Frequently asked questions

No. ZonePoints works with no sign-up, no email, and no account. Just open the app, connect a sensor, and tap start. An account is only needed if you later choose to turn on optional cloud backup.

Zone points are a single score for your training effort. They combine intensity (how deep into your heart rate zones you go) and duration (how long you stay there). Push harder or longer and you earn more. It means a short, high-intensity session can be worth the same as a longer, easier one.

No. ZonePoints knows when you are warming up, training, or resting based on your heart rate, so only real training time counts. There are no timers or start/stop buttons to manage mid-workout.

Yes (your heart rate needs a few minutes to climb from resting into a training zone, and that warm-up time doesn't score the way time inside a zone does. But once you're there, it's easy to stay: your heart rate holds steady with only steady effort, and it stays elevated for a while even after you stop working hard. Cooling down by walking around instead of stopping dead keeps your heart rate in a training zone for longer, so you don't lose all of that time back) you just have to earn your way in first.

Any chest strap, armband, or watch that uses the standard Bluetooth Heart Rate Profile. We have tested sensors from PowrLabs, Coospo, Moofit, Magene, Garmin, Polar, Scosche, Peloton, Wahoo, and the Fitbit Charge 6 (using "HR on equipment").

ZonePoints measures cardiovascular effort during focused workouts, not all-day activity. A gentle walk is great for your health, but it generally won't earn zone points. The app focuses on the moderate-to-vigorous work that improves your fitness.

Yes. On Android, ZonePoints connects to Health Connect to import sessions recorded by Fitbit, Garmin, Samsung Health, and other apps that write heart rate there, and scores them automatically. No need to wear an extra sensor or change how you train.

Because Strava doesn't share heart rate. Its Health Connect sync sends time, distance and calories only, and zone points are calculated from heart rate, so there is nothing for ZonePoints to score.

The fix is to connect the app that actually recorded the workout rather than Strava. If your run came from a Garmin, a Fitbit, a Samsung or Pixel watch, those apps do write heart rate to Health Connect, and ZonePoints will score the same workout from there.

No problem. It's your weekly zone points total that matters, and you have until Sunday to reach it. Research shows that as long as you catch up within the week, you get similar health benefits to spreading exercise out evenly.

You lose seconds, not the session. Every heart rate reading is written to your phone's storage the moment it arrives, and forced to disk every few seconds, so a flat battery, a crash, or Android killing the app in the background costs you a few seconds of readings at most. Reopen ZonePoints and it notices the unfinished session, restores your readings, and puts you straight back into it, still running.

This is a deliberate difference. Many training apps hold the whole workout in memory and only write it out when you press stop, which is exactly why an interrupted session disappears entirely.

Yes. The session runs in an Android foreground service, so your sensor stays connected with the screen off, in your pocket, or while you use another app.

Before your first session ZonePoints also asks to be excluded from battery optimisation. Android otherwise puts background apps to sleep partway through a long workout and quietly stops the recording, which is the usual reason a session comes back shorter than the workout you actually did. It only asks once, and the app still works if you decline; long screen-off sessions are simply more reliable if you allow it.

You may still be able to save it. Streaks in ZonePoints are weekly rather than daily: a streak week is one where you reach your zone points target, so rest days never break anything.

If you miss a week but still scored at least half your target, the week isn't lost, it's held open as a savable miss. What you owe is double what you fell short by, added to the next week's own target: fall 50 short of 300 and the following week needs 400. Clear it and both weeks count toward your streak.

Beat your normal target but not that raised goal and the streak survives anyway. Whatever is still missing doubles and rolls on to the week after, so several weeks can be waiting on one make-up and all be saved together. The run only ends when a week drops below your normal target, when a week goes by with no training at all, or when the make-up would come to more than double that week's target, which is the most you will ever be asked for.

The point is that one bad week (illness, travel, a deadline) shouldn't erase months of consistency, but saving it should still cost you real work.

Most watch apps are built around distance and pace, which quietly assumes running or cycling. ZonePoints scores effort from heart rate alone, so a rowing machine, a kettlebell circuit, a stair climber, or a gym class all count properly instead of registering as a slow, short run.

It also stays out of the way: no start and stop buttons to remember, no account, no feed, no ads, and no subscription needed to see your own data.

Because a single number is something you can act on. Zone points combine how hard you worked with how long you worked, so five hard minutes and twenty easy ones are directly comparable, and a weekly target becomes a real goal rather than a wall of graphs to interpret. The detail is all still there when you want it, the score just means you don't need it to know whether the week is going well.

Yes. By default, your raw heart rate readings and full session data stay on your device. Nothing leaves your phone unless you explicitly turn on cloud backup. See our privacy policy for full details.

ZonePoints is free to start and has no ads. Get it on Google Play.

An iOS app is in progress. Follow along and vote on the feature tracker.