Have you heard someone say, “I walked 5,000 steps today” or “I burned 1,000 calories”? You probably have. Have you ever wondered how they track these things so easily? If you ask them they will likely say through my fitness tracker app. The best workout tracker apps help people easily track things like steps taken, distance walked, calories burned, and even weight all in one place.
According to a report by Grand View Research, the fitness tracker market was worth about $60.9 billion in 2024 and it is expected to reach $162.8 billion by 2030. These numbers show the rising demand for top fitness tracking apps, and this trend is only going to continue. And why not? These apps offer major benefits and make managing your health much easier. Just download the app, enter your basic details, and you’re ready to start tracking your health.
This is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and both startups and established businesses can enter it with the help of a fitness app development company like Helpful Insight. In this blog, you’ll learn how to build a fitness tracker app, its features, cost to develop the best exercise tracker app, tech stack, and more.
Best Exercise Tracker App: An Overview
A fitness or exercise tracker app is a mobile app that helps you keep an eye on your daily exercise and health. It can count how many steps you walk, how many calories you burn, or how far you run. Some apps also let you set goals, like walking 10,000 steps a day. For example, if you go for a walk and wear a smartwatch, the app can show how long you walked and how many calories you burned.
Fitness and workout tracker apps work by using your phone or smartwatch to track your steps, movement, and heart rate. They show your progress to stay healthy and active. Best workout tracker apps also give you workout plans or tips on what to eat or what exercises to do. These apps make it easier to stay healthy and fit by keeping all your progress in one place.
Essential Features Gym and Workout Tracking App Should Have
When creating the best fitness tracker app, be sure to include innovative features in the app. Understand what users need, what other best gym exercise tracker apps offer, and what they lack. Then, design features that fill those gaps to make your fitness tracking application stand out.
1. Workout Tracking
This feature helps users to track their exercises like running, yoga, or dancing. It shows how far they went and how many calories they burned. It can use GPS for outdoor activities and sensors to measure heart rate and steps. Users can also sort workouts by time or how hard they were.
2. Personalised Dashboard
The app should allow users to see all their workout information in one place. They can see steps, calories, and recent activities. It helps them track their progress every day. This makes it easier to reach fitness goals, and feel proud of what users have done each day.
3. Social Workout Challenges
By integrating this feature fitness app developers allow users to join fitness challenges with their friends to make exercise more fun. They can also win prizes like discounts on sports gear or gym wear. It motivates the users to keep enjoying using the workout tracker app.
4. Nutrition & Workout Sync
The best exercise tracker app should suggest healthy meals and snacks based on users’ daily workouts. It helps them eat the right food to get energy and recover better. This feature makes it easier to follow a good diet plan.
5. Energy Level Tracker
This functionality enables users to record how tired or energetic they feel every day. Users can tell the app if they feel sleepy, strong, or weak. Over time, they can see how their energy changes and how it affects their workouts. Businesses can ask their fitness mobile app development company to add this functionality as it will be greatly loved by users.
How To Build a Fitness Tracking App That Stands Out?
If you’re planning to develop a fitness tracker app that is successful, it’s important to understand that there are many factors to consider. Working with the best fitness tracker app development companies can be a big advantage, as they specialize in building fitness and exercise tracking apps that users enjoy and trust.
Now, let’s take a look at the key steps involved in best gym and fitness tracker app development:
1. Market Analysis
Before you start to create a fitness tracker app, it’s important to identify who will use it. Learn their age, job, and what they like. Then, find out what problems users face with existing workout tracker apps. Talk to real users to understand what features they wish to have in their fitness tracker app. Avoid simply copying the best exercise tracker apps, instead, decide what your app will do, how it will help, and what makes it unique.
2. Wireframing and Designing
Next, the UI UX design agency will develop wireframes to visualize the best workout tracker app’s layout and design. Mapping out user journeys helps you understand how users will navigate through the best gym tracker app, ensuring a seamless and intuitive experience. So, you do have to plan carefully how your application will look to improve the user experience of it.
3. Selecting Tech Stack
To make a fitness tracker app, you need to choose the right set of tools and technologies. The tech stack helps your exercise tracking app work well and look nice. The fitness tracking app development tech stack typically includes React Native, Flutter, Node,js, Kotlin, and many more. Don’t worry if you don’t know which tools to use, dedicated app developers will help you choose the best ones because they know what works best.
4. Fitness Tracker App development
Now comes the most important part, the actual process of creating your best exercise tracker app. The fitness app development agency USA will build the app using the best tools and programming languages selected. They will develop both the backend and frontend of your fitness app solution. If you prefer not to start with full development right away, you can ask the fitness app developers to first create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product).
5. Testing & Launch
If you think the app is ready to launch right after development, not quite, one important step is still left that is testing. The QA team will perform in-depth testing to find and fix bugs or glitches. Once everything is working smoothly, your best exercise tracker app is ready for launch. As your app grows, keep adding new features and improve the app’s performance.
Explore More: Fitness App Development: Step-by-Step Process, Cost, Features, and More
Tech Stack To Create Best Fitness & Workout Tracker App
The tech stack you choose for your fitness app development solution plays a major role in everything, from how your app performs to how it looks. That’s why it’s important to select the right technologies and programming languages with the help of your health and fitness app development company.
In this section, let’s take a look at the main technology stack used for fitness tracker app development.
Frontend
The front-end of the best workout tracker app shows what users see in the mobile application. The tools used depend on where the app will work, whether on web or mobile. In the below table, let’s have a look at the most popular frontend tech stack use for best fitness tracker app development:
| Tools & Technologies | Description | Why App Developers Prefer It |
| React Native | Best framework to build fitness tracker apps using simple code. It works on both Android and iOS. | Saves time by using one code for two platforms |
| Flutter | A tool from Google that helps make apps with smooth design and fast speed using one code. | Fast performance and great design features. |
| Angular | A popular framework to build scalable and powerful web applications with many pages and features. | Good for building large, detailed apps. |
Backend
The backend technology stack of a workout tracker app is responsible for saving data, checks user login, and connects to other services. It helps the app run smoothly and keeps everything safe. Users don’t see it, but it’s very important. In the below table, let’s have a look at the most popular backend tech stack use for best diet tracker app development:
| Tools & Technologies | Description | Why App Developers Prefer It |
| Node,js | It helps apps run fast by using JavaScript on the server side. It’s fast and can handle many users at the same time | Hire app developers like this tool as it makes managing user data easy. |
| Java | A strong programming language used to build secure apps. It is safe, works well with Android, and is used for creating large apps. | Powerful, safe to use, and works really well on Android. |
| Ruby On Rails | A tool that helps fitness app development companies quickly build apps using simple code. | Saves time, and has many built-in tools. |
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Database Management Systems
A database helps store all the user data in the app like steps, workouts, and progress. The type of database management system hire dedicated app developers choose depends on what the app needs. Some apps need fast updates, others need to store lots of data. In the below table, let’s have a look at the database manage systems used by fitness application development company to create best gym tracker app:
| Tools & Technologies | Description | Why App Developers Prefer It |
| MongoDB | A database that stores data in a simple, flexible way using documents like a list or file | Easy to use, works fast, and handles large datasets well. |
| PostgreSQL | A powerful database that keeps data safe and organized using rows and tables. | Strong safety, accuracy, and ability to handle complex data. |
| AWS DynamoDB | AWS DynamoDB is a fast, cloud-based database from Amazon that can grow with the exercise tracking app. | Runs fast, handles many users, and needs little setup. |
Cost To Develop The Best Exercise Tracker App
Creating a workout and exercise tracker app is a great idea, but it does require a significant investment. As a custom fitness app development service provider in USA, we completely understand your concern about knowing the cost to build a fitness tracker app. The development cost depends on several factors that directly impact the total budget. Some of the key factors include:
- App Development Platform: The platform you choose, whether you’re building the app for a single platform or for both iOS and Android will affect the cost. Multi-platform development typically costs more.
- Workout Tracker App Features: Basic features are less expensive to build compared to advanced ones. The overall cost will depend on the number and type of features you choose to include.
- UI/UX Design Services: Creating a simple design is less costly. But if you want your workout monitor app to look great and easy to use, that takes more time and skilled UI/UX designers, which adds to the cost.
- Third-Party Integrations: If your best fitness tracker app connects to other apps or wearables like smartwatches, sleep trackers, or food apps, those tools may need extra money and time to set up.
- Location Of Mobile App Developers: The cost also varies based on where your development team is located. If you hire app developers from Asian countries it is usually more affordable than hiring teams from the USA or UK.
In addition to these, other factors like app complexity, level of customization, marketing, support, and maintenance also affect the final cost. On average, fitness app development may start around $15,000 and can go higher depending on your requirements. For an accurate estimate, contact the Helpful Insight team. Once we understand your project details, we’ll provide a personalized quote.
Develop Best Fitness Tracker App With Helpful Insight
Creating a gym exercise tracker app requires a deep understanding of the fitness app market, strong app development expertise, a skilled team, and experience with a wide range of technologies. You’ll find all of this in one place, at Helpful Insight. We are a leading fitness mobile app development company in USA, specializing in building high-quality, feature-rich app solutions such as calorie tracking apps, the best gym tracker apps, top workout apps for women, diet tracker apps, and more.
Our team consists of highly skilled and top app developers San Francisco who have been part of the tech industry for years. They’ve created innovative mobile applications and are dedicated to delivering even better digital solutions.
Take the first step today, hire app developers from Helpful Insight and turn your app vision into a fully functional, successful product.
FAQs
Some of the best exercise tracker apps include Strava, Fitbit, MyFitness Pal, and several others. You can explore these apps and choose the one that fits your personal fitness goals.
Creating the best fitness tracker app takes time, as it’s a careful and detailed process. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months. Once you share your requirements with an app development agency like Helpful Insight, they will give you an accurate timeline based on your needs.
Yes, you can create a fitness tracker app for both platforms. This can be done by using cross-platform development frameworks, which allows the app to run on both platforms with a single codebase.
The ideal monetization model depends on your target users, app features, and goals. Some popular models include subscription based model, freemium model, in-app purchases and brand collaboration.
