Frequently Asked Questions

URBDY is a dedicated training, nutrition, and coaching app designed specifically for UK university students and serious gym-goers. Instead of paying £80 a year for a calorie counter (like MyFitnessPal) and another £25 a year for a workout tracker (like Hevy), URBDY combines both into a single, cohesive iOS app.

You get a distraction-free gym logger with 876 illustrated exercises, a built-in UK food database with free barcode scanning, a weekly budget meal planner built around student maintenance loans, weekly inter-university consistency leagues, and integrated coaching—all for less than the price of a single high-street meal deal a month.

Yes, completely free. Throughout January 2027, URBDY is 100% free for every user as part of our nationwide launch month.

No payment details, credit cards, or subscription commitments are required to access the app during January. Every single feature—including full workout logging, unlimited UK barcode scanning, AI label snapping, budget meal preps, and uni leagues—is unlocked for all registered users. Subscriptions only take effect on 1 February 2027.

From 1 February 2027, URBDY operates on two clear, transparent subscription tiers with no adverts and no paywalled sub-features:

Student Plan (Verified UK University Students): £2.99 per month, or £19.99 per year (equivalent to roughly £1.66 a month). Standard Plan (Graduates and Non-Students): £6.99 per month, or £49.99 per year.

Both plans provide complete access to all app features. There are no secondary tiers, in-app microtransactions, or paid add-ons.

Verification is instant and hassle-free. When setting up your account or visiting Profile → Student plan:

1. Enter your official UK university email address (ending in .ac.uk).
2. We check your email domain against our verified allowlist of recognised UK universities and higher education institutions.
3. We send a 6-digit confirmation code to that inbox.
4. Enter the code in the app, and your student plan status is instantly confirmed until the next annual academic re-check in September.

No student ID card photos, biometric face scans, or manual founder reviews are required.

Student status is valid for the academic year and is re-verified every September via a fresh confirmation code sent to your active .ac.uk email address.

Thirty days before your verification expires, the app will remind you to re-verify. If you graduate or leave university and no longer have access to an active university email address, your account simply transitions to our Standard Plan (£6.99/month or £49.99/year). You never lose your workout history, custom routines, weight charts, or saved foods.

No. Aside from the free nationwide launch month in January 2027, URBDY does not offer a permanent free tier or rolling 7-day trials.

By charging a fair, modest subscription (£19.99 a year for students), we avoid running adverts, selling your private health data, or paywalling essential everyday utilities like barcode scanners. If your subscription ends, your historical logs and routines remain safely saved on your device, and the app prompts you to renew to resume active logging.

Your core account profile (account identifier, university affiliation, verification status, and subscription tier) is securely stored on enterprise-grade Supabase cloud infrastructure hosted in London, United Kingdom.

To ensure exceptional speed and complete privacy, your personal workout logs, custom routines, food logs, and weigh-ins are stored locally on your device and synchronized securely with encrypted backups in our London data centre. Your data is encrypted both in transit (TLS 1.3) and at rest (AES-256). We never sell your personal or training data to data brokers, advertisers, or third-party marketing networks.

Under the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, bodyweight, calorie intake, and physical exercise metrics are classified as Special Category Health Data.

URBDY requires explicit, unbundled consent during onboarding before any health information can be saved to your profile. If you choose not to provide health consent, you can still browse exercises and recipes, but personalized macro targets and logging features remain disabled. Furthermore, sensitive lifestyle logs (such as sleep scores and alcohol unit tracking) remain strictly confidential to you and are never displayed on public profiles, social feeds, clubs, or university leaderboards.

You retain absolute ownership and control over your personal data:

Download my data (GDPR Article 15 & 20): Navigate to Profile → Your data → Download my data. The app instantly compiles a comprehensive JSON export containing your profile details, complete workout history, sets, reps, personal records, food logs, and weigh-in records. Delete account (GDPR Article 17): Navigate to Profile → Delete account. Confirming deletion immediately and permanently erases your cloud records, authentication credentials, uploaded media, and local app cache.

For any specific data protection inquiries, you can reach our team directly at [email protected].

The URBDY AI Coach provides an objective, weekly check-in delivered every Sunday evening. It is powered by Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Haiku API.

To protect your privacy and ensure cost efficiency, the AI receives only anonymised, aggregated metrics—such as your weekly average calories, protein adherence (e.g. "hit protein target 5 out of 7 days"), total workouts completed, and main lift progressions. It then drafts a concise, constructive summary celebrating your consistency, identifying potential fatigue stalls, and outlining recommendations for the upcoming week. If you work with a human fitness coach through URBDY, the AI coach automatically pauses to ensure your coach remains the single authority on your programming.

No. The AI coach is strictly an automated training and consistency accountability tool. It is not a doctor, physiotherapist, or registered dietitian, and it never provides clinical, medical, or diagnostic advice.

URBDY incorporates strict automated guardrails: Daily calorie targets can never be set below safe physiological floors (minimum 1,500 kcal for men, 1,200 kcal for women). Weight loss pacing is strictly capped at safe weekly rates (~0.5–1.0% of total bodyweight). Fat-loss goals are automatically disabled for users who are pregnant, breastfeeding, or have a history of eating disorders. If extreme restriction patterns are detected, the app signposts users to Beat (the UK's leading eating disorder charity) and university student wellbeing services.

Coach Mode allows qualified personal trainers and online coaches to manage their roster directly within URBDY, eliminating clumsy Excel spreadsheets and WhatsApp check-ins.

• Client Linking: Coaches can share a unique invite link or get listed in the URBDY coach directory. Once a client links their account, the coach gains live visibility over their training logs, sets, reps, RPE, food logs, and weekly weigh-in averages. No Double Entry: Clients continue logging their meals and workouts as normal; their coach sees the data instantly without the client having to log into a separate portal.
• Zero Commission Fee: URBDY charges 0% commission on client payments. Coaches can invoice clients directly through integrated Stripe card processing (paying only standard Stripe processing fees) or collect fees outside the app in cash or bank transfer. Coach Mode is completely free for coaches during our launch period.

Yes. Many university gym weight rooms and campus sports facilities are located in basements with poor or nonexistent mobile reception.

URBDY is built offline-first. Our complete exercise library (876 exercises with animated illustrations and form guides) and over 11,000 UK supermarket and whole food items (sourced from the UK Government CoFID 2021 tables and curated Open Food Facts data) are stored directly inside the app. You can log entire workouts, start rest timers, record personal records, and scan common UK barcodes completely offline. All data syncs smoothly once your phone reconnects to Wi-Fi or 4G/5G.

Barcode scanning in URBDY is fast, native, and completely free of charge on all active plans. Unlike legacy fitness apps that lock barcode scanners behind premium paywalls, scanning is an essential core feature in URBDY.

Point your camera at any UK food packaging to scan its EAN/UPC barcode. The app instantly checks our local database of UK supermarket staples (Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Aldi, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, and Co-op). If you encounter an unrecognised product, you can use our AI Label Reader to snap a quick photo of the nutrition table on the back of the packet; the app reads the calories, protein, carbs, and fat automatically and saves the food for you and the wider student community.

The Budget Meal Planner is designed around the reality of UK student budgets. Instead of suggesting expensive ingredients like salmon fillets or specialist powders, the planner lets you specify your weekly grocery spend (e.g. £20 to £30) and your target daily protein goal.

The planner ranks ingredients and recipe components by protein-per-pound (£), surfacing cost-effective staples such as canned tuna, Greek yoghurt, eggs, chicken breast, lentils, and oats. It generates a full weekly shopping list sorted by supermarket aisle (Produce, Dairy, Meat, Bakery, Ambient) so you can get in and out of the shop quickly without overspending your maintenance loan.

Student halls and shared student flats often feature limited cooking appliances. URBDY includes a dedicated My Kitchen setup screen where you tick the equipment you actually possess: Microwave Single or double hob Oven Air fryer Kettle only No-cook / ambient prep

Recipes automatically filter to match your available setup. Furthermore, you can select your microwave's specific power rating (600–800W low, 800–1000W standard, or 1000W+ high). Cooking times across all microwave recipes scale automatically to your appliance's wattage, ensuring your food is piping hot and safely prepared.

Traditional fitness streaks that break if you miss a single day encourage unhealthy perfectionism and guilt. URBDY calculates streaks based on Active Weeks, counting whether you achieved your personalised weekly training frequency (for example, hitting 3 sessions in a week). Rest days will never break your streak.

To accommodate student life: Life Happens Grace Period: One missed week per month is automatically forgiven, preserving your hard-earned streak during intensive essay deadlines or illness. Holiday Mode: Heading home for reading week, summer, or festival season? Switch on Holiday Mode in Today → Streak & holidays. This pauses all streak counters and push reminders until your chosen return date.

Jumping straight back into your pre-exam weights after weeks off is a fast track to debilitating muscle soreness (DOMS) or injury. URBDY includes a science-backed Comeback Weights engine.

• When you start a session after two or more weeks away from the gym, URBDY analyses the duration of your break: Breaks under 3 weeks incur minimal genuine strength loss. For longer breaks, the app automatically suggests lighter starting weights (graduating downwards by roughly ~3% per week of absence, capped at a safe 30% reduction) and drops your first session's load by an additional 5% to limit extreme muscle damage.
• Over your next 1 to 4 sessions, the app progressively restores your baseline working weights as your muscle memory and neuromuscular coordination return.

URBDY connects your training with friends and your university campus:

Uni Leagues: Every time you complete an Active Week, your university earns points on the national inter-university league table. Most importantly, rankings are determined strictly by consistency, workouts logged, and strength progress—never by bodyweight lost or calorie deficits. Clubs & Group Chats: Create private clubs for your flatmates, sports team, or society. Club members can view each other's consistency logs, share routines with one tap, and chat in an integrated, WhatsApp-style group chat.

Subscriptions are processed securely through the Apple App Store (and Google Play Store on Android). You can cancel, upgrade, or switch billing intervals at any time:

On iPhone: Open the Settings app on your device → tap your name at the top → tap Subscriptions → select URBDY → tap Cancel Subscription. In the App: Navigate to Profile → Your plan to open a direct shortcut to your device's subscription management page.

When you cancel, you retain full, unrestricted access to URBDY until the end of your currently paid billing period. We never charge hidden cancellation fees.

If you have any further questions or need help with your account, please reach out to our team at [email protected].