. Scores need at least a week of history and the load ratio about four weeks; until then the app says so rather than guessing. Load/Ready is not a medical device and does not diagnose, treat or prevent any condition.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is in-app purchases: Thru at none against Load/Ready's 2. Thru also leads on ratings volume (133 vs 4) and iOS requirement (17.6 vs 26.0). On price, rating, review sentiment and update cadence there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Load/Ready sells 2 one-off in-app purchases. Thru asks for nothing beyond the download.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 4.9 for Thru against 5.0 for Load/Ready. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: Thru has 133 ratings behind it against 4, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews are what separate them: 93% of Thru's written reviews are positive against 100% of Load/Ready's.
Thru ships an update every 9 days, Load/Ready every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on November 9, 2026 and November 10, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Thru | Load/Ready |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 4.9 (133 ratings) | 5.0 (4 ratings) — better |
| Positive reviews | 93.5% of reviews | 100.0% of reviews — better |
| Number of ratings | 133 — better | 4 |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No — better | Yes |
| Monetization | Free — better | Free with in-app purchases |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad | iPhone, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 17.6 — better | 26.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 29 MB | 23 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 9+ |
| Developer | Aaron La Lau | Brian Sutterer |
Customer experience
Thru
Load/Ready
In-app purchases
Thru
No in-app purchases
Load/Ready
- 30-day TrialFree
- Load/Ready, unlocked$19.99








