Doing hip thrusts or squats for 9 weeks with the same total work builds your butt muscles just as much, even though hip thrusts feel like they work your butt harder during the exercise.

Doing hip thrusts or squats for nine weeks, with the same total amount of work, makes your butt muscles grow just as much—so neither exercise is clearly better for building glutes if you're new to lifting.

When doing a hip thrust with a barbell instead of a squat, the butt and back of the thighs light up more on muscle sensors during the same level of effort.

Squats build your thigh muscles (quads and inner thighs) more than hip thrusts do, because squats involve more knee and hip movement that engages those muscles more.

Squats make your thighs bigger—especially the front and inner muscles—while hip thrusts don’t really change your thigh size, making squats better if you want to build overall leg muscle.

If you want to get stronger at squats, you need to squat; if you want to get stronger at hip thrusts, you need to do hip thrusts—training makes you better at the exact movement you practice.