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.

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.

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.

Squats make the lower part of the outer thigh muscle grow more than leg extensions do, probably because squats involve more hip and knee movement together.

Squats make the outer part of the thigh muscle near the knee bigger than leg extensions do.

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 one doesn’t make you much stronger at the other.