MyFitnessPal launches a premium subscription for its keenest users

More than 85 million people are using the MyFitnessPal app to track their diet and exercise. Now the company behind it is hoping some of them will pay for it.

The firm, which was acquired by US sportswear brand Under Armour for $475m (£314m) in February, has launched a premium subscription for its app, charging $9.99 a month or $49.99 a year for additional features.

Those include recipes, meal plans and nutritional tips; the ability to set and track “macronutrient” goals; and the option to “jump to the front of the line” when needing customer support. MyFitnessPal is also removing its banner and news-feed advertising for subscribers.

Like other apps in the health and diet-tracking market, MyFitnessPal built its audience with a completely free app, but now needs to figure out how to make money from it – even if being owned by a much larger company takes some of the short-term pressure off.

Most people who start tracking their steps, calories or workouts in a health app don’t stop to think about whether the company providing it has a sustainable business model, but it’s an important question on privacy grounds alone.

If people aren’t paying for their fitness app, chances are someone is paying for the data they’re putting into it: a study conducted by Evidon for the Financial Times in 2013 found that 20 of the most popular apps were sharing their users’ data with nearly 70 advertising and analytics companies.

To some extent, this is necessary and does not involve handing over the actual health data – for example using demographic information to target advertising better, or using an external analytics company to understand how people are using an app and thus how it can be improved.

Even so, large insurance companies are watching the fitness apps market with keen interest, which in turn should be sparking more discussion about how these apps make money, and how this sits alongside the privacy of their users

With that in mind, the emergence of subscriptions for these apps should be a positive trend. If MyFitnessPal can persuade just 2% of its users to upgrade, that would be 1.7 million people paying $9.99 a month – a $200m annual business.

This is small beans by the standards of the fitness and sportswear industries, but there may be potential for more partnerships with companies in both those areas: for example, gyms bundling a MyFitnessPal premium subscription in with their memberships.