📖 Product handbook

The MonkeyGrade handbook

Every module in one place — what it is, who it's for, how to use it, and whether it's a paid add-on or included in the flat core plan.

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MonkeyGrade is one platform for a bouldering gym and its climbers. The gym pays a flatCHF 50 / month core plan and switches on optional modules only when it wants them; climbers use everything their gym runs for free. This handbook walks through every module — paid add-ons first, then the climber-facing Outdoor subscription, then everything included in the core plan.

Prices are in Swiss francs (CHF), per gym, per month, excl. VAT. See thepricing pagefor the interactive plan builder, or theAPI documentationfor the developer surface.

For climbers

The one thing a climber can subscribe to directly, independent of any gym. Everything a gym switches on is always free for its climbers.

Outdoor Crews

Climber subscriptionCHF 2 / mo solo · CHF 10 / mo crew

Your own crags, routes and sessions away from the gym — an outdoor logbook you can keep solo, or share with a crew with unlimited member invitations. It is the one feature a climber can subscribe to directly, independent of any gym.

Who it's for

Climbers who log outdoor sessions, and crews who climb together outside.

How to use it
  1. 1Free during early access today — request an invite from the Outdoor page.
  2. 2Add crags and routes, and log your outdoor sends.
  3. 3Create a crew and invite partners (invitations are unlimited, no per-seat fee).
  4. 4From autumn 2026 Outdoor becomes a paid subscription; if it lapses it goes read-only — nothing is deleted.
See Outdoor Crews →

Included in the core plan

Everything below is part of the flat CHF 50 / month core plan — no per-member fee, no extra charge. Some carry an admin on/off toggle, but never a bill.

Community grading & boulders

Included in coreIncluded in core

The heart of the app: a boulder board where every problem is graded by the community and attributed to its setter. Visitors can browse and grade without even creating an account.

Who it's for

Every climber at your gym, plus your setters and admins.

How to use it
  1. 1Setters add boulders to walls with a proposed grade.
  2. 2Members log sends and cast their own grade vote; the community grade settles from the votes.
  3. 3Browse by wall, grade, setter or status; favourite problems and add beta.

Community boulders

Included in coreIncluded in core

Members set their own problems on existing walls, crowd-graded like the official set. A moderation queue lets admins keep the board tidy.

Who it's for

Members who want to share their own problems, and admins who moderate them.

How to use it
  1. 1A member creates a boulder on a wall and publishes it.
  2. 2Others climb, grade and comment on it.
  3. 3Admins review flagged or new community boulders from the moderation queue.

AI hold isolation

Included in coreIncluded in core

AI detects a boulder's holds from a wall photo and isolates them so only the problem stands out — the rest of a busy wall is dimmed, making a crowded spray wall readable at a glance. Set it Off, On or Mandatory per gym.

Who it's for

Setters creating boulders from wall photos, and the members who then read them clearly on a crowded wall.

How to use it
  1. 1Pick an isolation mode in Settings → Hold isolation (Off, On or Mandatory).
  2. 2Calibrate your hold palette from real wall photos so detection matches your holds.
  3. 3Isolate a boulder's holds at photo upload when you create it.
  4. 4Members see only the problem's holds highlighted on the boulder photo.

Beta videos

Included in coreIncluded in core

Short beta clips attached to a boulder so members can see how a problem goes. Enabled per gym (requires member accounts).

Who it's for

Members sharing and watching beta on specific problems.

How to use it
  1. 1Turn on beta videos for your gym from the Members settings.
  2. 2A member records or uploads a clip against a boulder.
  3. 3Others open the boulder to watch the attached beta.

Member stats & strength radar

Included in coreIncluded in core

A personal strength radar and progression dashboard built from every logged send, plus "Improve" — training tips and drills that target a climber's weak spots.

Who it's for

Individual members tracking their own progress.

How to use it
  1. 1Log your sends as you climb.
  2. 2Open My Stats to see your strength radar and progression over time.
  3. 3Follow the Improve suggestions to work on weaker areas.

Session planner & party

Included in coreIncluded in core

Plan a training session and run it live — solo, or as a shared "Session Party" where a group works through the same plan together.

Who it's for

Members and coaches planning focused sessions, solo or in a group.

How to use it
  1. 1Build a session plan (problems, drills, targets).
  2. 2Start the runner to work through it live.
  3. 3Optionally open it as a Session Party so others can join the same plan.

Social Party

Included in coreIncluded in core

Start a Social Party and log the whole crew from one phone — a shared live feed of who is climbing what, right now. Free for everyone, no flag to enable.

Who it's for

Groups of climbers at the wall together who want to log and cheer as a crew.

How to use it
  1. 1Start a party from the app and invite the people you are climbing with.
  2. 2Log sends for the group from one device.
  3. 3Watch the shared live feed update as the crew climbs.

Meetups

Included in coreIncluded in core

Members organise and join climbing meet-ups at your gym — pick a time, RSVP, and turn up together. Reminders are pushed automatically, and an organiser can turn a meet-up straight into a live Social Party when everyone arrives.

Who it's for

Members who want to climb together and coordinate sessions with the community.

How to use it
  1. 1A member creates a meet-up with a time and a short description.
  2. 2Others RSVP and get an automatic reminder before it starts.
  3. 3The organiser can start the session as a live Social Party — no gym setup required.

Insights — dashboards, digests & alerts

Included in coreIncluded in core

Your gym's numbers, without having to know which number to ask for. Build your own dashboards from a catalog of governed metrics, click through any figure to the boulders behind it, and read a written digest of each week that tells you what moved — without having built anything to see it.

Who it's for

Your Gym Owner, your gym admins, and any admin you have given billing access to. Setters and members have no access to the gym's analytics: a setter keeps their own personal setter stats, and an individual member is never named in a dashboard, a digest or an alert. The full breakdown is below.

How to use it
  1. 1Open Dashboard in the admin — every gym starts with a dashboard already built, so there is no blank page to fill.
  2. 2Add a widget: pick a metric from the catalog, choose how to draw it, and save it — or open Ask, type the question in your own words, and let it draft the widget for you.
  3. 3Arrange the cards to suit you, then click any figure to see the boulders behind it.
  4. 4Open Weekly digest for this week's edition and every past one — and set your own delivery preference there, which applies from the week your gym has the unattended weekly send switched on.
What you get
A dashboard you build yourself

Pick any metric from the catalog and draw it as a single headline number, a bar, a line, a pie or a table. Charts are only offered where they are honest — a line is offered over days and months but not across walls, where a slope between things that have no order would read as a trend that is not there, and a pie stops being offered once it would be more colour wheel than picture. Arrange cards by dragging them or with the arrow keys, and resize them the same way; the keyboard path is the primary one, so the grid works without a mouse or a trackpad.

Click through to the climbing

Every figure on a dashboard is backed by real boulders, and you can open them. Click a number and you get the list behind it, so "sends are down on the slab wall" becomes the actual problems on that wall rather than a figure you have to take on trust. Any result can also be exported as a CSV to take into a spreadsheet.

Ask in your own words

Type a question the way you would say it — "which grades got the most sends last month?" — and get the chart back, without learning the catalog first. It shows you how it read the question before you keep the answer, so an interpretation you did not mean is something you correct rather than something you act on. It answers over the same governed metrics as the builder and over the same gyms you administer, so it can tell you nothing a dashboard could not; it just gets you there in a sentence. From the same box you can describe a whole widget and have it drafted, preview included, and accept it into a dashboard. Open to gym admins since July 2026, and rate-limited per person because each question can reach a paid model.

One gym, or several

If you run more than one gym you can point a dashboard, a single widget or a one-off question at this gym, at all of your gyms, or at a chosen few. Every answer states the gyms it was computed over, so a total is never ambiguous about what it covers. You only ever see gyms you administer — naming one you do not simply narrows the answer to the gyms you do, rather than refusing the whole question.

A written digest of your gym, one per week

One digest per gym, one per completed week, for gym admins only, on its own page in the admin: this week's and every past edition, whenever you want them. Unattended delivery by email and push is built and metered, and MonkeyGrade switches it on for a gym rather than a gym switching it on for itself — so set your own preference now and it applies from the week it starts; any admin can opt out individually without affecting the rest. It is written in English, French, German or Italian. It may name your setters — an admin already sees setter figures — and it never names an individual member. If the written summary cannot be produced, the digest still carries every figure and says what is missing, because a digest without prose beats no digest at all.

Nothing quietly answers less than it says

Where the product cannot answer something, it tells you so instead of guessing: a metric your plan does not include is named as narrowing the answer rather than silently shrinking it, and a gym with too little history behind it is reported as exactly that and never as a bad result. An unavailable optional step degrades the answer and says which part is reduced; it is never presented as a failure, and never as a complete answer that is quietly missing a piece.

Who can see what
Gym Owner
One per gym, appointed by MonkeyGrade. Full analytics, holds the gym's billing decisions including which paid add-ons the gym takes, can give a second admin billing access, and can hand ownership to another admin.
Gym admin
Full analytics for the gyms they administer: dashboards, the metric catalog, asking a question in their own words, drill-down into the boulder list, CSV export, alerts and the weekly digest.
Gym admin with billing access
Everything a gym admin gets, plus the gym's billing figures and its paid add-on switches.
Setter
No access to the gym's analytics. Setters keep their own personal setter stats page, which shows their own work and nobody else's.
Member
No access. Members have their own stats about their own climbing, and are never named in a dashboard, a digest or an alert.

Alerts

Included in coreIncluded in core

Be told when something moves, instead of watching a chart for it. An alert rule watches one of the same catalog metrics your dashboards are built from, and notifies you when it crosses a line you set, changes against its own past, or strays from its own normal.

Who it's for

Gym Owners and gym admins who would rather be interrupted by the two things that matter this week than read a dashboard looking for them.

How to use it
  1. 1Open Alerts under Dashboard and create a rule — either from the fields, or by describing what you want to watch in your own words and editing the draft it gives you.
  2. 2Choose what kind of watch it is: a threshold, a change against a week or a month ago, or a departure from the metric's own normal range.
  3. 3Set how urgent it is — Critical, Warning or Info — and, if you want, have it re-notify when nobody has acknowledged it.
  4. 4Read what has fired in the alerts inbox, filtered or sorted by urgency, and acknowledge the ones you have dealt with.
What you get
Rules that ask a real question

A rule is not limited to one condition. Combine several with AND, OR and NOT, group them, and use ranges for ages and dates — so "boulders on the beginner wall that are either unclimbed or older than three months" is one rule, and "sends are down AND nothing has been set this week" is one alert with one notification rather than two rules that mail you separately about one situation.

Three kinds of watch

A threshold rule fires when a number crosses a line you chose. A trend rule compares now against a week, four weeks or any number of days ago, and fires on a fall, a rise or either. An anomaly rule needs no number from you at all — it fires when a measure strays from its own recent normal, with sensitivity offered as named settings rather than a statistic. If a rule has not been measured long enough to have a past, previewing it says so plainly rather than reporting that nothing matched.

Urgency, escalation and history

Every rule carries an urgency — Critical, Warning or Info — which sets the wording of the notification and how its alerts rank in the inbox. Urgency is recorded on each alert as it fires, so changing a rule later never rewrites the importance of what already happened, and it is never shown by colour alone. Escalation is off unless you turn it on; when on, it re-notifies after however many days you choose, and can only ever widen to gym administrators — never to members.

It explains itself

An alert says what the measure was, what it reached and which line it crossed, rather than arriving as a rule name and a count. It may name a setter, and it never names a climber. If that written explanation cannot be produced, the alert still arrives with its figures.

Setting day

Included in coreIncluded in core

A workflow to plan and run a setting day — which walls to strip and reset, what to set, and a printable session sheet for the setting crew.

Who it's for

Head setters and route setters organising a reset.

How to use it
  1. 1Enable Setting day in Settings if it is not already on.
  2. 2Plan the walls and problems for the session.
  3. 3Print the session sheet and work through it on the day.

Boulder of the Week

Included in coreIncluded in core

Feature a boulder of the week with streak rewards for members who keep sending the featured problem.

Who it's for

Gyms that want a recurring highlight and a light engagement loop for members.

How to use it
  1. 1Pick the featured boulder from the admin.
  2. 2Members send it to build and keep their streak.
  3. 3Streak rewards recognise the regulars.

Gym map, news & QR codes

Included in coreIncluded in core

An interactive map of your gym, a news feed for announcements, and a QR code for every wall so members jump straight to it from their phone.

Who it's for

Gyms communicating with members, and members finding their way around.

How to use it
  1. 1Lay out your walls on the interactive gym map.
  2. 2Post updates to the news feed.
  3. 3Print the per-wall QR codes and put them up on the walls.

Coaching

Included in coreIncluded in core

Coach role and booking so members can train with a coach — sessions, goals and group coaching. On by default; gym-admins can turn it off.

Who it's for

Coaches, and members who book sessions with them.

How to use it
  1. 1Coaching is on by default — a gym-admin can toggle it in Settings.
  2. 2Give a coach the coach role.
  3. 3Members book sessions and track goals with their coach.

Community & messaging

Included in coreIncluded in core

Member community with direct messaging, plus blocking and reporting so the space stays healthy.

Who it's for

Every member, plus admins who moderate reports.

How to use it
  1. 1Members message each other and take part in the community.
  2. 2Block or report anyone who is out of line.
  3. 3Admins act on reports from the admin.

Training boards

Included in coreIncluded in core

Mirror standardised training boards (Kilter, Tension, MoonBoard) so members can find and log board problems alongside your own walls.

Who it's for

Gyms with a training board and the members who train on it.

How to use it
  1. 1Enable training boards for your gym in Settings.
  2. 2Members browse the mirrored board catalog.
  3. 3Log board problems the same way as gym boulders.

Not sure which modules you need?

Start with the flat core plan — it already covers community grading, member stats, the session planner, social party, coaching, and Insights with your dashboards, weekly digest and alerts. Switch on paid add-ons only when your gym wants them.