The Fitness App That's Beating All the Trends and Making All the Money
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Trend Busting. Check out the full article for more insights.
Over the last few years, it's become common to see apps get fewer downloads but make more money. Especially apps that have been around for a while.
The increase in revenue can be attributed to the rise of subscriptions as acceptable monetization model but also the focus and effort more and more companies are putting into optimizing revenue growth.
One such example is Strava, a workout-tracking app with a social component that saw its revenue rise 240% since 2020.
Our estimates show Strava, which was released all the way back in 2011, earning its first million back in December of 2018. And that's net which means it's what Strava took home after Apple's and Google's fees.
Revenue continued to grow after crossing the 1M milestone but very slowly, until 2020, when net revenue skyrocketed to more than $8M in August. It fell right after but started a new cycle where Strava's revenue is constantly growing and in the summer grows even more.
Fast forward to 2024, and Strava just had it biggest May ever. According to our estimates, Strava brought in $13M of net revenue in May, up 48% when compared to last May.
And May isn't even Strava's strongest month. According to our App Intelligence, that's August. Last August, Strava hauled a whopping $13M of net revenue. If growth remains the same this summer, Strava could be looking at almost $20M in net revenue this August.
What's fueling this mega growth? Downloads - sure. Unlike other apps, Strava's downloads aren't on the decline. After a huge year in 2020, Strava saw two fairly stagnant years, but 2024 reversed the trend. So far this year, downloads have risen 43%, adding 11M new users to its pool.
But that's not all. If you're a user of Strava you know how aggressive the app is at getting users to upgrade to a paid plan. See, getting started with Strava is pretty simple, but once you're in the odds of you not seeing some sort of a push to a paid tier every time you use the app are nonexistent. But it's never too pushy or aggressive so as a user I rarely even think about it.
Strava is a great example of how important revenue optimization is to a subscription app and also the proof that it works.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
