Fitness app cost in the UK: build your own or white-label?

If your app is mainly a branded way to book classes, pay and watch workouts, start with a white-label platform. Build your own when the app is the thing members pay for: your programming, your coaching logic and your data. In the UK, Contic’s fixed LaunchPad price for a custom build is £25k, £60k or £100k, excluding VAT.

The rest of this guide helps you work out which side of that line you’re on. It covers what each route costs and how a build actually runs. It also covers the two rule books that trip fitness apps up: UK health data law and Apple’s app review.

Start with what you’re buying

Nobody downloads a fitness app to admire the login screen. What you’re buying is members who sign up, book or start a plan, pay, and come back next week.

So decide how you’ll measure it before anyone designs a screen. For most fitness businesses, the scorecard is short:

• Sign-ups finished: how many people who open the app reach a booked class or a first workout.
• Paid conversions: how many trial or free users start paying.
• Retention: how many members are still active after 30 and 90 days.
• Cancellations: how many leave, and what they did just before.
• Questions answered in the app: how many members get help without emailing or ringing the front desk.

Saving staff time comes second. A booking system that stops your team chasing no-shows is useful. An app members prefer to your competitor’s is what makes you money.

Then ask yourself an honest question. Does your app need to work differently from everyone else’s to move those numbers? Or does it just need your logo, your classes and a reliable way to pay? That answer decides most of what follows.

White-label or build your own: the real difference

A white-label platform is someone else’s fitness app with your branding on it. You configure it rather than build it. A custom build is software made for your business, and you own it.

When white-label is the right call

• You run classes, PT sessions or memberships, and the app mainly handles booking, payment and video.
• You want to find out whether members will use an app at all before spending more. Our guide to validating an app idea covers cheap ways to test that.
• What you sell is your coaching and community, not the software.
• You’re happy for the platform’s roadmap to decide what your app does next.

People underrate that last point. If your competitors sign up to the same platform, the app won’t be what sets you apart.

When building your own pays

• Your programme logic is the product: how plans adapt, progress, or ease off after an injury.
• You want members helped instantly inside the app, not by email or phone.
• You need it joined up with systems you already run, such as booking, payments or your CRM (the system that holds your customer records).
• You expect investors to ask what you own. “A subscription to someone else’s app” is a weak answer.
• You plan to add wearables, hardware or a second audience, such as corporate wellness, later.

On AI, our view is simple. With today’s AI models and agents (software that can take actions, not just answer), members can get real service inside your app. Plan changes, rebookings and questions get handled the moment they’re asked. That does more for your competitiveness than automating paperwork behind the scenes. Just note that if the app is designed to infer something about a member’s health, the data rules below apply.

There’s also a middle path. Start on white-label to prove demand, then build once you know what members actually use. If you go that way, check now that you can take your members and their data with you.

How a fitness app gets made, from your side of the table

You don’t need to write code, but you do need to make decisions. Here’s how a custom build runs with LaunchPad, in four steps.

1. Discover. We agree what the first version must do, who it’s for and how you’ll measure it. Discovery sets the exact scope within your tier. If you aren’t confident in the plan afterwards, you get your money back.
2. Design. You see how the app looks and works before it’s built, while changes are still cheap.
3. Build. We start with the hardest, most uncertain feature, not the login screen. You see working software at a weekly demo, with short written updates in between.
4. Launch. We handle the App Store and Google Play submissions, including listing details, screenshots and replies to the reviewers.

Expect the project to take around two days a week of your time during Discover and Design. During Build, it drops to around a day a week. Our non-technical founder’s playbook covers how to stay in control without learning to code.

A few points matter for fitness in particular:

• Both phones. We build iPhone and Android apps from one shared codebase, using React Native. Apps work on tablets too, unless Discovery decides otherwise.
• Real devices. We test on real iPhones and Android phones, not just simulators. Your members will use the app mid-set, with sweaty thumbs.
• Accessibility. Everything we build meets WCAG 2.2 AA, an accessibility standard that helps people using screen readers or keyboards use the app too.
• Wearables. Building for smartwatches is scoped separately. If watch data matters to your idea, say so before we start.

There’s more on the app itself in Do you build apps for both iPhone and Android?

What it costs in the UK

A custom fitness app with Contic costs one of three fixed prices.

The price covers everything up to launch. That includes developer accounts, hosting, licences and the third-party services the build needs. You pay in stages, with each phase invoiced in advance. Your proposal sets out what each phase costs before you sign.

Which tier fits depends on what your first version has to do, and Discovery sets the exact scope. Which Contic LaunchPad package is right for me? walks through the choice, and LaunchPad pricing has the detail. For the wider picture, read how much it costs to build an app in the UK.

Two more details are worth knowing. If you need a full brand from scratch on Starter or Growth, we quote it as extra work. And a short delay on your side moves the date, not the price.

Comparing it with white-label

We haven’t quoted a white-label price range here, because we couldn’t find one we’d stand behind. Get the platform’s price in writing, then model it properly:

• What it costs at today’s member numbers, and at the numbers in your business plan.
• What it charges as extra, such as custom features, extra locations or more video.
• What it costs to leave, including getting your members’ data out in a usable form.
• Three years of fees, set against a build price plus running costs.

A monthly fee that looks small can still overtake a build price as you grow. Equally, a build is wasted money if members never open the app.

After launch

An app isn’t finished when it goes live. Apple says it will remove apps that no longer work as intended or aren’t actively supported (Apple App Review Guidelines).

TotalCare runs your product after launch for a fixed monthly price. That covers hosting, app store accounts, third-party services, updates and support. The team that built your app can be the team that looks after it. See Do you offer ongoing maintenance and updates?

The health data question

This is where fitness apps differ from most consumer apps. Under UK GDPR, data concerning health is special category data, which gets extra legal protection (ICO). The ICO lists data from fitness trackers as an example of health data (ICO).

The ICO frames the categories broadly. It says details about a broken leg are health data, just as details about mental health are (ICO). Inferences count too: profiling that infers health status, such as a condition or risk, is processing special category data. Its gym example is fingerprint scanning at the turnstiles. That processes biometric data, so the gym needs a specific legal condition to do it.

The ICO says this guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act, so check the current version before launch (ICO).

Here’s what it means for your decision:

• On white-label, the platform’s systems hold your members’ health data. Ask where it’s stored, who can see it and how you’d get all of it back.
• On a custom build, you choose where it lives. With Contic, it sits in an AWS account that transfers to you as a whole.
• Either way, ask what the app is designed to infer about members, and whether it treats them differently because of it.

Contic is registered with the ICO and holds Cyber Essentials Plus. We get clients ready for GDPR audits, but we don’t issue certificates. If you’re adding AI personalisation, our AI and GDPR governance guide goes further.

What Apple will check

Apple says experts review every app on the App Store (Apple App Review Guidelines). You’re responsible for everything in your app, including analytics, ad networks and third-party SDKs (Apple App Review Guidelines). SDKs are ready-made code components dropped into an app. On white-label, that includes components the platform chose, not you.

Three points in Apple’s physical harm section matter for fitness apps (Apple App Review Guidelines):

• Health claims need evidence. Apps must disclose the data and methodology behind accuracy claims for health measurements. Claiming to measure blood pressure or blood oxygen with only the phone’s sensors isn’t allowed.
• A doctor reminder. Apple says apps should remind users to check with a doctor before making medical decisions.
• Risky challenges. Apps shouldn’t urge people into challenges that risk physical harm. A leaderboard daring members to do 500 burpees is a product decision and an App Store risk.

To publish on the App Store, you need Apple Developer Program membership, enrolled as an individual or as an organisation (Apple developer account overview). Enrol your business, not a freelancer or a member of staff. On white-label, ask whose account your app will sit in, because it may be the platform’s.

With Contic, your App Store and Google Play apps transfer to you. If you’re planning AI chat features, read whether Apple will reject your app under its AI and user-content rules.

Questions to ask before you sign

Ask these of any white-label platform or build supplier, and get the answers in writing:

• Whose Apple and Google developer accounts will the app be published under?
• Who owns the code and IP, and where does the contract say so?
• Where is members’ health data stored, and can we export all of it?
• What does it cost at three times our current member numbers?
• What happens to the app and the data if we leave, or you close?
• Which third-party tools are inside the app, and what do they collect?
• What will the app infer about members, and how is that handled?
• Who keeps it running after launch, and on what terms?

Our answers are short. You own the code and IP, and our contract assigns it to your company in writing. Your AWS account, GitHub repositories and app store apps transfer to you. We can also give you a list of the open-source libraries in your product and their licences. There’s more in Who owns the code when an app developer builds it for you?

Where Contic fits

If you’re at the idea stage or planning a first build, LaunchPad is the route. It’s a fixed price in four steps, and you get your money back if Discovery’s plan doesn’t convince you. Contic’s own team designs and builds your product, and senior engineers review and own everything that ships.

Health is a sector where trust is part of the product. Our Pristine Condition work is movement tracking used by about 150,000 warehouse staff, and it works offline. Our health and wellness page has more on how we work with health and wellness brands.

The first chat is free, and we’ll sign a reasonable NDA before you share your idea. If you have a white-label quote, compare it with LaunchPad over the same three years.