Fitness app ideas are all the rage right now.

And, why shouldn’t it be. These days, more and more people are paying better attention to their health and well-being, making fitness apps a staple in almost every smartphone. Although fitness apps have been shaping our lives long before, COVID-19 has accelerated the trend.

Take MyFitnessPal for example, generating ~$12 million in revenue by January 2024 and is inching towards becoming the top-gross fitness app of all time. It’s no wonder why many of us are wondering “What are winning fitness app ideas in 2024” or “How to build your own fitness app”?

If you are looking for the information on how to create an amazing fitness app, you’re reading the right guide. We’ll share everything that you must know about fitness app development.

Fitness App Market in a Nutshell

The global fitness app market is booming and thanks to COVID-19 pandemic.

• Revenue generated $3.5 billion in 2023, fast-forward to 2024, and it’s projected to reach $8.6 billion.
•  Expected to reach $14.7 billion by 2026.
• The United States generates the highest revenue, amounting to $2,061.00 m in 2024.
• In 2023 and 2024 the number of fitness app users are correspondingly 119 millions in the US.

What Fitness App Ideas Earn Big Bucks?

Checking on the most recent stats for 2024 on the leading fitness app by number of downloads, we’ve discovered the following:

• 26% of lifestyle apps have to do with sleep tracking and meditation.
• 40% workout related
• 20% diet and nutrition
• 14% outdoor sports activities tracking like running

Taking into consideration all these stats about fitness apps, no wonder health and fitness mobile app development is rising.

Top Trending Fitness App Ideas for 2024 and Ahead

1. AI-Powered Personal Trainer

Building an app that leverages Artificial Intelligence to analyze user data is termed an AI-driven fitness app. Simultaneously it offers personalized workout routines to nutrition plans along with real-time workout assistance.

2. Mindfulness and Meditation App

Want to feel more calm and practice mindfulness daily?

There’s an app for that – “Mindfulness and Meditation apps”. These apps intend to remind users to practice mindfulness through simple assisted meditation activities, inspiring users to reflect upon and bring attention to their well-being throughout the day.

3. Augmented Reality Fitness Training App

Build an app that integrates playfulness with fitness. “AR fitness games” is the answer to bridging the virtual world with reality.

This amazing technology works in fitness app development by overlaying the physical environment with 3D elements to set up an interactive environment.

4. Workplace Wellness App

Build a fitness app that is community-driven, especially designed for corporate wellness programs, providing fitness challenges, and resources for employees to improve their well–being a stress management tool.

5. Pregnancy and Postnatal App

With pregnancy and postnatal apps, you offer to-be-moms a comfortable place to embrace the changes and still be healthy. This app will provide personalized and safe yoga practices, workout routines, and nutrition guidance with experts monitoring your every step.

6. Sleep and Recovery Tracker

Build an app that tracks user’s sleep patterns, provides sleep improvement techniques and simultaneously tracks post-workout recovery to optimize overall wellness.

7. Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation App

Sports injury and rehabilitation apps offer personalized treatment plans. With this type of app, users get access to the right injury treatment plan depending on the stage of recovery, plus prevent re-injury.

Furthermore, you can blend medical research with modern design and technology in a sports injury treatment app to leverage a first-mover advantage.

Fitness App Features You Should Not MISS!

Often, entrepreneurs get confused between the must-have and nice-to-have features. But, let me spill the beans – there’s a strong connection between the features a fitness app will have with its monetization model.

Without any ado, let’s start by focusing on the basic features that make a fitness app more fascinating and desirable features.

User Profile

This is often considered the most boring thing after settings, right?

Well, fitness and wellness apps are an exception. This is where users personalize their experience by submitting their weight, activity level, and other related parameters. The user profile is often the place to show off your accomplishments.

Here are a handful of profile-related things to take into consideration when developing a fitness app.

• Dashboards with earned perks and accomplishments
• Dietary preferences
• Before and after photos
• Feature to track fitness goals and weight

Workout Sessions

The workout planner feature is the focal point of any fitness program because people install them with a focus on losing weight and getting into the summer body.

The most common approach to achieve this is video, but you may also find image-based instructions with voice commands. Though everyone has different shapes, the workout needs to be adjustable according to the challenges. Remember, to integrate a workout schedule and workout calendar to keep track of the progress made.

Nice-to-have feature for workout sessions:

• Text-to-speech engine supporting multiple languages for voice tips, e.g. Google’s text-to-speech API.
• Offer ample meta-data for exercises and equipment.
• An easy way to navigate back and forth between different exercises.
• A workout calendar for planning better workout sessions.

Notifications

This one is inescapable – after all, you need to remind your users about the training sessions, and discounts for a season to get in shape and notify them if other users post comments on their posts.

One thing to remember is that it’s easy to abuse the feature and provoke customers into turning them off. On the contrary, when it’s about fitness app development, notifying and reinforcing positive messages and daily inspirational quotes is a key to letting your users know they’re making an impact.

Therefore, establishing these features can significantly improve user engagement and retention in your fitness app development journey. When creating something amazing, consider these tips:

• Enable users to micromanage different types of notifications
• Keep track of all the notifications
• Consist of quick actions, allowing users to start an activity right from notifications

Calorie Counting and Meal Plans

Meal planning and calorie counters are essential when building a fitness planner app.

The best app in this category should offer top-notch information on ingredients. Also, can recommend recipes depending on the user’s preferences, eating habits, and workout schedules. After all, nutrition and diet are crucial elements for mobile wellness apps.

Here’s how you can improve a meal and exercise fitness app:

• Allow users to keep track of their water intake
• Integrate barcode scanning and extract nutrition data from external sources
• Dynamically personalize recommended meals depending on consumed or spent calories

Adding Audio Integration with Fitness Apps

There’s no denying, that many of us love working out to our favourite bits, but it turns daunting when you need to switch between workout sessions and audio streaming. This is why it’s crucial to integrate audio streaming apps like Spotify, and Apple Music with your workout training app.

A piece of advice for embedding audio streaming when you build your own fitness app:

• Select songs with a tempo that matches the user’s heart rate
• Provide personalized playlists or allow users to share their own playlists
• Highlight tracks that got users to perform at their best

In essence, creating a fitness application that seamlessly integrates with popular audio streaming services can immensely enhance the user experience and keep them inspired during their workout sessions.

Maps and Routes Integration

For outdoor activities like cycling, running or any other fitness monitoring activities, it’s important to show the routes overlay. Though users may not require this feature, it’s something they’ll review after the training is complete.

Your users will absolutely love the app if your fitness app idea offers:

• Offer key stats like pace and speed at one glance
• Automatically set map markers for accomplishments during a workout
• Highlight portions of the tracks where users can perform better

To build your fitness app, consider integrating weather forecasts or real-time traffic insights.

Educational Content

In some situations, keeping our morale up and inching towards achieving fitness goals becomes a real demur. What may come as a rescue in these situations is educational material, i.e. teaching us exercise and diet fundamentals.

A handful of tips to consider when thinking about educational aspects:

• Connect the content directly to the user’s result in the app
• Provide versatile bite-sized recommendations
• Optimize the content for your target audience

This also means there’s a need to integrate CMS during the fitness app development services, so that content keeps rotating.

Live Streaming

When you are developing a gyming app, you need to include a class streaming feature. Not to miss – Peloton is an excerpt of what we are saying, and this underlines the fact that many ideas root from this.

However, what’s more crucial is that all these features are knitted together into a flawless gym program experience. Thus, the gym workout app is much more about balancing the right mix of options.

How Will Your Fitness App Earn Money – MONETIZATION STRATEGIES

The core reason behind creating a fitness app is to generate profit. There are numerous ways to monetize a fitness app, but picking a specific monetization model depends almost completely on the functionality and target audience.

So, when investing in fitness app ideas in 2024, choosing the right monetization strategy is critical to ensure the app’s sustainability and scalability. Surprise, surprise – fitness apps have the same app monetization strategy as other mobile apps. You can opt for in-app purchases or subscriptions. Moreover, you can set up an e-commerce store if you have some concrete sports equipment or dietary nutrition supplements to sell.

If you are choosing a subscription model for your fitness app, keep it a little away in the initial phase. This way, you’ll keep the 30% portion that Apple and Google get from each purchase.

Why should you consider the subscription model?

Just for one thing – You’ll be among the first 5. Otherwise, you can also opt for ads, but be mindful that your business model should not be a challenge in the user experience and ensure consistency.

Finally…

Creating a successful and innovative fitness app depends on two imperatives – “a groundbreaking fitness app idea” and “an experienced tech team”.

By exploring the top fitness app ideas outlined above and integrating key features like progress monitoring, push notifications, user personalization, wearable device integration, and community sharing, you can easily create a fitness app that addresses the user requirements in today’s evolving fitness landscape.

Get in touch with fitness app developers at Apptunix to turn your innovative idea into a successful fable of the fitness landscape. Stay ahead of the curve by making a positive impact on people’s health and well-being with your fitness app idea in 2024.