80% of top fitness apps share user data with third parties

The New Year brings new goals and, for many, fitness apps are key to achieving them. While they all help you shape up, the choice is still vast. Let’s take a closer look at which popular fitness apps are the heavy lifters when it comes to collecting your information. After all, isn't one of your goals being more privacy-conscious this year?

Key insights

• The analysis of 15 top fitness apps, including exercise trackers, workout apps, and personal training platforms, reveals that they collect an average of 12 different types of data — more than one-third of the 35 data categories defined by Apple.
• Some apps collect nearly twice the average amount of data. For instance, two popular apps — Strava and Fitbit — gather 21 unique types of data, representing 84% of all potential data points, making them the most data-hungry apps.
• Centr stands out as the app that prioritizes user privacy the most, collecting just three types of data: User ID, Product Interaction, and Crash Data, with only one of these actively tracked. In comparison, the most data-hungry apps (Strava and Fitbit) collect roughly seven times more.¹
• 80% of fitness apps share user data with third parties. This is called tracked data, where “tracking” refers to linking data collected from your app about a particular end-user or device, such as a user ID, device ID, or profile, with Third-Party Data for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes or sharing data collected from your app about a particular end-user or device with a data broker.¹ Nike Training Club leads in this category, collecting four types of data shared with third parties (Coarse Location, Sensitive Info, Device ID, and Product Interaction).
• Unsurprisingly, nearly all fitness apps (13) collect health and fitness data linked to the user, except Centr and Peloton.
• Additionally, three apps collect sensitive information. This data can include information such as racial or ethnic background, sexual orientation, pregnancy or childbirth details, disability status, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, political opinions, genetic information, or biometric data.¹ For example, Nike Training Club collects and shares sensitive data with third parties, which may then be used for targeted advertising.
• Exercise apps used to log runs, jogs, and walks often require access to the user's location. Four apps, including popular running apps like Runna and Strava, collect precise location data linked to the user. Five apps collect only coarse location data, and two of these, Nike Training Club and Peloton, share this information with third parties.

Methodology and sources

We analyzed 15 fitness mobile apps from lists published by CNET², Tom’s Guide³, and Techradar⁴. These apps were included in lists highlighting the best workout and fitness apps.

The data collection information for each app was sourced from its Apple App Store page on December 30, 2024. The App Store provides a list of 35 unique data points categorized into 16 unique data point categories. We analyzed the data set according to the number, type, and handling of the data points collected by each app.

Note on data used to track the user: “Tracking refers to the act of linking user or device data collected from your app with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes. Tracking also refers to sharing user or device data with data brokers.”¹

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