How to Develop a Fitness App: Features, Steps, Monetization

Fitness app market: 2024 overview

The fitness app market continues to thrive, driven by increased health awareness and the growing popularity of digital wellness solutions. Leading fitness apps like MyFitnessPal, Strava, Peloton, Lose It!, and Fitbit — each carved out a significant market share.

These mobile apps stand out because of their user-friendly interfaces, comprehensive features, and ability to create engaging communities. For example, MyFitnessPal excels in nutrition tracking, Strava in social fitness sharing, Peloton in live and on-demand workouts, Lose It! in weight management, and Fitbit in seamless integration with wearable devices.

According to Statista, MyFitnessPal led the revenue charts in January 2024, generating over $12 million, highlighting its dominant position. Overall, the global fitness app market is expanding rapidly, with Allied Market Research projecting it to reach $120.37 billion by 2030.

This expansion, coupled with the increasing demand for personalized health solutions, opens up opportunities for newcomers. There’s still room for innovative apps that can address niche fitness needs or offer unique features, giving entrepreneurs a chance to develop their own popular workout apps.

Types of fitness & health apps

Fitness applications help solve various problems, such as finding an appropriate workout or stopping putting sports on the back burner. The functionality of the app depends on the problem. We have identified five types of health and fitness apps and want to tell you about each of them. Let’s go!

Workout planning

These fitness apps provide three main types of exercises: strength, endurance, and mobility. With a personal training app, users can select pre-built workout plans or create their own.

An exercise library often includes descriptions or demo videos to help users exercise safely and effectively. Fitness app users can also adjust the difficulty level, schedule their workouts, and track progress.

Many fitness apps now feature IoT integration with wearable devices like fitness bracelets or smartwatches. This allows users to track key health metrics and track progress.

At Purrweb, we have extensive experience in IoT integration. In our recent case, EnerGO, we developed an IoT mobile app for power bank rental. You can read more about the project here.

Diet and nutrition

Diet and nutrition apps help track eating habits, count calories, and stay hydrated. Who can imagine a diet app that doesn’t provide users with an opportunity to set goals, check calories, and find proper nutrition recipes?

Usually, diet & nutrition apps include:

• • food data tables — allow users to find information about calories, proteins, fats, and carbs of a product
  • calorie counting calculator — helps calculate a daily calorie intake depending on the user’s body like age, gender, and height-to-weight ratio
  • food diaries — lets users record data about meals they eat during a diet

Activity tracking

Over the last few years, people have started buying smart devices more often: Apple Watch, Xiaomi Mi Band, and SmartWatch. With their help, the user can count the number of steps taken, the heart rate, and even the stress level of a day!

Activity-tracking apps are used not only by professional athletes but also by people who want to track their health indicators. Think in advance about the potential of your own fitness app and add sync with a wearable device — users will appreciate it.

Habit tracker

Regularity will lead to success in anything! Habit-forming health and fitness apps help users get rid of bad habits, form good ones, and gradually begin a healthy lifestyle.

Effective habit trackers typically include features like:

• • customizable goals
  • visual progress representations
  • timely reminders
  • streak counting
  • and adjustable goal setting with a retained history

These elements work together to keep the fitness app users accountable, motivated, and informed about their progress towards creating healthy habits.

Yoga and meditation

Meditation and yoga apps provide a curated selection of guided yoga sessions and meditation practices, accessible anytime and anywhere.

The typical yoga and meditation app features a diverse library of content, including:

• • guided yoga flows for various skill levels and styles
  • meditation sessions, ranging from quick mindfulness exercises to longer, immersive experiences
  • breathing exercises and relaxation techniques
  • progress tracking and personalized practice recommendations
  • educational content on yoga philosophy and mindfulness principles

Key features for health and fitness app

The features of your fitness app define its success. To help you choose, we’ve highlighted the core features every fitness application needs. Based on the fitness app that we’ve designed, we’ll illustrate how certain features help keep users engaged.

Login screen

The login screen primarily aims to to authenticate users and provide secure access to their accounts. A well-designed login screen should strike a balance between security and user-friendliness. It typically includes fields for entering a username or email address and a password, allowing returning users to quickly access their profiles.

For our fitness app, we also added the ability to log in via email and social media to streamline the login process.

The login screen should also reflect the app’s overall design aesthetic, creating a cohesive and engaging user experience from the very first interaction.

User profile

The user profile is the heart of personalization in fitness apps. It collects essential information about the user, including basic details like gender, age, height, and weight. The profile also captures dietary preferences or restrictions, which is crucial for apps offering nutrition advice.

A key feature is the progress tracking section that allows users to see how far they’ve come in their fitness journey. The ability to update information is important, as goals and stats change over time. All this data helps the app tailor workouts, meal plans, and overall guidance to the unique needs and preferences of users.

Workouts

The workout menu typically includes video demonstrations and workout cards with text and image instructions. The fitness app usually provides customizable workout plans based on goals and fitness levels, ensuring everyone gets an appropriate challenge.

By offering diverse content in various formats, the workout section caters to different learning styles and fitness preferences. This approach increases the likelihood that users will stick with their fitness routines and achieve their health goals.

Activity and progress tracker

To set goals means to challenge yourself. The desire to get better every day needs to be encouraged. Make sure that for each new record or completed goal, the user gets something in return. Add a results-based achievement system and grant the user a virtual or real prize. It will help with the marketing strategy of your fitness application — you can find advertisers willing to show up as partners.

For more specific fitness goals, it might track weight lifted, running pace, or swimming laps. Many advanced trackers also incorporate sleep data and heart rate information, recognizing the importance of rest and recovery in overall fitness.

Filters

Allow users to pick a workout plan according to their needs. Add filters to quickly search the workouts.

Search parameters can be different — think about them in advance. For example, it can be filtered by training duration, the physical level required for training, type of load, or focus on a specific muscle group.

Push notifications

Those who struggle to plan their day will appreciate a customizable push notification system. The most common problem in sports is the loss of enthusiasm. Bad weather, laziness, or household chores — good reasons to skip exercises or break the diet.

Sync with wearable devices

Most users have smart devices to help them track their physical activity while doing sports. Smart devices became popular a few years ago, and today, almost everyone uses them to monitor health indicators. The user who has a smartwatch bought it for a reason — they want to use it in training. Most likely, this user will prefer a fitness application that works in tandem with their device.

Advanced features to elevate your fitness app

To stand out in the market, it’s not enough to do a bare minimum, so consider incorporating these features. They can transform your fitness app from a simple tool into an indispensable fitness companion that adapts to users’ evolving needs.

Geolocation

Geolocation enhances the user experience by helping them find fitness-related locations and participate in local activities. Such as:

• • locate nearby gyms, parks, or running routes
  • discover and join local fitness events or competitions
  • track outdoor activities with accurate GPS mapping
  • receive location-based challenges or promotions

Implementing geolocation requires careful consideration of user privacy and data protection. Ensure secure data handling and provide clear opt-in/opt-out options for location tracking.

Meal plan and calorie counting

A well-designed meal planning and calorie counting system helps maintain a balanced diet that complements user fitness journeys. The meal planning feature should offer personalized recommendations based on goals, dietary restrictions, and personal preferences. For instance, when aiming for weight loss, a user will receive different meal suggestions than focusing on muscle gain.

Calorie counting functionality is crucial for tracking daily food intake. This feature typically includes a searchable food database, barcode scanning, and visual representations of daily calorie intake.

Live streaming

Live streaming capabilities can transform a fitness application from a solo experience into an interactive, community-driven platform. This feature allows users to participate in real-time workouts led by professional trainers or even share their own fitness journey with others.

Make sure to provide tools to host and follow live workout sessions, fostering a sense of community within the fitness app. This could include features for scheduling sessions, promoting upcoming streams, and building a follower base. Also, remember to include a replay option for those who miss live sessions, enabling on-demand access to the content.

Educational content

Incorporating an educational component will empower novices with knowledge about fitness, nutrition, and overall wellness, helping them make informed decisions about health. Consider creating a dedicated section within the app for educational content that includes:

• • in-depth articles on various fitness topics written by certified professionals
  • video tutorials demonstrating proper exercise techniques to prevent injuries
  • informative podcasts discussing the latest trends and research in health and fitness
  • infographics explaining complex nutritional concepts in an easy-to-understand format

To make this feature more engaging, implement a personalized content recommendation system. This system could analyze a user’s profile, workout history, and browsing behavior to suggest relevant educational materials. For instance, if someone frequently engages in strength training, they will receive articles about muscle recovery and protein intake.

Gamification

Gamification, the application of game-design elements and principles in non-game contexts, has revolutionized various industries, including health and fitness apps.

Simple progress bars can be powerful generators of motivation. They capitalize on the psychological principle of the “endowed progress effect,” where people are more likely to complete a task if they perceive that they’ve already made some progress.

Similarly, leaderboards foster a sense of friendly competition, allowing users to compare their performance with friends, family, or even strangers. A well-known fitness app, Nike Run Club, has a great option — users can choose a distance and date and invite their friends. The one who does the best receives a gold medal!

Mentors

Being guided by a highly trained professional is always safer, so users will appreciate having access to expert advice among your custom fitness app features. This is particularly important for beginners who may be unsure about proper form, intensity levels, or how to effectively structure their workouts. Even for more experienced fitness enthusiasts, having access to professional guidance can help break through plateaus and optimize performance.

Think about adding an online mode of workouts under the mentor’s control. You can hire professionals who will help your users develop an effective workout program, teach them how to track progress, and set the right direction in building their health.

Chat

The ability to share results will motivate users to grow. For example:

When no one knows that you have started doing a sport, there is a temptation to reduce physical activity or skip a workout. But if there is someone (for example, a friend who uses the same fitness app) who can find out that you skipped a training session, it is an additional motivation not to skip it.

Friends will motivate users to exercise regularly and input the results in the fitness app! 🙃 To maximize these benefits, you should offer privacy controls, diverse social options, and integration with social networks.

How Purrweb creates workout apps

As we showed before, we developed a fitness app to connect personal trainers with users for online workouts. The app serves both existing gymgoers transitioning to home workouts and new users looking for personalized workout plans.

Our clients already had a website. However, they were not satisfied with it, so we started the app development process from scratch.

To connect two distinct roles — coaches and athletes — we needed to develop two separate applications. We built a mobile app for users and a web app for coaches.

We also added specialized features: customizable training plans and invite capabilities for trainers to interact with clients directly.

And we still managed to meet the deadlines and stay within the budget. You can learn more about this case in the link below.

Monetization strategies for fitness apps

Let’s dig deeper into the monetization models and learn how you can earn money from health and fitness apps. The key to successful monetization is finding the right balance between providing value to users and generating revenue for your business.

Ads

One of the monetization options is to add advertisements for other brands to your fitness app. Everyone is happy in this scenario: brands increase sales, users get a free app, and you earn money from advertising.

This model can be particularly effective for mobile fitness apps with a large user base, as it allows you to generate revenue without charging users directly. However, it’s crucial to implement ads in a way that doesn’t disrupt the user experience. Consider using native ads, rewarded video ads, or banners.

Paid app

Selling a fitness app on the store isn’t the safest option for a startup. Users are only willing to pay when they are sure of receiving a quality product. However, you can always offer the user to start with a trial version and add relevant in-app purchases. Remember that while this model can provide revenue upfront, it may limit your app’s reach compared to free alternatives.

Subscription

Users need to subscribe to get access to the functionality of an app. Add a trial period so that users can evaluate the quality of your fitness app.

Subscription models have become increasingly popular because of their ability to provide consistent revenue. Ensure that your subscription offers clear value over the free version, and continuously add new features or content to retain subscribers.

Freemium

The basic functionality of an app is available to everyone. Users pay only for premium or additional features like disabling ads, access to personal trainers, or individual training plans. You can mix this strategy with other monetization models.

The key to a successful freemium model is striking the right balance between providing enough value in the free version to attract users while offering compelling reasons to upgrade.

How to create your own fitness app step-by-step

Now that you know the types of fitness applications and what features an app can have, let’s move on to the best part of the development process. Here is a step-by-step guide to the health and fitness application development that helps you not to be sidetracked on your way.

Step 1. Define the app purpose and its target audience

Start by clearly outlining what your app will achieve and who it will serve. This foundational step will guide all subsequent decisions. A well-defined purpose and target audience will inform your app’s features, design, marketing strategy, and monetization model.

First, identify the primary goal of the app. Is it weight loss, muscle gain, overall wellness, or something more specific? Your app’s primary goal should address a particular need or pain point in the fitness market. Consider current trends and gaps in the existing fitness app landscape to identify opportunities for innovation.

Next, define your target audience. Consider factors like age range, fitness level, and specific health concerns. Understanding your potential users is crucial for creating an app that resonates with them and meets their unique needs.

Finally, conduct market research. Use surveys or focus groups to validate your app idea and gather insights. Based on your research, develop detailed user personas representing your target audience segments, including demographic information, goals, daily routines, and motivations.

This process is also called project discovery. At Purrweb, project discovery starts from $3,000, and it takes up to eight weeks for us to complete the analysis and present the results. So, if you don’t have time to do it yourself — let us take care of it.

Step 2. Analyze the competition

This step involves more than just a cursory glance at your competitors. It requires a deep dive into what other fitness apps offer, user experiences, and market positioning.

Begin your competitive analysis by creating a comprehensive list of both direct and indirect competitors. Direct competitors are other fitness apps with similar primary goals. In contrast, indirect competitors might include broader health and wellness apps or even traditional fitness methods that your app aims to supplement or replace.

This will help you:

• • see which features work and which don’t,
  • get a list of both positive and negative references for the design of your app,
  • look at possible monetization models, etc.

Almost every big decision that you might have to make — has already been made by one of your competitors. So, look at those who succeeded in order to see what actually works, and look at the failed startups to see what doesn’t.

Step 3. Determine the feature set

Start by listing all potential features and categorizing them into basic and advanced functionalities. Basic features form the core of your app and should be included in the initial fitness app development process. Premium features usually set your app apart from competitors and can be introduced in later updates.

When finalizing your feature set, prioritize based on your target audience’s needs, development resources, and timeline. It’s often better to launch with a polished set of core features rather than a bloated app with half-implemented features.

The key is to balance functionality with usability, ensuring your app remains intuitive and valuable to users as it evolves.

Step 4. Choose the tech stack

Selecting the appropriate tools and technologies for your fitness app is a critical decision that will impact fitness app development efficiency, app performance, and future scalability. Your choice of tech stack should align with your app’s requirements, your team’s expertise, and your long-term vision. If you’re in doubt, you can consult with the stack we use at Purrweb.

When making your final decision, consider factors like community support, learning curve, performance requirements, and potential for future expansion. It’s also crucial to ensure that your chosen technologies can effectively integrate with fitness-specific APIs and SDKs, such as those for wearable devices or health data platforms.

Step 5. Assemble a team

The success of your project hinges on the expertise and collaboration of your team. Key roles to consider include:

• • Marketing specialists can provide valuable input on user acquisition strategies and help shape the app’s features to align with market demands.
  • UI/UX designers are essential for creating an intuitive and visually appealing interface.
  • Developers proficient in iOS, Android, or cross-platform technologies, depending on your target platforms.
  • Quality Assurance (QA) specialists ensure your app functions flawlessly across different mobile devices and scenarios.
  • A project manager is vital for coordinating efforts, managing timelines, and maintaining clear communication among team members.

When assembling your fitness app development team, carefully weigh the decision between hiring in-house staff or outsourcing to a development agency. This choice should be based on factors such as your budget, long-term plans, and desired level of control over the process. In-house teams offer greater oversight and can foster a strong company culture, but they will require a larger upfront investment.

Outsourcing to an agency can provide access to a diverse talent pool and reduce costs. Agency teams are typically composed of experts across various disciplines, which allows you to tap into a wide range of skills and expertise. Outsourced companies also often have established processes and economies of scale that enable them to be more cost-effective than building an entire in-house team.

Step 6. Design the UI/UX

Start by developing wireframes and prototypes that outline the app’s structure and user flow. These visual representations help identify potential usability issues early in the design process.

Next, establish a consistent and attractive visual style that aligns with your brand identity and appeals to your target audience. This includes choosing appropriate color schemes, typography, and iconography that enhance readability and user experience.

Ensure your design is accessible to users with different abilities by incorporating features like adjustable font sizes, high-contrast modes, and voice commands.

Step 7. Develop the app

This is where your team starts working on a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to test core functionalities. Use agile methodologies to maintain flexibility throughout the development cycle, enabling your team to adapt to changing requirements and user needs.

Throughout development, maintain open communication channels between developers, designers, and other team members to promptly address issues and ensure all components can seamlessly integrate. Regularly conduct QA testing to catch and resolve bugs early.

Step 8. Test the app

Thorough testing in the development stage is crucial in ensuring your fitness app functions flawlessly and provides an optimal user experience. Test your fitness app on a wide range of devices and operating system versions to ensure compatibility and consistent performance across different platforms. Conduct rigorous performance testing to evaluate the app’s speed, responsiveness, and stability under various conditions, including high user loads.

Step 9. Improve and maintain the app

Don’t think that when your app is released, you can put your feet up. The hard work is only beginning! After launch, you should focus on continuous improvement:

• • actively seek and analyze user feedback;
  • regularly update the app with bug fixes and new features;
  • monitor app performance and user engagement metrics;
  • stay updated with the latest fitness trends and technologies.

Remember, happy users are the key to success. Always keep the user experience in mind when making decisions about design improvements and new features. Satisfied users are more likely to recommend your app, leave positive reviews, and continue using it, which ultimately translates to better retention and increased revenue.

Health and fitness app development cost

At Purrweb, we estimate a project cost at the discovery stage. If you’re going to create your own workout app, you should be aware of all the parts of the fitness app development process and know what the total cost of development consists of.

Here’s how our team estimates rates and timeframes of health and fitness app development:

Stage	Estimation in hours	Estimation in weeks	Approximate costs
Project analysis	20	1	$700
UI/UX design	120	4 weeks	$6,000
App development stage	800–900	9–10 weeks	$40,000-$45,000
QA Testing	270–300	concurrently with the development	$8,100-$10,000
Project management	during the whole project	during the whole project	$5,500-$8,000

Overall, you will need $50,000-$56,000 to launch your own fitness app. And developing an application will take approximately 920–1,020 hours, which equals four months.

Bring us your health and fitness app idea and get a free estimation of your project from Purrweb’s experts. Fill out the form below 👇

Finish line

Creating a successful fitness app combines technological innovation with a deep understanding of user needs.

So, take the first step. Build a fitness app, and who knows? Your app might just be the motivation someone needs to start their fitness journey or the tool that helps another achieve their long-awaited health goals. The world of fitness technology is waiting for your contribution — it’s time to make your mark!