Can’t do an exercise? Find one that works the same muscles.

Type any movement and get its closest substitutes, ranked, and filtered to the equipment you actually have.

  • 2,056 exercises
  • 12-factor matching
  • Equipment aware
  • Over 100,000 searches since January 2026

What Everyone’s Looking For

The exercises people most often need a swap for. Each one opens its own alternatives page.

We’ve Got You Covered

Common constraints, each pointing at the exercises that still work.

  • No gymExercises that need nothing but your bodyweight
  • No barbellExercises you can load with dumbbells
  • No pull-up barBack exercises you can pull from the floor or a bench
  • Bad kneesGlute exercises, which load the hips rather than the knees

What’s Your Setup?

Open the finder with your kit already selected. Counts are by primary equipment: every exercise whose main kit is in the preset.

Target Specific Muscles

Every exercise we list for a muscle group, with its alternatives.

Swap a Whole Workout

Paste the exercises you planned and get one alternative for each, filtered to the equipment you have.

Or just type any exercise above and we will find your options.

How we calculate similarity

  • 20%Movement subpattern
  • 15%Primary muscles
  • 10%Movement pattern
  • 10%Equipment category
  • 8%Body position
  • 7%Laterality
  • 7%Stability requirement
  • 5%Skill complexity
  • 5%Force vector
  • 5%Exercise mechanic
  • 4%Range-of-motion profile
  • 4%Grip type

Every substitute is scored on 12 factors. These weights total 100% of the match. Similarity is not a safety rating. Read the full methodology

Questions about exercise substitutes

What the finder does, what it filters on and what a match percentage is worth.

How does the exercise substitution finder work?

Every exercise has its movement pattern, the muscles it works, the equipment it needs, the body position it is performed in and how much balance it demands on file. Name one and the finder scores every other exercise against those, then ranks them.

Which equipment can I filter by?

Tick the kit you have, from bodyweight and bands through dumbbells, barbells, benches and racks to the machines in a commercial gym. The finder then drops the exercises that need something you did not tick.

What does the match percentage mean?

How closely the two exercises agree on movement, muscles, equipment, body position and balance, weighted by how much each one matters. Above 90% is near-identical; below 70% is a loose cousin. It is not a promise that an exercise suits your injury or your experience.

Can I find alternatives that need no equipment?

Yes. Tick bodyweight on its own and the results are limited to exercises that need nothing else.