Fitness App Development: Business Models and Monetization Tricks

The penetration of smartphones, tech sprawl, and the advocacy for healthy lifestyles in social media are promoting the expansion of fitness applications. In 2024, the volume of health and fitness app downloads jumped to 3,6 billion globally.

This and the fact that every sports and wellness startup plunges into the fitness app development domain make the fitness app market numbers jump.

Sure, isolation of people during the pandemic made them more used to online training as a far more comfortable and cost-effective alternative to gym classes. No need to commute, fit into a gym’s schedule, or settle for a pricey membership card that always lapses when you finally decide to hit the gym again.

Besides that “homey” advantage, smart fitness apps combined with health trackers, and dedicated in-app communities help create a sort of “activity bubble” around the person who becomes accountable for their own success. This is almost a digital ecosystem that constantly monitors, guides, assesses, and motivates a user to continue working out and brings visually appealing data on results and achievements. This is what makes Strava (135 of all downloads), RunKeeper (10M), Nike Run Club (10M), Fitbit (100M), Samsung Health (1B) the largest market players who constantly evolve and improve their products.

Sure, reaching a similar app adoption rate entails many success factors, hurdles on the way, and ground-breaking features in place. In this very post, we will provide a detailed overview of fitness software development, its common business models, essential features, and much more.

How to Build a Fitness App that Lasts and Wins

Before choosing fitness app features, it’s vital to identify a monetization strategy and a winning business model that will drive your revenue. Fitness apps like MyFitnessPal, Fitbit, Strava, Runkeeper, and similar to them have articulated business models, philosophies, goals, and premium capabilities that suit a selected target audience. Sure, the sources of revenue of such fitness and sports giants are already backed by their brand reputation and a huge community of amateurs and professional athletes.

So, what is their formula of success in health and fitness app development? There are many factors that impact the unceasing uplift of profit for these industry giants – customers’ trust and loyalty, continuous app updates and improvements of premium services, dedicated stores, positive brand image, partners, etc.

However, each app leans on a specific business model defining the essential purpose, value proposition, and revenue streams. You may opt for multiple monetization methods within each model to maximize revenue.

Types of Fitness App Business Models

Freemium model

Like trying out a new dress, a freemium model allows users to test essential or even premium app features for a limited period of time. It’s one of the most widely used models by the largest fitness brands (Fitbit, Strava, and many others), offering such benefits as:

• Ability to engage a larger customer base in the shortest time. If there are no barriers to entry, a user can experience all the benefits and decide whether to buy a premium subscription or not.
• Savings on customer acquisition and marketing effort, especially when the app becomes viral and gets its own community
• Users' feedback allows improving the app features and keeping up with trends
• Higher user engagement and chances of converting them into paying users.

Though startups often end up with high expenses and resource consumption, having a large free user base to manage, many monetization options allow sticking to the freemium model anyway:

• Paywall or X-day trial period – a user tries all features for free, like Peloton’s 30-day free trial of the App Membership, or only premium ones like MyFitnessPal’s personalized meal plans. Automatic charging is a common practice when the trial period ends, so to avoid negativity, we suggest adding notifications or adopting Amazon’s practice to send a full refund for the unused service. By the way, the latest study shows that apps with longer trial periods show the highest 45,7% conversion rate, giving people more time to see the real value of an app.
• Core to advanced features – the app is again free but in this case, you limit the app functionality, offering integral features for free. Find a golden middle, choose those features that will allow users to get familiar with your app, also sparking curiosity about premium capabilities. For example, Freelitcs puts forward its premium personalized training programs that include AI coaching and custom nutrition plans.
• Free but with ads – this type of freemium model allows customers to access content, but it will contain ads (banner or full-screen ads, sponsored content, etc)

Subscription-based model

By now, you might have noticed how recognized the freemium-to-premium model is in fitness app development. Though most fitness and wellness apps start with freemium, some soon switch to a subscription-based model, switching to more predictable and scalable revenue sources. Why so? To achieve at least 2% conversion, you will need about 50 million active users. For example, RevenueCat discovered that only 1,7% from all downloads turned into paid subscriptions. Sure, apps like Strava or Nike Run Club can afford sticking to the freemium model, having diverse monetization options in their pocket.

Still, many rising brands choose the subscription model because it sets the ground for consistent profit and clear-cut cost structure:

• Tiered subscriptions (common 3-/6-/12-month subscriptions with one-month trial). Plus, some memberships may also include standard, advanced tiers, like in Peloton, Freeletics, Centr apps, etc.
• Fixed-price for unlimited access to all the features. For instance, Les Mills+ has a monthly US$14.99 fee for their all home workout programs. Apple Fitness+ offers a flat rate for both monthly and annual subscriptions.
• Family or group model: Commonly, it’s a shareable subscription that a group can use. If it’s family or friends, good examples would be Apple Fitness and Fitbit plans.

In-app Purchase Model

So, how to create a fitness app that results in high ROI and stands the test of time? First and foremost, diversify your monetization strategies, and use as many options as possible in a single app.

Together with freemium and subscription models, in-app purchasing is one of those monetization methods that many fitness and wellness companies prioritize these days. Though solely relying on this model will be harder to predict revenue, it’s more flexible for users as they pay only for the targeted content catering to their needs. Overall, in-app purchase market size in 2024 was over US$166 according to IMARC report, which means it’s a preferred choice in the fitness mobile app development niche.

Usually, an in-app purchase model pairs nicely with freemium, giving customers a choice–going premium or buying personalized classes, diet plans, X-week challenges, and workouts with specific intensity, duration, focus, type of training, and a coach that users can select based on their preferences, etc.

Gamification as a monetization method

Within this model, it’s common to add gamification elements like trophies, badges, rewards, and leaderboards as part of competitions, races, and challenges. The latter can be monetized with paid entry. For instance, Nike Run Club often organizes running day challenges, gathering people around a goal to achieve their milestones and receiving virtual trophies. MyFitnessPal, RunKeeper, Strava, and Fitbit largely use leaderboards to ignite competition between groups of athletes, as well as streak rewards for consistency, and keep users highly motivated.

The app, Zombies, Run (a part of ZRX app, also combining another app Marvel Move) is an example of an entirely gamified fitness app that tells a story of a post-apocalypse and suggests taking missions to chase zombies. This app chose freemium and subscription models and in-app purchases to unlock exclusively engaging race events for its customers.

Among other business models, you should also consider:

• Affiliate Marketing: Promotion of third-party brands, services, and products for commissions, e.g., gear, equipment, supplements, wearables, etc.
• Sponsorships and partnerships: To get exposure and credibility, it’s essential to partner with related brands or influencers, e.g., Nike Training Club app engages famous athletes and celebrities to lead workouts. Even if your app is local and hasn't gotten world fame yet, you can find local ambassadors who promote healthy lifestyles and partner with them.
• In-app Store and Merchandise: Peloton, for instance, sells its merchandise (clothes, accessories, and even hardware like treadmills and bikes) and gets commissions, partnering with Lululemon, a Canadian luxury sports clothing brand.

How a Choice of Fitness App Features Is Shaped by Monetization 

While health and fitness apps surpass every other type of apps by 2X better monetization, only 5% from the majority attain US$10,000 profit in their first 2 years at the market. The thing is that many apps lack a well-thought-out customer engagement strategy, offering a whole suite of features, trying to replicate successful cases of famous brands like Runkeeper or Strava. However, those rely on a hybrid business model and various monetization methods.

As to their features, they are all about precision, applying AI and smart wearables to activity tracking and refined analytics, as well as habit-forming activities, and support of community channels. Strava, for example, has rolled out 40 novel features in 2024 for their 135 million community of athletes, keeping them engaged and active.

Plus, most importantly, you should find your own gimmick in this niche–Strava, per se, made their activity sharing feature a winning and defining point of their engagement strategy. Just think–the number of activities shared on Strava in the past year exceeded 12 billion!

So, the choice of core app features will stem from the purpose of your app, the complexity of offerings, and its business model. Among such standard functionality could be:

• User profile, goals, age, weight, height, athletic level
• Sign-in options and seamless social media integration
• Library of video workouts
• Progress tracking and rewarding
• Activity, steps, distance, calories tracking
• Sync with wearable devices
• Daily reporting
• Logging meals, water, vitamins, etc.
• Notifications, reminders, streak tracking, etc.

Advanced Features = Higher Engagement Rate

The above features would be a good start for a freemium-focused app. Still, without further engagement techniques, it would be difficult to thrive in such a competitive landscape. Which is why, we recommend going for premium features or in-app purchasing.

• Personalized training plans
• AI-coaching and programs on demand
• Live workouts within a broadcasted challenge or race
• Virtual group trainings or challenges
• Class length customization
• Integration with IoT devices (biosensors, EGGs, blood pressure monitors, heart rate monitors, etc.) and in-house gym hardware and equipment (treadmills, weight scales, etc.)
• In-app social network, allowing users to compete and share their tips and tricks.

Fitness App Development Challenges

Obviously, the most pressing concern for fitness app owners is engagement and retention as repetitive workouts and routines make people look for better options soon. Hence, implementing some of the above features may help you deal with that.

Among other challenges that most fitness development companies highlight are:

App Security and Data Privacy: The more engaging your fitness app becomes, the more prone it becomes to malicious attacks and unauthorized access. It can lead to loss of sensitive user data and reputational damage. Enforcing stringent privacy policies and security measures for storing user data would be a first step towards protecting the app against misuse. Related solutions would be end-to-end encryption, granular user permission controls, MFAs, and data usage monitoring under GDPR and HIPAA regulations.

Real-time data synchronization between the app, wearables, and APIs: Each device has its own communication protocol and data formats, complicating compatibility. Third-party APIs may lack consistency in accurate data delivery on time. Standardized protocols, robust data management and exchange solutions, continuous APIs monitoring, and redundancy measures in place could do their magic.

Complex user interface that caters to different needs: Often, if the app presents a variety of features, navigation gets complicated and users are overwhelmed. So, prioritizing simplicity, customer-centric and inclusive design, and intuitive navigation will help resolve those issues.

Multi-level personalization: Providing different experiences for athletes requires workout plans adaptability and ability to analyze large volumes of data to make necessary changes. That is where AI (Agentic AI, Gen AI) can help, analyzing the athletic level of a customer, their progress, automatically generating recommendations, creating personalized video guides, etc.

Conclusion

The fitness app development may pose many more difficulties for those who launch their first app of this kind. However, with the right support from an experienced partner like Svitla, you will be equipped with mobile app development expertise, relying on a high-performing UX/UI design portfolio and scalable architecture implementation projects. You'll also understand how to monetize your app and engage more audiences through cost-effective best practices. Contact us to know more.