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Fitness App Usage Statistics: Adoption, Activity and Retention

A source-based look at fitness app use, health tracking, downloads, user engagement and retention across surveys, app cohorts and markets.

November 12, 2026 8 min read fitnessbodyequipment.com Editorial Team

Contents

Fitness app usage statistics: How many people use fitness apps, and how often?

There is no single figure that captures fitness app use. A survey asking whether people track health statistics with an app measures something different from an app store’s download count, a company’s active-user total or a research study’s definition of continued workouts. The distinctions matter: downloads are not unique users, and active users are not necessarily people who use an app every day.

In a Gallup telephone survey conducted November 6–20, 2024, 26% of U.S. adults said they currently tracked health statistics using a smartphone or tablet app. This is a broad health-tracking measure, not a count of people who use workout apps specifically. The same survey found 24% wore a fitness tracker such as a smartwatch or smart ring, a separate measure that may overlap with app use. Gallup

ABC Fitness’s Summer 2025 Wellness Watch report gives a narrower, technology-specific snapshot: 49% of surveyed consumers said they used an AI-based fitness or wellness app daily, and 30% said they used one weekly. These figures concern AI-based apps, not fitness apps as a whole. The release does not state the survey’s field dates or sample size, and describes the report as combining company data with a third-party research survey. They should not be read as population-wide usage rates. ABC Fitness

A large commercial app study offers another view: how often people exercise after starting. Among 100,709 beginner users in the Fitbod cohort, participants averaged 15 days with at least one workout during their first 28 days. The mean was 12 app workouts and 21 total workouts in that period; total workouts included sessions generated in the app and externally imported sessions. These are averages with substantial variation (standard deviations of 4, 6 and 13, respectively), drawn from a selected cohort rather than a general population sample. Fitbod cohort study

Fitness app usage statistics: What do U.S. adults track, and what do users say?

The Gallup finding suggests app-based health tracking is used by roughly one in four U.S. adults. Among adults who used an app to track health statistics, 82% said it was helpful for reaching their health goals. That is a reported assessment from app users, not evidence that the app caused them to achieve those goals. The survey’s app measure also covers health statistics generally, rather than workout logging alone. Gallup

Separate ABC Fitness surveys focus on active consumers and AI tools. In a January 2025 survey of more than 2,000 active consumers, 63% said they had used AI-based fitness tracking apps, while 43% had used virtual fitness trainers or workout generators. These are “ever used” measures among active consumers, not current or daily use among all adults. ABC Fitness Q1 2025 report

Use and trust do not necessarily move together. ABC Fitness’s Summer 2025 release reported that 55% of consumers worried about data and privacy in the context of AI-powered fitness and wellness apps. It also reported 37% were cautious about over-reliance on technology and 35% cited lack of personalization as a barrier to trust. The release does not provide the precise denominator or survey dates for these concern measures, so they are best treated as reported consumer concerns rather than estimates for a defined national population. ABC Fitness

Fitness app usage statistics: What downloads and market activity show

App-market reports count activity across stores and categories. Sensor Tower reported 3.6 billion global downloads for Health & Fitness apps across iOS and Google Play in 2024, up 6% year over year. Within that broad category, Gyms & Fitness remained the top subgenre by downloads and grew 3% from 2023. Medical Tracking downloads rose 43% over the same period. These are category-level download trends, not counts of unique people or measures of how frequently individuals used an app. Sensor Tower, 2025 State of Mobile

The broader category growth coexisted with weaker results for a separate fitness-app cohort tracked by Sensor Tower. In the second quarter of 2024, that cohort’s downloads fell 2% year over year and its monthly active users fell 3%. Because the reports describe different scopes—a full Health & Fitness category in one case and a defined fitness-app cohort in another—the figures are not contradictory measures of the same market. Sensor Tower, fitness app engagement

Growth also varied by individual app. Sensor Tower reported that U.S. monthly active users for CashWalk rose 42% in 2024 compared with 2023, while WeWard’s rose 609%. The same report placed 30-day retention at 31% for CashWalk and 20% for Sweatcoin in its discussion of fitness-reward apps. These app-specific outcomes illustrate why download growth and ongoing use should be considered separately; they do not describe all fitness apps. Sensor Tower, 2025 State of Mobile

Fitness app usage statistics: What one platform’s user metrics reveal

Keep, a Chinese fitness platform, reported more than 400 million registered users by the end of 2024 and more than 100 million annual active users during 2024. Its average monthly active users for the year were 29.921 million, compared with 29.756 million in 2023. Registered users are a cumulative total; annual active users, monthly active users and average monthly active users are different measures and should not be substituted for one another. Keep 2024 annual report

Keep also reported more than 55 million annual fitness users and over 1.4 billion workout records tracked on its platform during 2024. More than 300 million workout records were synchronized from smart devices, including Keep devices and third-party apps and services. These are company-reported platform measures: records are not unique people, and the “annual fitness user” category is defined by the company.

The report gives a sense of how platform activity can extend beyond simple logging. Keep said its platform connected to more than 22 million smart devices, and that smart plans were used over 65 million times in 2024. More than 90% of available plans were described as smart customized plans. Those counts indicate reported product activity and plan availability, but do not establish how many distinct users used a plan or how effective it was.

Fitness app usage statistics: How engagement changes over time

In the Fitbod study, 10.1% of beginner users remained adherent at 12 months. The study defined adherence as completing at least one workout per week, with up to six missed weeks allowed. Median dropout time was 19 weeks, meaning half of beginners had ceased meeting this study’s adherence criteria by that point. This is a specific behavioral definition within one app cohort, not a universal retention benchmark for fitness apps. Fitbod cohort study

Experience level was associated with different 12-month adherence rates in the same study: 18.3% for intermediate users and 25.8% for advanced users, compared with 10.1% for beginners. These are cohort comparisons, not proof that experience itself caused the difference. The study analyzed 389,481 adult users followed for 12 months from their first recorded workout; the beginner subgroup used for early behavior summaries included 100,709 people.

The early activity profile also shows why a simple workout count needs context. In the first 28 days, beginner users averaged 11 days with app strength work and 14 distinct equipment types. Their average app workout time was 719 minutes, while average total workout time was 1,017 minutes. The study reports these time values as means with standard deviations of 666 and 749 minutes, respectively, and notes that duration was winsorized. They describe this study cohort’s recorded activity, not a typical app user’s expected schedule.

Fitness app usage statistics: How audiences vary by geography and measure

In Australia, Ipsos iris reported that 9.7 million people aged 14 and older accessed a health app in August 2025. This broad health-app audience includes more than fitness services. Within the report, Apple Fitness had an audience of 1.56 million and was described as the country’s leading health app; its audience was up 30% over the year to August 2025. The report also said the Fitness & exercise subcategory audience grew 10% over the prior year. Ipsos iris, August 2025

A YouGov survey gives a different kind of national measure for Germany. Across a 52-week average from August 2025 to August 2026, 27% of German residents aged 18 and older who trained independently said they tracked their training progress with a fitness app. The denominator is people who train independently, not all German adults. The online-panel results were weighted to represent residents aged 18 and older. YouGov Germany

These figures cannot be ranked as if they measured the same audience. Australia’s 9.7 million is an audience count for any health app in one month; the Apple Fitness number is an app audience with an annual comparison; Germany’s 27% is a survey share within a specific group of independent exercisers. Together they show that reported adoption depends on who is counted, what counts as use and whether the measure is a survey response, audience estimate, download or platform activity.

Sources

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