Joe Wicks: The £24M Body Coach App Empire

Joe Wicks gives away free workouts to millions of people. Then he sells the one thing those free workouts can't replace: structure, in a subscription app his audience pays for every month. The Body Coach app has been downloaded more than a million times, and the business behind it has earned Joe Wicks over £24 million. That gap, between a free audience and a product they pay for, is the whole story. And in January 2026, ITV liked the story enough to put £3 million behind it. Key Takeaways:

Joe Wicks grew The Body Coach to 4.7M Instagram followers and 2.8M YouTube subscribers, then launched a subscription app in late 2020.
The Body Coach app costs roughly $14.99 to $19.99 a month or $119.99 a year and has passed 1 million downloads.
Body Coach Ltd has earned Joe Wicks over £24 million, with a recent annual profit near £6.8 million (HELLO! magazine).
In January 2026, ITV invested up to £3 million in the app through its AdVentures fund, trading TV airtime for equity.

Who Is Joe Wicks?

Joe Wicks is a British fitness coach, author, and founder of The Body Coach, born in Epsom in 1985. He did not start with a media empire or a famous last name. He started by cycling 40 minutes to a Richmond park early in the mornings to run bootcamps, struggling to fill them, and borrowing money from his dad to pay for his personal training course. He worried he would not be able to pay that loan back. Then he found social media. Short HIIT workouts and 15-minute recipe videos turned a broke personal trainer into the most recognizable fitness name in the UK. His first book, Lean in 15, sold 77,000 copies in its first week. During the 2020 lockdowns, his "PE with Joe" YouTube series became the nation's living-room gym, raised £580,000 for NHS Charities Together, and earned him an MBE. Twelve books and millions of followers later, the core of the business is no longer the books or the brand deals. It's the app.

From Park Bootcamps to a £24M Business

Here is the origin-to-outcome jump every creator wants: a guy borrowing money from his dad for a training course built a brand that has paid him over £24 million. The relatable part is that Joe Wicks did not invent a new kind of exercise. Thousands of trainers teach the same burpees and the same high-protein meals. What he built was a repeatable content habit, post free and post often, and then a separate product for the people who wanted the full system. Most creators stop at the content. They build the audience, cash the brand deals, sell a book once, and never build something the audience returns to and pays for monthly. Joe Wicks built both. The free workouts are the front door. The app is the house, and the house is the part he owns.

What Is The Body Coach App?

The Body Coach app is a subscription fitness service that gives members structured 28-day workout and meal plans, with new programs unlocking every cycle. It launched in late 2020, right as Joe Wicks became a household name during lockdown, and crossed 1 million downloads inside its first year. Free YouTube videos and a paid app do different jobs. The free content is reach: it gets discovered, shared, and ranked, and it brings in the millions. But YouTube ad revenue is set by an algorithm Joe Wicks doesn't control, and brand deals end the day the campaign ends. None of it compounds. The app does the opposite job. It gives the committed fans what a scattered free library can't: a clear plan, beginner-to-advanced progression, customizable meal plans, live workouts, and challenges that keep people coming back. People pay for that structure every month. That is recurring revenue, and it is his. It's the exact move we break down in our guide on turning a YouTube channel into a subscription app: keep the free funnel wide, then sell the depth to the people who raise their hand.

Free builds the audience. The app builds the business.

Built by Foundry builds, launches, and runs the app for you. $0 upfront. Three weeks to App Store.

Book a free strategy call →

How Does The Body Coach App Make Money?

The Body Coach app makes money on a simple subscription: roughly $14.99 to $19.99 a month, or $119.99 a year, for full access to workouts, meal plans, and community features. The app holds a 4.9-star App Store rating, so the people who pay tend to stay. Do the math on the annual plan. At around £69.99 a year, Joe Wicks reported 130,000-plus paid subscribers as early as 2020. That alone is nearly £9 million a year in recurring revenue, before a single book sale or brand deal. And unlike ad payouts, that money shows up whether or not he posts that week. Here is how the three income paths compare for a creator at his scale.

Income Source	Who Controls It	Recurring?	Scales Past Followers?
Brand deals	The brand	No	No
YouTube ad share	The platform	Volatile	No
Subscription app	The creator	Yes	Yes, via App Store

The last row is the only one a creator owns end to end. It is also the only one that keeps growing through App Store discovery, where someone searching "home workout app" finds The Body Coach before they ever find Joe Wicks on YouTube. New customers, acquired by the product itself.

Why ITV Bet £3M on a Fitness App

In January 2026, ITV committed up to £3 million to The Body Coach app through its AdVentures Invest fund, taking equity in exchange for a long-term TV and ITVX advertising campaign (BM Magazine). A national broadcaster does not buy into a fitness celebrity. It buys into a recurring-revenue business with a product that retains. "I never imagined when I started my bootcamps in the park over 12 years ago that The Body Coach would grow into a brand reaching millions of people," Joe Wicks said of the deal. The signal for every creator is loud. Smart money chases ownership and retention, not follower counts. The asset that attracted £3 million wasn't the audience. It was the subscription app sitting underneath it, the same kind of owned business we cover in our breakdown of the creator economy hitting $480 billion by 2027.

What Creators Can Learn From Joe Wicks

The lesson is not "do HIIT." It is "build the house." Joe Wicks' free audience proves demand. His app captures it. That order matters: the content earns trust, the product earns money, and the two feed each other. Every free workout sends new people toward the paid app, and every app challenge gives him more to post about for free. The content engine and the business reinforce each other on autopilot. You see the identical pattern across niches. Adriene Mishler turned Yoga With Adriene into the Find What Feels Good app on top of a free YouTube following. Different audience, same move: stop renting the audience to advertisers and sell them something you own instead. That is the model we run for creators at Built by Foundry, and you can read how the $0-upfront, revenue-share approach works. It's also why App Store discovery matters so much, because the app keeps acquiring customers long after the post stops trending. The uncomfortable question for any creator reading this: you have the audience. Where is your app?

You have the audience. Build the house.

We design, build, and run your subscription app so you keep posting and start owning. $0 upfront, three weeks to launch.

Book a free strategy call →

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does The Body Coach app cost?

The Body Coach app costs roughly $14.99 to $19.99 per month or $119.99 per year, depending on the plan and region. The subscription unlocks structured 28-day workout plans, customizable meal plans, live workouts, and community challenges.

How much is Joe Wicks worth?

Reported estimates of Joe Wicks' net worth range from about £14.5 million to £55 million. His company, Body Coach Ltd, has earned him over £24 million, with a recent annual profit near £6.8 million according to HELLO! magazine.

How many followers does Joe Wicks have?

Joe Wicks has around 4.7 million Instagram followers and 2.8 million YouTube subscribers under The Body Coach brand, plus a large following on TikTok and Facebook.

How much does it cost to build a creator app like this?

Most agencies charge $50K to $200K upfront. Built by Foundry charges $0 upfront and takes a revenue share, so we only earn when your app does. We handle design, development, App Store submission, and ongoing updates. Want to turn your audience into an app you own? We build custom subscription apps for creators. $0 upfront, three-week delivery, and we run the tech forever.

Let's Build →