Health & wellness
Own-Once Fast Timer
A fasting timer for everyday fasters who want to pay once, not rent another app forever.
In plain English
- What category is this?
- Clinics, coaches, and consumers buy for care, fitness, or wellbeing workflows. Here the focus is consumer health and wellness.
- The idea, briefly
Build one purchase unlocks the whole product: every fasting protocol, unlimited history with CSV export, on-device storage with no account, no auto-renew, and no streak shaming, with optional one-time content packs instead of a subscription.
More ▾- What buyers expect
People comparing tools like Zero (Zero Longevity Science), Fastic (HealthVida GmbH), DoFasting (Fasting Solutions UAB) expect the basics to work without surprise fees or missing pieces. The loud complaints are: A canceled subscription can keep charging; and people explicitly ask to buy the app once instead of subscribing.
More ▾
- Sources
- 19
- Checked
- 12
- Competitors
- 4
- Gaps
- 7
- Page checked
- 12 · 63%
- Snippet only
- 7 · 37%
- Documented
- 7 · 47%
- Interpreted
- 8 · 53%
- complaint7
- pricing4
- revenue4
- market3
- playbook1
Competitors
4- Zero (Zero Longevity Science)$4.99/mo
- Fastic (HealthVida GmbH)$14.99/mo
Parsed from public pricing blurbs (entry paid tier when available). Max in set: $14.99/mo.
| Competitor | From | Free tier | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zero (Zero Longevity Science) | $4.99/mo | Yes | zerofasting.zendesk.com✓ |
| Fastic (HealthVida GmbH) | $14.99/mo | — | apps.apple.com✓ |
| DoFasting (Fasting Solutions UAB) | $5.59/mo | — | apps.apple.com✓ |
| Simple (simple.life) | Unverified | — | nutriscan.app✓ |
What customers complain about
7| Gap | Src |
|---|---|
A canceled subscription can keep charging. | |
People explicitly ask to buy the app once instead of subscribing. | |
A long-time free user is pushed onto a trial. | |
Promotional pricing renews at full price and drives one-star reviews. | |
Editing a schedule can wipe history. | |
Streak and goal mechanics shame users who miss a day. | |
Premium price is hidden until after a long quiz and email capture. |
Documented Interpreted
How competitors find customers
3| Tactic | Src |
|---|---|
| Zero went App Store-first with a free, simple, no-account timer and grew on the founder's own community-and-reviews loop, | zerolongevity.com✓ |
| Simple built a niche SEO blog of how-to and fasting-explainer content to capture search demand and feed installs, | rampiq.agency✓ |
| DoFasting gates the paywall behind a personalized onboarding quiz so the plan feels tailored before any price appears. | apps.apple.com✓ |
Your angle & pricing wedge
| Piece | Claim | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Angle | One purchase unlocks the whole product: every fasting protocol, unlimited history with CSV export, on-device storage with no account, no auto-renew, | |
| Wedge | Mechanism: sell the timer as a one-time purchase (target $29) instead of a yearly subscription, | zerofasting.zendesk.com✓ |
How others got traction
4| Move | Why | Src |
|---|---|---|
| Zero launched as a genuinely free, simple, ad-free App Store fasting tracker and crossed one millio… | Founder-attributed: CEO Mike Maser credits the user community, App Store reviews, support email and Twitter feedback. the free, | zerolongevity.com✓ |
| Zero later narrowed the free tier and sold the premium layer as a yearly subscription (now $89.99/y… | Documented on the company's own support page: current Zero Plus pricing is $89.99/year and $9.99/month auto-renewing (citation 1), | zerofasting.zendesk.com✓ |
| Simple built an SEO content blog that acquired 15k+ organic keywords and moved branded searches fro… | Agency-attributed: the agency reports the before/after numbers and quotes Simple's CEO endorsing the work. | rampiq.agency✓ |
| DoFasting (and Simple) put a personalized onboarding quiz in front of the paywall. | Company-attributed in the App Store description (DoFasting): members answer a quiz, then get a personalized plan. | apps.apple.com✓ |
Market heat
Zero, the category leader, crossed one million App Store downloads in about two years and called itself the #1 fasting app in the App Store (founder post).
Zero now sells Zero Plus at $89.99/year (7-day trial, or $4.99 first month) and $9.99/month, auto-renewing (company support page).
Fastic carries 246K App Store ratings at 4.8 and sells Fastic Plus as auto-renewing 1-month, 3-month and 12-month plans with in-app prices up to $79.99 (App Store listing).
More ▾DoFasting sells three auto-renewing plans at $32.99/quarter, $45.99/half-year and $66.99/year (App Store listing).
Simple reports 20M+ downloads and 800K+ active subscribers (company-reported; competitor comparison blog restating store figures).
Revenue signals
6| Signal | Src |
|---|---|
Simple: company-reported 20M+ downloads and 800K+ active subscribers (competitor comparison blog restating company figures, not audited). | nutriscan.app✓ |
Simple: a company spokesperson said 78% of daily active users are paid and 22% free (self-reported, not audited). | mediapost.com✓ |
Simple raised a $35M Series B in Oct 2025 at a reported $42M valuation (third-party company-data profile; snippet-only, unverified, | platform.tracxn.com· |
Zero: third-party Sensor Tower estimate of about $200K revenue and 8K downloads in a recent month, with 4M lifetime Android downloads (third-party estimates, | app.sensortower.com· |
Fastic: 246K App Store ratings at 4.8, Plus SKUs up to $79.99, and a claim of 30M+ users (company-reported and App Store listing, | nutriscan.app✓ |
Category list pricing documented: $66.99/year (DoFasting), up to $79.99/year (Fastic), $89.99/year (Zero), with robust free tiers underneath; | zerofasting.zendesk.com✓ |
Should you build this?
Demand for subscription fasting apps is proven on opened sources (Zero crossed a million App Store downloads and became the top fasting app; Simple reports 800,000+ subscribers) and everyday fasters already pay about $67 to $90 a year to time a fast, but the evidence for the one-time-purchase wedge is only one verified observation deep: it rests on a single opened reviewer (citation 11) plus snippet-only Reddit/AppBrain complaints, the free floor is strong and the specific LIFE Fasting free-tier comparison now comes only from citation 12, a listicle that misstates Zero's pricing and acquisition history and is therefore treated as inference, and incumbents can add a lifetime SKU at any time (Zero already sells a limited, non-standard, final-sale Lifetime Access offer per citation 2).
More ▾
All sources
19| Source | Kind | Status | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| pricing | page checked | 2026-10-05 | |
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| complaint | snippet only | 2026-10-05 | |
| market | page checked | 2026-10-05 |