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What strength software actually costs per athlete

Every vendor in this category prices the same way: a flat annual fee against a roster cap. That makes the headline numbers impossible to compare, because $1,000 for up to 250 athletes and $900 for up to 30 are not the same offer. So here is the whole category divided out — first at the cap, then at a roster size an actual high school has.

Published prices, divided by the cap they buy

Only vendors that publish a rate card can appear here. The per-athlete column is the annual price divided by the plan's own stated cap.

On this table CoachMePlus looks like one of the two cheapest things in the category. Hold that thought.

Now divide by a roster that exists

A cap is not a feature. You cannot buy $4.00 an athlete from CoachMePlus unless you have 250 athletes to put on it — below that you are paying for empty seats. So here is the same published pricing against thirty athletes, one varsity squad, using each vendor's cheapest plan that fits thirty.

CoachMePlus moves from joint-cheapest to second most expensive without changing its price, because its smallest plan carries a 250-athlete cap and a thirty-athlete program pays for 220 seats it will never fill. That reversal is the whole point of this page. Nothing in the category is mispriced; the published numbers are just answering a different question from the one a coach is asking.

The rule that falls out of it: ignore the per-athlete rate at the cap and work out the per-athlete rate at your roster. It is one division and it reorders the market.

The four you cannot put in either table

Not because they are expensive — because they publish nothing to divide.

• PLT4M prints "Plans Start At Just $500" with no tier, no cap and no ceiling. A floor with no cap attached cannot be turned into a per-athlete figure at all. There is more on what a starting price leaves out.
• TrainHeroic lists eleven athlete tier sizes and puts a price against none of them. Inspected 26 August 2026, the only dollar figure anywhere on the page is $9.99 a month per assistant coach, which is charged on top and scales with your staff rather than your roster.
• BridgeAthletic publishes no price and asks for a call.
• Smartabase is the interesting one. Its own pricing URL, smartabase.com/pricing, now returns a 302 redirect to teamworks.com/ams — read 26 August 2026. That destination publishes no price either; it asks you to "complete the form below and one of our team members will be in touch." It also does not use the Smartabase name anywhere on the page. If you are comparing Smartabase against Teamworks as two options, check whether you are comparing one.

Roughly half this category will not tell a coach what it costs. That is covered separately on the page about buying when nobody lists a price.

What this table is not

Price per athlete is one axis and it is the least interesting one if the products differ, which they do — enormously. CoachMePlus's Performance plan includes clinician dashboards, an alerts and automation engine, PHI access controls with an audit trail, and a GDPR- and HIPAA-aligned deployment with EU hosting options. That is a different category of product from a logging app, and a program that needs it should buy it and not think about $33 an athlete for a second.

The same cuts against us. EatSleepRep does not supply written programs, does not integrate force plates or velocity hardware, and has no athlete-management layer. If you need any of those, every number above is irrelevant to you. What the table is good for is the case where two products would both do the job and one of them costs four times more because of how its tiers happen to be drawn.

One more caveat worth stating: annual figures are compared throughout. Several vendors offer monthly billing at a higher effective rate, and at least one advertises multi-year and district discounts that are not published. Check what you are actually being quoted before you use any of this.

How to use this before a quote call

1. Count your actual roster. Not your program, not the whole department — the athletes who will log in.
2. For each vendor, find the cheapest plan whose cap is at or above that number.
3. Divide. That figure, not the one on the pricing page, is what you are paying per athlete.
4. Ask what happens when you cross the cap mid-season, because that is when the second invoice arrives.
5. Ask whether coach or assistant seats cost extra. At least one vendor charges per assistant monthly, on top of the roster tier.

Common questions

At the plan cap, TeamBuildr Platinum Pro is $2.80 per athlete a year and EatSleepRep School is $3.25 - but those rates require 1,000 and 400 athletes respectively. For a real roster of thirty, the published prices work out at $8.30 per athlete on EatSleepRep Squad, $30.00 on TeamBuildr Silver, $30.00 on Volt's high school Small Team plan and $33.33 on CoachMePlus Strength. All figures read from each vendor's own pricing page on 26 August 2026.

Because every vendor prices a cap rather than a headcount. CoachMePlus's smallest plan is $1,000 a year for up to 250 athletes, which is excellent value at 250 and poor value at thirty, since you pay the same $1,000 either way. The per-athlete rate printed against a cap is only real if you fill the cap.

CoachMePlus publishes $1,000 a year for its Strength plan, up to 250 athletes, and $2,500 a year for Performance, up to 500. Its Elite tier is quote-only, described as scalable from 500 athletes up. All three list a free 14-day trial. Read 26 August 2026.

No. As of 26 August 2026 smartabase.com/pricing returns a 302 redirect to teamworks.com/ams, which publishes no price and asks you to complete a form for a demo. That page does not use the Smartabase name.

Often not. CoachMePlus Performance includes clinician dashboards, PHI access controls with an audit trail and HIPAA-aligned hosting; TeamBuildr has years of depth built for strength staff. If you need those, buy them. This comparison only helps when two products would both do the job and the price gap comes from how the tiers are drawn rather than what you get.

More in this series

• What the category costs — Published prices for TeamBuildr, Hevy Coach, PLT4M and EatSleepRep side by side.
• What "plans start at $500" leaves out — A floor with no tiers, no roster cap and no ceiling, and what that does to a budget line.
• The assistant coach bill — TrainHeroic charges $9.99 a month per assistant on top of the athlete tier. What a staff of four costs.
• Volt's two price sheets — The same plan and the same roster cap cost $900 on one page of Volt's site and $1,200 on another.
• When nobody lists a price — BridgeAthletic, Teamworks and PLT4M will not quote without a call. Five questions that turn a demo into a number.
• Choosing for a high school — Mixed phones, summer, subs, and the parent who asks what the app collects.
• What "free" actually means — Trial, free tier and free-for-athletes are three different things.

All eight are listed on the for-coaches index.

Prices and plan details for other products were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 25 August 2026 and are quoted as published. They change; check before you buy. EatSleepRep's own prices are on the product page.