💪 wger Exercise Database Scraper

🚀 Export the open-source fitness exercise catalog in seconds. Pull 845+ exercises with primary and secondary muscle targets, equipment, multilingual descriptions, images, and videos. No API key, no registration, no manual CSV wrangling.

🕒 Last updated: 2026-05-22 · 📊 19 fields per record · 💪 845+ exercises · 🌍 30 languages · 🎯 16 muscle groups · 🏋️ 12 equipment types

The wger Exercise Database Scraper exports the community-maintained wger.de fitness catalog and returns 19 fields per record, including exercise name, body category, equipment, primary and secondary muscles, full description, license attribution, image gallery, and video links. The underlying dataset is one of the most widely cited open fitness references and has been maintained by a global network of personal trainers, athletes, and fitness app developers for over a decade.

The catalog covers 9 body categories, 12 equipment types, 16 named muscle groups, and 30 translation languages, from major compound lifts down to mobility and rehab movements. This Actor makes that data downloadable as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML in under five minutes. All filters run on the server, so you skip the parser engineering entirely.

🎯 Target Audience	💡 Primary Use Cases
Fitness app builders, personal trainers, gym software, sports scientists, rehab clinicians, content creators, e-learning platforms	Workout-builder catalogs, exercise libraries, muscle-group autocomplete, multi-language fitness apps, AI workout planners, gym CMS sync

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📋 What the wger Exercise Database Scraper does

Four filtering workflows in a single run:

• 🌍 Full catalog export. Every translated exercise in the wger database.
• 🗣️ Language filter. Pick one of 30 translation languages including English, German, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic.
• 🏷️ Category filter. Restrict to one of 9 body regions: Abs, Arms, Back, Calves, Cardio, Chest, Legs, Shoulders.
• 🏋️ Equipment filter. Filter by 12 equipment types: Barbell, Dumbbell, Kettlebell, Resistance band, Pull-up bar, Bench, Gym mat, Swiss Ball, Bodyweight, and more.
• 💪 Muscle filter. Filter by 16 named anatomical muscle groups (Pectoralis major, Latissimus dorsi, Quadriceps femoris, etc.).

Each record includes identifiers (exerciseId, uuid), naming and aliases, anatomical targets (primaryMuscles and secondaryMuscles), equipment list, full HTML description, CC-BY-SA 4.0 license attribution, image gallery, video links, and source URLs.

💡 Why it matters: clean, structured exercise data is the backbone of every workout app, gym CMS, personal-training platform, and AI coach. Building your own pipeline means writing HTML parsers, normalizing muscle taxonomies, and chasing translations. This Actor skips all of that and keeps your library fresh on every run.

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🎬 Full Demo

🚧 Coming soon: a 3-minute walkthrough showing how to go from sign-up to a downloaded fitness catalog.

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⚙️ Input

Input	Type	Default	Behavior
maxItems	integer	10	Records to return. Free plan caps at 10, paid plan at 1,000,000.
language	string	"en"	One of 30 supported languages. ISO 639-1 codes.
category	string	""	One of 9 body categories. Empty = all categories.
equipment	string	""	One of 12 equipment types. Empty = all equipment.
muscle	string	""	One of 16 primary muscles. Empty = all muscles.

Example: 25 chest exercises that use a barbell, in English.

{
    "maxItems": 25,
    "language": "en",
    "category": "11",
    "equipment": "1"
}

Example: every bodyweight back exercise in Spanish.

{
    "maxItems": 50,
    "language": "es",
    "category": "12",
    "equipment": "7"
}

⚠️ Good to Know: wger relies on community translations. English coverage is the most complete; other languages may fall back to English when a translation is missing. Image and video assets are also community-contributed and not every exercise has visuals.

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📊 Output

Each exercise record contains 19 fields. Download the dataset as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

🧾 Schema

Field	Type	Example
🖼️ imageUrl	string | null	"https://wger.de/media/exercise-images/91/Bench-press-1.png"
🏷️ name	string	"Bench Press"
🆔 exerciseId	number	192
🔖 uuid	string	"5891d0aa-e30c-4f10-a8d6-fa1da77b71e6"
📂 category	string	"Chest"
🏋️ equipment	array	["Barbell", "Bench"]
💪 primaryMuscles	array	["Pectoralis major"]
🤸 secondaryMuscles	array	["Anterior deltoid", "Triceps brachii"]
📝 description	string	"Lie flat on a bench, grip the bar..."
🌐 language	string	"en"
🪪 aliases	array	["Barbell Bench Press"]
⚖️ license	string	"CC-BY-SA 4.0"
👤 licenseAuthor	string | null	"wger.de contributors"
🖼️ images	array	["https://wger.de/media/exercise-images/..."]
🎥 videos	array	[]
📅 createdAt	ISO 8601	"2014-09-01T13:46:33Z"
🔄 updatedAt	ISO 8601	"2023-08-14T18:32:11Z"
🔗 detailUrl	string	"https://wger.de/en/exercise/192/bench-press"
🕒 scrapedAt	ISO 8601	"2026-05-22T00:00:00.000Z"

📦 Sample records

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✨ Why choose this Actor

	Capability
💪	Comprehensive catalog. 845+ exercises across 9 body regions and 16 muscle groups.
🌍	30 languages. From English and Spanish to Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Esperanto.
🎯	Multi-dimensional filters. Category, equipment, muscle, and language stack freely in a single run.
🖼️	Visual assets. Image galleries and video URLs included when available.
⚡	Fast. 10 exercises in under 5 seconds, the entire catalog in under a minute.
⚖️	Open license. CC-BY-SA 4.0 attribution included on every record.
🚫	No authentication. Works with public fitness data. No login or sign-up needed.

📊 Accurate exercise reference data is the foundation of every workout-builder, AI coach, and personal-training platform on the market.

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📈 How it compares to alternatives

Approach	Cost	Coverage	Refresh	Filters	Setup
⭐ wger Exercise Database Scraper (this Actor)	$5 free credit, then pay-per-use	845+ exercises	Live per run	category, equipment, muscle, language	⚡ 2 min
Commercial fitness data feeds	$200+/month	Varies, often opaque	Vendor-controlled	Limited	🐢 Days
Scraping a closed gym app	Free	Single source, fragile	Manual	None	🕒 Hours of engineering
Hand-curating your own library	Free	Whatever you write	Manual	None	🐌 Weeks

Pick this Actor when you want a broad multilingual catalog, server-side filtering, and no parser maintenance.

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🚀 How to use

1. 📝 Sign up. Create a free account with $5 credit (takes 2 minutes).
2. 🌐 Open the Actor. Go to the wger Exercise Database Scraper page on the Apify Store.
3. 🎯 Set input. Pick a language, category, equipment, or muscle (or leave blank for all), and set maxItems.
4. 🚀 Run it. Click Start and let the Actor collect your data.
5. 📥 Download. Grab your results in the Dataset tab as CSV, Excel, JSON, or XML.

⏱️ Total time from signup to downloaded dataset: 3-5 minutes. No coding required.

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💼 Business use cases

🏋️ Fitness Apps & Workout Builders Pre-populated exercise library on app launch Muscle-group autocomplete and search Localized exercise names in 30 languages Image and video galleries for movement demos	👨‍🏫 Personal Trainers & Coaches Programmable workout templates Client-facing PDF handouts with images Multilingual programs for international clients Substitution lookups by equipment availability
🏥 Rehab & Sports Medicine Targeted protocols by muscle group Equipment-free home programs for patients Multilingual instructions for clinics Structured data for outcome research	🤖 AI Coaches & LLM Pipelines Grounded retrieval source for AI workout planners Training corpora for fitness-domain models Embedding catalogs for semantic search Validated exercise vocabulary for generated plans

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🔌 Automating wger Exercise Database Scraper

Control the scraper programmatically for scheduled runs and pipeline integrations:

• 🟢 Node.js. Install the apify-client NPM package.
• 🐍 Python. Use the apify-client PyPI package.
• 📚 See the Apify API documentation for full details.

The Apify Schedules feature lets you trigger this Actor on any cron interval. Hourly, daily, or weekly refreshes keep downstream databases in sync automatically.

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🌟 Beyond business use cases

Data like this powers more than commercial workflows. The same structured records support research, education, civic projects, and personal initiatives.

🎓 Research and academia Sports-science papers needing standardized exercise vocabulary Kinesiology and physiotherapy coursework Reproducible studies with cited dataset pulls Comparative meta-analyses on training protocols	🎨 Personal and creative Side-project gym apps and tracker tools Personal workout journals with images Fitness-themed blogs and YouTube content Hobby projects for self-coached athletes
🤝 Non-profit and civic Community gym kiosks and recreation centers Refugee health programs needing multilingual content Open educational resources for schools and PE classes Inclusive accessibility-focused exercise libraries	🧪 Experimentation Train fitness-classification or recommender models Prototype LLM agents that build custom workouts Test embedding strategies on movement taxonomies Validate workout-app concepts with real data

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🤖 Ask an AI assistant about this scraper

Open a ready-to-send prompt about this ParseForge actor in the AI of your choice:

• 💬 ChatGPT
• 🧠 Claude
• 🔍 Perplexity
• 🅒 Copilot

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❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🧩 How does it work?

Pick a language, category, equipment, or muscle filter in the input form, click Start, and the Actor applies the filters server-side and emits a clean structured record per exercise. No browser automation, no captchas, no setup.

📏 How complete is the data?

The English catalog is the most complete with 845+ exercises and full descriptions. Other languages cover the high-frequency exercises first and fall back gracefully when a translation is unavailable.

🔁 How often is the dataset refreshed?

wger is community-edited and updated continuously. Every run of this Actor fetches the latest data, so your dataset reflects current records as of run time.

🖼️ Do all exercises have images and videos?

No. Visual assets are contributor-driven. Major lifts and popular exercises usually have at least one image; obscure or recently added movements may have none. The images and videos fields are arrays that can be empty.

🌐 Which languages are supported?

30 languages: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Czech, Swedish, Norwegian, Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Tamil, Thai, Chinese, Korean, Azerbaijani, Indonesian, Esperanto, Croatian, Slovenian, Slovak.

⏰ Can I schedule regular runs?

Yes. Use Apify Schedules to run this Actor on any cron interval (hourly, daily, weekly) and keep a downstream database in sync.

⚖️ Is this data legal to use?

The wger catalog is published under CC-BY-SA 4.0. You can use it commercially as long as you provide attribution and share derivative datasets under the same license. Each record includes license and licenseAuthor for easy compliance.

💼 Can I use this data commercially?

Yes, with attribution under CC-BY-SA 4.0. Most major fitness apps that license open exercise data follow this pattern.

💳 Do I need a paid Apify plan to use this Actor?

No. The free Apify plan is enough for testing and small runs (10 records per run). A paid plan lifts the limit and gives you access to scheduling, higher concurrency, and larger datasets.

🔁 What happens if a run fails or gets interrupted?

Apify automatically retries transient errors. If a run still fails, you can inspect the log in the Runs tab, fix the input, and re-run. Partial datasets from failed runs are preserved so you never lose progress.

🆘 What if I need help?

Our support team is here to help. Contact us through the Apify platform or use the Tally form linked below.

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🔌 Integrate with any app

wger Exercise Database Scraper connects to any cloud service via Apify integrations:

• Make - Automate multi-step workflows
• Zapier - Connect with 5,000+ apps
• Slack - Get run notifications in your channels
• Airbyte - Pipe exercise data into your warehouse
• GitHub - Trigger runs from commits and releases
• Google Drive - Export datasets straight to Sheets

You can also use webhooks to trigger downstream actions when a run finishes. Push fresh exercise data into your fitness backend, or alert your team in Slack.

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💡 Pro Tip: browse the complete ParseForge collection for more reference-data scrapers.

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🆘 Need Help? Open our contact form to request a new scraper, propose a custom data project, or report an issue.

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⚠️ Disclaimer: this Actor is an independent tool and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by wger.de or its contributors. All trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. Only publicly available open fitness data is collected, with attribution to the CC-BY-SA 4.0 license preserved on every record.