The digital wellness sector has boomed in recent years, but which apps have the healthiest profits, number of subscriptions and five-star reviews?
It’s no secret that the wellness industry is a fast-growing market, with digital wellness apps providing millions of people with solutions to improve their sleep, fitness, mental and menstrual health.
With the demand for wellness apps being higher than ever, the creators of these apps are turning to global payments and AP automation, so that they can spend more time focusing on providing app users with new and improved features.
But what are the best wellness apps available to us? We’ve analyzed a range of wellness apps, from fitness to women’s health, and ranked them based on a variety of different factors, in order to determine which wellness apps you should be downloading right now.
Flo Period Tracker Tops the List of the Best Wellness Apps
1. Flo Period Tracker & Calendar – 8.14 overall score
Topping the list of the best wellness apps is Flo Period Tracker and Calendar, with an overall score of 8.14. As the name suggests, the app allows women to track their menstrual cycles, as well as their fertility window, PMS symptoms, and birth control use. Any users of the app who are currently pregnant are also able to follow their baby’s weekly growth.
Flo is currently available in 102 countries and is free to download and use. However, there is the option to subscribe, which enables users to create a more personalized experience and provides unlimited access to the health and wellbeing content library. In the month of April, the app was downloaded over 1 million times and generated over $5 million in revenue.
2. Calm – 6.50 overall score
The second-best wellness app available on the market is Calm, which receives an overall score of 6.50. The app provides users with various different features that help to aid sleep and relaxation, including meditation and breathing exercises, mindfulness programs, and soundscapes. Users can also access Sleep Stories, featuring celebrities such as Harry Styles, Dame Mary Berry, Matthew McConaughey, Kate Winslet, and Cillian Murphy.
Calm has been downloaded over 50 million times on the Google Play store, where it receives a review score of 4.4. The app, which is available in 102 countries, generated over $6 million in revenue and 500,000 downloads in the month of April.
3. MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter – 6.36 overall score
In third place is MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter, which receives an overall score of 6.36. The app allows users to track their progress toward a variety of goals including fitness, weight loss/gain, water intake, and nutrition. As well as being able to track the calories in over 14 million different foods, users have access to over 500 recipes and 50 workouts.
MyFitnessPal made a huge $10 million in revenue throughout April, as well as over 800,000 downloads. The app is currently available in 99 countries and 18 different languages, including English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
Flo Period Tracker and MyFitnessPal are Some of the Most Downloaded Wellness Apps on the Google Play Store
With over 100 million downloads each, Flo Period Tracker and MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter are some of the most downloaded wellness apps on the Google Play store. According to the app’s website, over 250 million women worldwide use Flo as their chosen period and ovulation tracker app.
Tied in second place, with over 50 million downloads on the Google Play store each, are Calm, Fitbit: Health & Fitness, and Strava: Run, Ride, Hike. According to its latest data, Fitbit: Health & Fitness is the number 1 top-grossing health and fitness app on the Google Play store. There are also 14 wellness apps tying in third place with 10 million downloads each, including the likes of BetterSleep: Relax and Sleep, Noom: Healthy Weight Loss and Lose It! Calorie Counter.
Flo Period Tracker was the Most Downloaded Wellness App in April
Flo Period Tracker was officially the most downloaded wellness app in April, with over 1 million downloads. The app is available in 22 different languages and was initially released in 2015, with most of its downloads being from the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom.
Tying in second place are MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter and BetterMe: Health Coaching, which were both downloaded 800,000 times throughout April. BetterMe: Health Coaching was first released in Cyprus in 2017 and is now available in 99 countries. The third most downloaded wellness app throughout the month of April was JustFit: Lazy Workout & Fit, which received 700,000 downloads. The app was released worldwide in January 2022, with the most downloads currently occurring in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
MyFitnessPal was the Highest Earning Wellness App in April
MyFitnessPal: Calorie Counter was officially the highest-earning wellness app in April, generating over $10 million in revenue, equating to almost £8 million and just over €9 million. The app was released worldwide in 2009 and is currently most commonly used in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States.
In second place, with over $6 million in revenue, is Calm. This means that throughout the month of April, the app generated over £4.7 million and €5.5 million. Tying in third place are Flo Period Tracker and Strava: Run, Ride, Hike, with each app generating over $5 million in revenue, equating to almost £4 million and €4.6 million. Strava: Run, Ride, Hike was first released in 2011 and is now most commonly downloaded in Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
Fitness is the Most Profitable Wellness App Category
The wellness app category making the most money is fitness, with over $29 million of revenue made in April alone. Despite the fitness category not appearing in the top three most profitable apps, it does makeup half of the top ten. Some of the most profitable fitness apps include Strava: Run, Hide, Hike, and Fitbit: Health & Fitness, which made $5 million and $4 million respectively in the month of April.
In second place is the relaxation and sleep category, which made $16.7 million dollars of revenue throughout the month of April. There are two apps within the top 10 most profitable apps throughout April that fall into this category: Calm, which generated $6 million, and Headspace: Mindful Meditation, which made $4 million. In third place is the weight loss category, which made $8.8 million of revenue in April, followed by women’s health, which made $7.3 million, and lifestyle, which generated over $4 million.
Zwift, Lifesum, and Breeze Amongst the Most Widely Available Wellness Apps
When creating an app, it’s important that it can be accessed by people all across the world. Of the 45 wellness apps that we analyzed, 25 of them are available in 102 countries, including the likes of Zwift: Ride and Run, Headspace: Mindful Meditation, Breeze: Mental Health, and Lifesum: Healthy Eating. These apps are also available in a range of languages, such as English, French, and Spanish, depending on which app it is you’re downloading.
There are seven apps tying for second place, including Sweat: Fitness App for Women, Ten Percent Happier Meditation, and Paired: Couples & Relationship, which are all available in 101 countries across the globe. The following three apps are available in 100 countries: 1st Phorm, AllTrails: Hike, Bike & Run, and Strava: Run, Ride, Hike. Whilst the 1st Phorm app is currently only available in English, Strava; Run, Ride, Hike, and AllTrails: Hike, Bike & Run are both available in 11 languages each.
I Am – Daily Affirmations is the Wellness App Making Users the Happiest
1. I Am – Daily Affirmations – 4.85 average review score
The wellness app making its users the happiest is I Am – Daily Affirmations, with an average review score of 4.85. The app helps users to create a new way of thinking, build their self-esteem and change any negative thought patterns. It is free to use, with the option to subscribe to the ‘I Am Premium’ content and is available in 102 countries and 15 languages.
I Am – Daily Affirmations receives a score of 4.9 on the Apple app store, with one user saying “I can’t begin to describe how helpful it is to have some positive words show up on my Apple Watch just when I needed it”. The app also has a score of 4.8 on the Google Play store, with users praising it for the variety of different uplifting phrases that are available.
2. Gym Workout Planner & Tracker – 4.80 average review score
Following closely behind is Gym Workout Planner & Tracker, which receives an average review score of 4.80. The app, which is available in 18 different languages and 102 countries, provides users with guided gym workout plans, detailed exercise instructions, and a smart trainer that acts as your personal gym coach. Users can also search by muscle group, equipment type, skill level, or keyword.
Gym Workout Planner & Tracker receives a score of 4.7 on the Google Play store, with one user describing it as “very intuitive and highly customisable”. The app also has a score of 4.9 on the Apple app store, where a subscribed user praised it as “By far the most useful, flexible and customizable app I’ve found and totally worth the money”.
3. Daylio Journal – 4.75 average review score
In third place is Daylio Journal, which has an average review score of 4.75. The app is a self-care bullet journal that allows you to work towards your goals and take care of your mental, emotional, and physical health. Users are able to pick their mood and add in activities that they have completed during the day, before the app turns them into visuals, such as statistics and charts.
Daylio Journal receives a score of 4.8 on the Apple app store, with one user saying “I started off simply looking for an app where I could have more than one daily entry but this app goes above and beyond”. The app also has a score of 4.7 on the Google Play store, where one user described how it has helped them to better their self-reflection and mood management skills.
Methodology
We used Sensor Tower to create a list of 45 wellness apps. We did this by refining our search to just the ‘Health & Fitness’ category and took our apps from the ‘Top Grossing’ list. We also looked at an article about the best wellness apps on hellomagazine.com and added any other well-known apps to our list.
We also used Sensor Tower to gather data for the following factors: the number of downloads last month, last month’s revenue, and the number of countries that each app is available in. All ‘last month’ data refers to the month of April.
We used the Google Play store in order to find out how many times each app had been downloaded from there, as well as the review score for each app.
In order to calculate an overall average review score, we also took review score data from Trustpilot and the Apple app store. No data was available from Trustpilot for 14 of our chosen apps.
To calculate an overall score, we ranked each wellness app on the following five factors: number of Google Play store downloads, number of downloads last month, last month’s revenue, number of countries available in, and average review score. We then gave each factor a normalized score out of 10, before taking our final overall score as an average across all five factors.
All data is correct as of 16th May 2023 and therefore, may now differ.
