BetterMe is a real company that offers a functioning health and fitness app, but it has a pattern of billing complaints that you should understand before signing up. The app holds a 4.7-star rating across more than 704,000 reviews on Apple’s App Store, yet it has also accumulated 55 complaints with the Better Business Bureau in the last three years and is not BBB-accredited. The picture is mixed: the product itself works for many users, but the subscription and billing practices have caught a significant number of people off guard.
What BetterMe Actually Offers
BetterMe is a mobile app ecosystem that provides personalized exercise programs, meal planning, habit tracking, progress monitoring, and motivational support. The company offers several products under one brand. BetterMe: Health Coaching is the core fitness and nutrition app. A separate Mental Health app focuses on wellness tools. They also sell one-on-one coaching and fitness challenges as add-ons.
The app asks for your weight, height, fitness level, food preferences, and health goals during onboarding, then generates a plan based on your answers. A clinical trial registered on ClinicalTrials.gov is currently evaluating BetterMe’s app alongside a wearable fitness tracker for its effects on weight management, which suggests the company is at least engaging with formal research. That said, the app’s methodology is fairly standard for the category: personalized workouts, calorie guidance, and behavior-change nudges rather than any proprietary science.
How Much It Costs
Subscriptions start at $14.99 per month for Health Coaching and go up to $19.99 depending on the plan. The Mental Health app runs $14.99 per month. One-on-one coaching costs between $49.99 and $99.99, and fitness challenges range from $5 to $100. A 7-day free trial is available, which is where many billing issues begin.
The pricing itself is within the normal range for health and fitness apps. The trouble isn’t the sticker price. It’s what happens after the trial and how additional charges appear, which is covered below.
The Billing Complaints
This is the core reason people search whether BetterMe is legit. User complaints on Reddit, the BBB, and other forums describe a consistent set of problems. People report being charged for subscriptions they believed they had canceled. Others say they were billed for expensive coaching add-ons ($75 to $100) without clearly understanding they had signed up for them. Several users describe discovering recurring charges only by checking their bank statements months later.
A few specific patterns show up repeatedly. Users sign up for what they believe is a $15 to $20 plan, then find a separate $99 charge for one-on-one coaching they didn’t realize was part of their signup flow. Others cancel through Apple or Google’s subscription management but later receive renewal notices from BetterMe directly, suggesting the app may process some payments outside the standard app store subscription system. Multiple users in different countries report being unable to log back into their accounts after canceling, with password reset emails never arriving, effectively locking them out while charges continue.
One user described being charged over $200 with no prior notice and being denied a refund upon contacting support. Another paid for roughly a year without realizing it because the subscription didn’t appear in their iPhone’s subscription management screen. These aren’t isolated incidents. They represent a recognizable pattern across dozens of independent reports.
How BetterMe Handles Your Data
The app collects a broad range of personal health information: your height, weight, workout data, sleep patterns, meditation preferences, and cycle tracking data if you use that feature. BetterMe’s privacy policy states that it uses this data to provide its services, analyze how customers use the app, and serve ads. That last point is worth noting. Your health and activity data is part of the information ecosystem that supports advertising within the app.
If you grant permission, BetterMe can also read data from Apple Health, including step counts, distance, weight, and dietary energy. The company says it asks for consent before processing sensitive health data like diabetes-related meal planning or limb loss programs, which is required under European data protection laws. But the baseline data collection, including IP addresses gathered through cookies and tracking tools, happens automatically when you use the service.
Refund and Cancellation Policies
BetterMe’s official store policy allows returns within 30 days for physical products, processed within 5 business days after the company receives your request. For the app subscriptions, the picture is murkier. The complaints suggest that getting a refund for digital subscriptions is difficult, with multiple users reporting flat denials from customer support even when they contacted the company shortly after being charged.
If you do sign up, the safest approach is to manage your subscription directly through Apple’s App Store or Google Play’s subscription settings rather than relying on BetterMe’s own interface. Check your bank or credit card statements within the first week to verify exactly what you were charged. If you see charges you didn’t expect, dispute them with your bank or payment provider rather than going through BetterMe’s support alone.
The Bottom Line on Legitimacy
BetterMe is not a fake company, and the app does provide real workout plans and health coaching tools. Its 4.7-star rating from hundreds of thousands of users reflects a product that genuinely works for a large number of people. But “legit” means different things. The app delivers content. The billing practices, however, are aggressive enough that a meaningful number of users feel deceived.
The red flags are not about the product failing to work. They’re about charges appearing that users didn’t anticipate, cancellation processes that don’t fully stop billing, and customer support that resists issuing refunds. If you decide to try BetterMe, use the free trial with a clear calendar reminder to cancel before it ends, verify every charge on your statement, and treat any upsell screen during signup with skepticism. Read every screen in the signup flow carefully, because agreeing to what looks like a single plan may actually enroll you in multiple paid services.