Cursa vs orma run
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side โ with what reviewers say about each.
Cursa
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You don't start over. From the moment you grant Apple Health permission, Cursa reads every run you have ever logged, from any app, so your PRs are detected before you take your first step and your fitness level is already known. You arrive as yourself, not as a blank slate. TRAINING PLANS THAT SHOW THEIR WORK Pick any race from the RunSignUp catalog and Cursa builds a plan backward from your finish line. When your week goes sideways and the plan needs to shift, a card surfaces the exact sessions that changed and the plain-English reason beside them. Miss two tempo runs and volume pulls back before the deficit compounds. String together five strong weeks and the plan moves up to match. Nothing is reshuffled without you agreeing to it first. No spreadsheets, no PDFs or paper plans, no decision fatigue, no guessing what to run on Tuesday. COACHING THAT KNOWS THE WORKOUT After every run, Cursa generates a coaching note using Apple Intelligence -- on-device, not sent to a remote server. Because Cursa built your plan, it knows what today's workout was meant to deliver: the goal pace, the training phase, the intent. The note tells you exactly where you held form, where you drifted, and what that means for the rest of the week. Not a template. Not a run like yours. This run. INTERVAL WORKOUTS BUILT ON YOUR PHONE, RUN ON YOUR WATCH Drag work and recovery blocks, set target paces, define repeat counts. Send to watch. From that point, your Apple Watch owns the session -- showing current interval, live pace, heart rate, and rep count, with a gentle haptic or voice coaching when you drift off target. You don't need to touch your phone again. YOUR FULL RECORD, IN ONE PLACE All-time and year-to-date personal records across 1 mile, 5K, 10K, half marathon, and marathon. PRs are detected from real run segments, so a half marathon can surface a 10K PR you didn't know you set. Official chip times from RunSignUp sync automatically when available, and every race result links back to the source run you tracked. Every PR links back to the run where you achieved it. RACE DAY, HANDLED Before you start, enter the list of people you want to receive a live tracking link. Your friends and family open it in any browser, no account, no download. A moving dot, an estimated finish time that updates as you run. Cross the line and Cursa pulls your official chip time from RunSignUp automatically. No results site. No manual entry. RUN CLUBS AND A SOCIAL LAYER THAT STAYS LOCAL Create or join clubs, track group events, and see a leaderboard built around your circle, not a global ranking. Kudos and comments on completed runs. Routes visible only to mutual followers. The start and end of every route map is trimmed by 400 metres (default, can be adjusted) to keep your home off the screen. TREADMILL TOO No GPS signal needed. Set your speed on the treadmill and Cursa tracks distance and cadence, saving the session to Apple Health with the indoor workout flag set. NEW TO RUNNING? START FROM ZERO If you have no run history, that is also a starting line. Tell Cursa you are just beginning and your plan opens with a distance you can finish today, then adds only what the previous week's efforts earned. No deciding what pace to hold. No guessing how far. The first time you cross your goal distance, it logs as your first PR. We can have you running a 5K in 8 weeks. Core tracking and training is free at launch (some features may require a subscription later, but tracking runs will always be free). Features you would be paying a monthly subscription for elsewhere are free on day one. Cursa does the thinking. You do the running. You don't have to feel like a runner before you start being one. Run with intent.
orma run
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orma is a private diary for running and walking, for iPhone, Apple Watch and iPad. it records your run or your walk, hides the numbers while you move, and turns the data into color and shape afterwards. three principles, in this order: experience first, memory after, data last. DURING THE RUN choose run or walk, then start. the Apple Watch stays silent. no pace, no distance, no heart rate, no time. you see only a line drawing itself kilometer by kilometer, and a color slowly forming. everything is measured and saved. nothing is shown. the run stays a run, the walk stays a walk. WHEN YOU STOP fifteen seconds, two questions: how good it was, and one word that stayed with you. that is all orma asks while you catch your breath. a longer note is written later, on iPhone. COLOR FROM THE BODY every run and every walk becomes a colored tile. the color is not chosen, it is computed from three measured signals: elevation, heart rate, distance. a flat, calm, short outing and a steep, hard, long one come out as different colors. runs and walks share the same scale for distance and elevation, while a walk's heart keeps its own quieter band: a walk never looks like a run. orma learns your personal range and keeps tuning it, so the color is yours from the first day. THE TRACE each run and each walk is rendered as an orma: a generative line built from your own data. one loop per kilometer, its size set by your heart rate, its drift shaped by how your heart rises and falls and by the gradient under your feet. no two are alike. even the tile carries meaning: its width is the distance, its height the time. YOUR YEAR, AS ONE IMAGE your days fill a grid of the whole year, one cell per day. the days you moved become colored tiles. the days you did not stay blank. when you run and walk on the same day, they merge into a single tile: the grid shows days, not workouts. the empty days count as much as the full ones: a quiet week, a holiday, a season of life. the grid becomes a portrait of your year, lived on foot. MADE TO BE PRINTED orma is built for paper. export your year as a high-resolution poster, export a single orma as a clean image of one outing, or turn a whole year into a print-ready book. orma never sells or ships anything: the files are yours, and you choose where, and whether, to print them. A DIARY FOR EVERY STEP you do not have to record with orma to use orma. it reads your runs and walks from Apple Health automatically, whatever recorded them. import a full year at once, add outings done without a device by hand, or import a .gpx file for the full route and heart rate, then mark each one as a run or a walk. add a word, a rating and a note to any past outing, and build your diary backwards as well as forwards. export any outing as a .gpx for Strava or anywhere else. FREE AND PRIVATE orma is free and complete. every feature is open. no subscription, no in-app purchase, no ads, no account. nothing is tracked, nothing is sold. your runs and walks live on your device and in your own private iCloud, and nowhere else. ON EVERY DEVICE record on Apple Watch, read on iPhone and iPad. an Apple Watch is needed to record with orma; without one, you can still use orma as a diary by importing from Apple Health. orma is an independent app, made in Umbria, Italy.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: Cursa at every 9 days against orma run's every 6 weeks. orma run's advantage is iOS requirement (17.6 vs 26.0). On price, ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price ยท Rating ยท Positive reviews ยท Number of ratings ยท Update frequency ยท Ads ยท In-app purchases ยท Monetization ยท Best chart rank ยท Devices ยท Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
Cursa ships an update every 9 days, orma run every 6 weeks. The most recent releases landed on October 2, 2026 and October 5, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Cursa | orma run |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days โ better | Every 6 weeks |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.6 โ better |
| Further details โ not scored | ||
| Size | 32 MB | 7 MB |
| Age rating | 17+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Inflect LLC | Filippo Parroni |
In-app purchases
Cursa
No in-app purchases
orma run
No in-app purchases









