Meta announced that Supernatural now boasts over 100,000 users, putting its first-party fitness app’s revenue in the millions.

Launched in 2020, Supernatural gamifies fitness with some very Beat Saber-inspired orb-smashing mechanics, which is set to the beat of a poppy soundtrack led by personal coaches in a variety of picturesque locales.

Now, Meta has released its first user figures for Supernatural, saying in a blog post it now counts 110,000 users of the app.

As the first user data released for Supernatural, it’s difficult to tell whether the app has floated or flourished since its release during the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw many gyms closed, forcing users to workout at home. Still, it’s clear Meta is putting some gas behind Supernatural, as the app recently released a workout led by fitness legend Jane Fonda.

Granted, Meta may be counting among its 110,000 users those taking advantage of the 14-day free trial, which you’d expect to be at its peak right now as users are looking to get fit in the new year. Provided Meta is counting actual subscribers though, that handily puts the app’s yearly revenue in the millions.

At $100 per year, or $10 per month, Supernatural’s yearly gross revenue could fit somewhere between $11 million and $13.2 million, or $917,000 and $1,100,000 when calculated monthly. It may also be slightly lower than that, considering the app can also be purchased in Quest 3/3S hardware bundle for an additional $50 than either headsets’ base version, which provides a one-year subscription to the app.

In comparison to leading non-VR fitness apps, Supernatural still has lot of room to grow if it wants to become the ‘Peloton of VR’. According to data compiled by Statista, Peloton’s mobile app subscription posted over $5 million revenue in January 2024 alone.

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While Peloton can be used with nearly any mobile device, and be paired with any manufacture of rower, stationary bike, or treadmill, Supernatural’s bottleneck to higher user numbers invariably comes down to the number of Quest headsets in active use.

Meta hasn’t published recent figures on monthly active users (MAU) of its Quest headsets, however a 2023 Wall Street Journal report citing internal figures from October 2022 noted the Quest platform counted 6.37 million MAU.

And the need to recoup on Supernatural is very real, if only to justify the company’s costly legal process started by the United States Federal Trade Commission in 2022 to block the acquisition of original developer Within under the guise of unfairly monopolizing the VR fitness space.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Christian Schildwaechter

    TL;DL: Buying a fitness app during the pandemic was a great idea for VR users, but a very expensive one for Meta.

    Assuming the upper end of USD 13.2mn in subscription revenue per year, and the (not confirmed) USD 400mn Meta paid for Supernatural, it will take 30 years to recoup the cost. Longer actually, as part of the money will be needed to run the service.

    We know that Meta is in it for the long run, but 30 years is a lot, and I wonder if this is one of the cases were actual growth didn't match expectations. At GDC 2022 Meta showed an unlabeled revenue graph for the top selling Quest apps. There was one making a total of more than USD 100mn in lifetime revenue, which was revealed to be Beat Saber. A second one had generated about USD 60mn, and I always assumed that this was Supernatural, which had accidentally struck gold when the CoViD-19 pandemic kept people out of fitness studios, with Supernatural offering human trainers being a much closer replacement than other Quest fitness apps.

    Before Meta acquired them, the monthly subscription price was twice as high at USD 19, allowing for more revenue from fewer users. At the time the revenue slide was shown, Supernatural had been available for about two years, meaning yearly revenue would have been around USD 30mn, more than double what it is now, and rising quickly. Adjusted for the higher subscription price it would still be USD 15.8mn, indicating that during the pandemic, Supernatural's subscriber count would have been about 22% higher than today, despite the Quest user base growing since them.

    So Meta's evaluation of Supernatural at what was probably its peak popularity may have been somewhat overblown due to pandemic one time effects that didn't translate to comparable user growth once things had gone back to normal. I doubt they'd pay the equivalent of 30 years of revenue for a similar service today.

  • Octogod

    Meta's blog post appears to have been updated to clarify that there are 110,000 users in the official Supernatural Community on Facebook. These aren't app user numbers, which would be significantly higher. Active monthly users on the other hand…