What MakoSwim actually does
MakoSwim calls itself "the operating system for swim coaching," and the scope backs that up. As of September 2026, it's built around several modules: MakoSets for writing workouts with live volume tracking, MakoVision for race video and stroke-rate analysis from phone footage, a Wellness/Load module for athlete check-ins and readiness monitoring, MakoBoards for leaderboards and test-set rankings, and Mako AI, an assistant that handles admin work — season plans, emails, attendance, reports.
That's a genuinely broad platform. If you're running a club program and want video breakdown, readiness data, and team leaderboards living next to your workout planner, MakoSwim is doing more than SwimIQ does, and it's worth saying that plainly before anything else.
How you actually write a set in MakoSets
MakoSets works on typed shorthand. You write sets "the way you already write them on the whiteboard," using your own club's terminology, and the system parses that text into distance, stroke, energy zone, and interval. You can save sets to a reusable library so you're not retyping your staples every week.
That's a solid workflow if your practice already lives in a text box or a spreadsheet. We found no evidence on makoswim.io of a feature that scans a photographed handwritten practice sheet, or one that converts spoken workout notes directly into a structured set. Mako AI's documented job is admin — plans, emails, reports — not parsing a photo of a whiteboard or a voice memo. That doesn't mean MakoSwim can't do it; it means we didn't find it published as a feature. If you write your sets by hand on a deck sheet or dictate them between reps, that gap matters to your actual routine.
Where SwimIQ is narrower — on purpose
SwimIQ doesn't do video analysis. It doesn't do wellness check-ins. It doesn't do leaderboards. If any of those are why you're shopping, MakoSwim is the more complete answer and SwimIQ won't pretend otherwise.
What SwimIQ does is one job: take a photo of a handwritten sheet, a spoken workout, or typed shorthand, and turn it into a structured practice with distance, stroke, zone, and interval broken out — then check it against training-zone logic so you can see if your aerobic-to-anaerobic mix actually matches what you meant to write. No typing required, no club-wide setup, no onboarding a whole roster before you can use it tomorrow morning.
Pricing, side by side
Different currencies, so don't force a conversion — just compare the actual numbers.
| MakoSwim | SwimIQ | |
|---|---|---|
| Entry tier | Solo Coach: €60/mo (30 athletes, 1 coach) | $14.99 CAD/mo |
| Lowest tier | Solo Workouts: €25/mo | $14.99 CAD/mo |
| Club tier | Small Club: €130/mo (120 athletes, 6 coaches) | — |
| Largest tier | Large Club: €219/mo (300 athletes, 10 coaches) | — |
| Free trial | 14 days | 7 days |
MakoSwim's tiers scale with roster size and coaching staff, which makes sense for a program-wide tool. SwimIQ has one price because it's solving one problem for one coach at a time, regardless of how many swimmers are on your deck.
A few things we didn't confirm either way
We found no documentation of a coach-knowledge-base upload in MakoSwim — a way for a coach's own training philosophy or club methodology to take priority over whatever reference logic the platform ships with. That's unconfirmed, not absent. If that matters to you, ask MakoSwim directly rather than assuming.
Similarly, we're not claiming MakoSwim's video or wellness modules are weak or strong beyond what's published — we simply haven't tested them, so we're not rating them here. This piece is about workout capture and structure, which is where the real, checkable difference between the two products sits.
Who should actually pick which
If you're running a multi-coach club program and want video review, readiness tracking, and leaderboards under one login alongside your sets, MakoSwim's breadth is the better fit for that job — that's what it's built for.
If your actual daily friction is simpler than that — you write sets by hand on a deck sheet, or you talk through a workout out loud between sets and don't want to retype it later — SwimIQ is built for exactly that moment. It's not a MakoSwim replacement. It's a smaller tool for a specific, recurring problem: getting from "what's in my head or on my sheet" to a structured, zone-checked practice without opening a laptop or learning a new shorthand syntax first.