How to Develop a Health and Fitness App [Detailed Guide + Cost]

The global health and fitness mobile app market is expanding rapidly. Surely, you must be planning to build a health and fitness app and looking for the right strategies. You’re in the right place! 

Let’s look at numbers – the fitness application market reached US$1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) in 2021 and is estimated to grow to US$8.1 billion ($11.7 billion) by the end of 2032.

Investing in health and fitness app development apps offers a plethora of opportunities in this digital world.  Also, you might be wondering about the cost to build a fitness app. In today’s guide, we’ve discussed all aspects of fitness app development and provided realistic cost estimates for development to avoid any surprises or shocks later. 

Make sure to read till the end to understand every aspect of starting your own fitness or health app is easier than ever! Let’s get started. 

3 Reasons Why You Should Invest in Health and Fitness App Development 

Investing in health and wellness app development would definitely be worth your time and money. Here are the following 3 reasons that would convince you to go for developing a fitness app:

1. The Digital Era

In this digital era of smartphones, people want more convenience and comfort with a single click on their smartphone, including health and fitness segment. It is the right time to target users globally via fitness app development.

According to Statista, in 2023, the current number of smartphone users in the world today is 6.92 billion, meaning 85.82% of the world's population owns a smartphone. If we talk about health and fitness app downloads –  there were almost 21 million downloads of leading mobile fitness and workout apps worldwide in 2023.

2. Huge Profits & Revenue

Health and fitness apps made $4.12 billion in revenue in 2022, which accounted for about 15% of total health and fitness technology revenue. Also, apps in the fitness sector are anticipated to bring in up to 1.8 million dollars in revenue in the United States alone in 2024. It is certain that investing in health and fitness apps could be highly rewarding and profitable for your business. 

3. User Behavior

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, people have changed many aspects of their lives. Be it working from home, doing workout at home, socializing online, and so on. Although the pandemic is over now many of us found ourselves immersed in that zone. 

Speaking of workout, people are now more likely to use health and fitness applications. Exercising at home or in the park on your own time appears more convenient and better than paying a lot of money to go to the gym at fixed times.

Overall, it signifies the growing demand for fitness apps among people. If you plan to invest in fitness apps, then it is the right time to implement that plan. 

Get in touch with health and fitness app development experts to kickstart your business. 

Must-Have Features in Health and Fitness Apps

Following, we’ve listed important features that you should incorporate in your fitness application development. Here’s the list:

1. User Profile

Here users personalize their information by adding their details such as name, weight, age, height, and fitness goal. With those details, the fitness app provides a personalized plan for workout and meals. Users can either follow it or customize their workout and dietary preferences.  Get in touch with diet planner app development experts. 

2. Workouts

Workout planner is the core base of any fitness mobile app development. People download the app to lose or gain weight – eventually, the purpose is to stay fit. There are different kinds of tutorials on gym workout app development such as video streams, and image-based tutorials with voice commands. 

Certain levels of fitness will encourage users to workout extra hard every passing day. It comes with calendars and a proper schedule. 

3. Meal and Nutrition Plan

This is an important feature in the health and fitness application. To be in the top category of fitness apps, you must include a ton of information on ingredients and suggest meals following the eating patterns, preferences, and goals of the user.

With the help of this feature, customers can track their water intake, adjust recommended meals, and extract nutrition data. 

4. Push Notifications

The push notifications remind users to take water on time, schedule workouts, and log their meals. If users are not using the app for a long time, the app also sends motivational notifications that encourage them to restart their workout routine

5. Payments

Users will get both free and paid versions of workouts and diet plans. To have a paid version of workout, users have to buy subscription plans or make in-app purchases. 

Therefore, it is important to incorporate a secure payment portal in the app. Fitness app developers can make use of PayPal, Stripe, and other payment modes to have safe and secure payment methods. 

6. Audio Streaming Integration

Incorporating audio streaming into the fitness apps allows users to workout without wasting time on switching players back and forth. Therefore, it is important to integrate Apple Music, Spotify, and other music streaming in the fitness app. The following points are crucial for the development process:

• Provide ready playlists where users can share with others as well
• Highlight tracks that users would love to play
• Select songs that would go with the user’s pace and heartbeat

7. Tracking Maps and Routes

Displaying maps and routes in the app would track, monitor, and save the data. It would help users to check the entire week or month's routine in their fitness app. It will also showcase their routine data and when they missed their sessions. 

Fitness app developers must include map markers to highlight their achievements. Also, it should provide a map that states users where they need to do better along with key stats like pace and speed. 

8. Educational Content

Most of the time we workout in the wrong way which would sprain our muscles. Doing the right technique is quite important in terms of staying fit and staying safe from any injuries. 

For that, developers must include educational content in the app where – users can easily watch videos, read informational articles, and more. 

Also, developers must integrate a CMS during fitness app development to keep shuffling the medium with new articles and blogs. 

Build a Health and Fitness App: Step-by-Step Guide 

The step-by-step guide listed below will help you understand the overall process of the development process. Let’s take a look:

Step 1: Choose a Platform

One aspect of the cost of health and fitness app development would depend on the platform you’ve chosen. You’ve to decide if you want to build a fitness app for Android, iOS, or cross-platform. 

In case, you want to build for both platforms, then the cost will increase. This is because both Android and iOS use different programming languages. 

To build a health and fitness app requires strategic planning and technical expertise. If you’re planning to build a health & fitness app within your budget– you must get in touch with fitness app development experts. 

Step 2: Integrating Features and Functionality

The features and functionalities of any app determine its success. The same goes for health and fitness apps. You must ensure to integrate amazing features that your users would love to use. 

We’ve discussed many interesting features in the above section. If you’d like to add more advanced features to your app, then the development cost will increase. 

Step 3: Choosing the Right Tech Stack

Having the right tech stack in your app will create a strong foundation for your fitness app. We’ve listed some of the common tech stacks. Take a look:

• Native: Swift, Objective C, Kotlin
• Hybrid: Flutter, React Native
• Frontend: React JS, Angular
• Backend: Node JS, .NET, Python, Java, PHP, TypeScript 

Having advanced tech stack implementation would again increase the cost of health and fitness app development. 

Step 4: Design and Development

Next comes the design and development phase. To attract and engage users with your app - you must have an enticing UI/UX design. 

Your app must have a user-friendly design, an interesting user interface, and accessibility. A superior user experience will be provided by having all these components, coupled with deployed servers and third-party APIs. 

You can begin developing your health and fitness app, depending on its complexity. To effectively manage users and safeguard transactions, your backend development must be scalable and dependable. For encryption, data storage, communication between internal and external services, and other uses, create a secure server architecture. 

You can keep ahead of the competition in the industry by hiring skilled Fitness app developers. 

Step 5: Testing and Launching

To properly evaluate the security, usability, and functioning of your fitness app, utilize manual and automated tests. Finding any faults or issues as soon as you can will be beneficial. 

You can launch your app when you've tested it. However, even after it has been released, supporting and maintaining the system by addressing bugs, mistakes, and other problems is important. 

Estimated Cost to Build a Health and Fitness App

The cost to develop a health and fitness app varies on certain factors. These factors include the project’s complexity, UI/UX design, tech stack, and more. If you’re looking for any specific number – then that’s not the case here in the mobile app development process. 

Having an advanced version would definitely increase the cost and vice versa. The estimated cost to develop a health and fitness app would be around $25,000 to $50,000. If you want advanced features and functionalities in your health and fitness app, then the estimated cost would be $80,000 or above.

Note:

If you want to go for a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), it will be less expensive for health & fitness app development. You can launch the app with limited features and can check users' reviews and engagement. 

Once you’ve made enough reach, you can obtain funding from investors and – go for a fully developed health and fitness application. 

Health and Fitness Apps Popular Examples

Here we’ve listed some of the top examples of health and fitness apps:

1. MyFitnessPal App

MyFitnessPal is one the leading mobile health and fitness applications. They offer the best fitness solutions for weight loss and dietary plans. With an amazing interface and features, including workout plans, a calorie tracker & counter, and more. 

2. Peloton App

If you want to workout from the comfort of your home – Peloton would be the perfect app for you. Peloton allows people to benefit from the competitive gym atmosphere while exercising at home. 

Interestingly, it helps the company increase sales of running and cycling equipment, which when paired with their subscription services are anticipated to reach $1.8 billion (in 2020). 

3. FitBit App

FitBit is an all-in-one personalized application that enables users to track their workouts, activity, goals, step tracking, sleep tracking, and more. Users have access to meal planning, an activity planner, community, and even meditation sessions.

Final Thoughts

As we've almost reached the end of this guide, we believe that by this time you are better informed on how and why to build and finance fitness software. 

However, proper planning and research are crucial before you start building the app. Additionally, it's important to fully know the industry while taking your business objectives into account in order to dramatically increase your chances of developing a successful fitness app. 

This can be accomplished by getting in touch with a reputed fitness app development company like Apptunix to handle every aspect. Health and Fitness developer experts will be your guide to take your business to the next level.