Onboarding that produces a plan
A short questionnaire that ends with a real programme, not a generic template. The quality of the plan is the product.
App costs · 6–8 weeks
How much does a fitness app cost in 2026?
A fitness app lives on a phone, sells a subscription and has to be worth opening every day. That makes it a Product Build: $15K–$25K fixed, six to eight weeks, iOS and Android from one codebase. Month6, built here and on the App Store, is the reference.
Where the number comes from
The screens of a fitness app are familiar: onboarding questions, a plan, today's workout, a log, progress. The cost sits in the logic underneath. A training engine that generates a real programme from someone's experience, days per week and equipment, and progresses it week to week, is a piece of software on its own. Month6 generates full-body, upper/lower, push-pull-legs or Arnold splits with double progression from nine onboarding answers.
The second cost is the subscription. In-app purchases on iOS and Android go through the stores, not Stripe, with receipts to validate, trials to handle and a paywall that has to convert. RevenueCat takes most of that work and the price assumes it. A seven-day trial on a monthly plan is a sensible default and it is what Month6 ships.
The low end of the band is a plan-and-log app with a paywall and a small web dashboard. The high end adds an AI coach that can edit the plan, progress photos in private storage, a projection or scoring model, and weekly check-ins that adjust targets. Each of those is in Month6 and each took a week or more.
What the price includes
The scope, as it would be written.
Workout logging
Sets, reps, weight and rest timers that work with a sweaty thumb. Tolerates a dead signal in the gym and syncs when it returns.
Progress
Charts of volume and bodyweight, personal records, and optional progress photos stored privately with the user's consent.
Subscription paywall
RevenueCat on both stores, a trial, restore purchases, and the entitlement checks throughout the app.
Store submission
Health-adjacent apps get extra review attention. Listings, screenshots, privacy labels and the review back-and-forth are handled until both apps are live.
What moves the price
Four things that change the number.
An AI coach
A chat coach that can read the plan and change it is valuable and expensive. Month6's refuses medical advice and starvation targets by design, and that design is where the hours go.
Wearables
Reading Apple Health and Health Connect is a few days. Live heart rate from a watch, or a watchOS app, is a separate project.
Nutrition
Calorie and protein targets are cheap. A food database with barcode scanning is not, and it is usually better licensed than built.
Social features
Friends, leaderboards and shared workouts bring moderation, privacy settings and notifications. Rarely right for version one.
Built here
Month6
Fitness app · Six-month projection, training engine, AI coach · iOS
Nine answers and two photos become a six-month projection, a training plan and a weekly check-in loop with an AI coach.
Questions
What people ask about fitness app costs.
- Can I start with a web app for $5K?
- You can, and for a coaching business that sells plans it is sometimes right. But a fitness app that people open daily belongs on the phone, with notifications and a store listing. The MVP Sprint is web only, so most fitness products start as a Product Build.
- Do you build the training logic or do I supply it?
- Both work. If you are a coach with a method, it gets encoded as rules the engine follows. If not, the engine is built on standard progression models, the way Month6's was. Either way the logic is yours and documented.
- Stripe or in-app purchases?
- In-app purchases, because the stores require it for digital subscriptions sold inside the app. RevenueCat handles both stores and gives one dashboard. Stripe is added only if there is a web checkout as well, which the band allows for.
- How long until it is in the App Store?
- Six to eight weeks to submission from a signed scope. Review time is Apple's and Google's, usually days, and it sits outside the contract date.
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