Yesterday Strava sent out an e-mail to users, outlining a change that’s occurring almost immediately, regarding 3rd party apps and the way apps are allowed to access and process data from Strava. All of these changes impact what is known as the Strava API (Application Programming Interface). That’s the piece that lets your Garmin watch push your workout to Strava, and then lets an app like VeloViewer or others access your data.
There are countless apps that use Strava’s API, literally tens of thousands according to Strava. Some of these are tiny, some of them are massive. Virtually every company in the space uses Strava’s API, including Garmin, Wahoo, TrainerRoad, VeloViewer, Xert, and plenty more. It’s become the defacto data hub for millions of athletes, some 100m+ according to Strava’s press release.
In any event, the e-mail Strava sent out, as you can see below, is pretty bland, and doesn’t really get into things:
Instead, you need to crack open the included link to start understanding the implications. All of which roughly boils down to two main items (but a bunch of smaller things), there’s three biggies:
#1: “Third-party apps are no longer able to display your Strava activity data on their surfaces to other users.”
#2: “We’re updating our terms to explicitly prohibit third parties from using any data obtained via Strava’s API in artificial intelligence models or other similar applications.”
#3: “You may not process or disclose Strava Data…for the purposes of, including but not limited to, analytics, analyses…”
They also included language that apps are somehow not allowed to replicate Strava’s “distinctive look and feel”, which…ok. And more hilariously, they added that any users posting to their community hub forums that are “requesting or attempting to have Strava revert business decisions will not be permitted” and summarily deleted.
Said differently: Do not discuss the community things you don’t like in the community.
But again, the big three that matter here are:
#1: Apps can’t show your data beyond yourself
#2: Apps can’t use any “AI” whatsoever in their processing of your data
#3: Apps can’t do any analytics or data processing of your data
To understand how ridiculous these are, let’s outline some real-world apps you’re probably familiar with.
Breaking Coaching and Comparison Apps:
The first item (not showing data beyond yourself) immediately breaks almost all coaching apps that have connections to Strava. This includes apps like Final Surge, Xert, and Intervals.icu. These are apps that pull in your Strava data (as you requested) to analyze on your platform. For visual reference, this:
Now you may be wondering why they don’t just go directly to Garmin, Wahoo, etc… That’d be more effective, right? And indeed it is, and most of these apps do. Except there are literally thousands of device manufacturers out there, and many of them only connect to Strava.
Take for example the AmazFit T-Rex watch I’m testing right now. That doesn’t connect to Final Surge. Or Xert. Or TrainerRoad. Or much else. It does connect to Strava though, so, my data uploads to Strava and I’m done – off it goes to all my authorized apps. The same is true for the Google Pixel Watch. Or Samsung’s Galaxy watches. Below is a good example of how I can get all those data types into Strava.
Strava benefits because they’ve become the defacto platform of choice for consumers. Companies benefit because they don’t need never-ending connections to platforms. And consumers benefit because everything ‘just works’. That’s the goal, right? Just working?
Well, not anymore.
With this change, apps that do any sort of coaching on their platform are not allowed to show the end users data to their coach. The new API terms and conditions explicitly prohibit this:
“you may not disclose such data to, or use it for, another user nor any other third party.”
In fact, the popular training and coaching platform Intervals.icu already posted this breaks all coaching features for them related to Strava data – requiring them to hide not only new user data going forward, but all historical data for coaches.
“Activities from Strava will soon only be visible to the athlete that performed the activity, not to their coaches or followers. This is a new addition to the Strava API terms and conditions.”
But it also breaks plenty of other apps that aren’t coaching apps – but merely showing Strava data. For example, apps like VeloViewer, which curates your lists of segments for deeper analytics and competition among groups, breaks. Same goes for all of their leaderboards for Zwift. Or their challenges. Or the listing of other people’s efforts (when you click on ‘View on Veloviewer’ from any of these below. All of it – going to be killed off if apps follow the letter of the law.
Like these details:
The challenge with these changes, is that practically speaking, unless you have a Garmin or other big-name device with a proper and well-documented public and easy to access API, all of these apps won’t set up connections to those device platforms directly. They can’t in some cases, and it won’t be feasible in most to service all of these app requests. Even seemingly big players like Wahoo, Hammerhead/SRAM, and Polar don’t have easily accessible APIs that scale well to the number of requests that are going to be required here.
No Analysis of Data Apps:
But wait, there’s more. Strava’s new API agreement also makes clear that you can’t do ‘year in review’ type summaries either. In fact, it actually says you can’t do any analytics or processing of the data:
“You may not process or disclose Strava Data, even publically viewable Strava Data, including in an aggregated or de-identified manner, for the purposes of, including but not limited to, analytics, analyses, customer insights generation, and products or services improvements. Strava Data may not be combined with other customer data, for these or any other purposes.
In fact, as one major app pointed out to me, the above paragraph basically says you can’t do anything with any data at all. While portions of the above entry existed in previous API versions, this paragraph has now been expanded to be more precise.
With the above line, you can’t do much of anything. You want to show a user how many miles they ran that week? Nope, not according to the letter of the law as that’s ‘processing’ for the purposes of ‘analytics’. You want to show them how hard their workout was compared to a year ago? Nope, can’t do that either, that’s ‘processing’ for the purposes of ‘analysis’. Want to create a heat map tile like VeloViewer has? Nope, that’s “aggregated” data for “insights generation”:
While Strava lawyers might try and say perhaps that line is there to prevent something else, any non-lawyer or lawyer would argue the opposite in court if they had to. That single paragraph basically says apps can’t do anything at all. Period.
The problem here is that Strava’s API terms are so broad and wonky now, that the API no longer serves a purpose, as stated by the above paragraph.
Nonetheless, I went back to Strava and asked them questions about many of these topics, trying to get clarification to see if this was a misunderstanding, they completely ignored the questions I had, and responded with:
“These changes were implemented to provide additional safeguards around our community’s data and to help ensure that a user’s Strava data can only be viewed by others on third-party apps in limited scenarios where sharing is both transparent and central to the functionality of the app. We recognize this is a change and are committed to working closely with partners during this transition.”
Point being, I gave them an opportunity to clarify things or set the record straight, and they said ‘nah’.
Add to that, they don’t seem all that committed to “working closely with partners”. As every single partner I’ve talked to over the last 24 hours has been completely broadsided by this change. They all received a generic e-mail Friday night, with a mere 30 days of notice to completely re-work their entire applications. Mind you, a 30-day period that includes the holidays (most companies would give at least 6 months of notice for something like this).
I suspect we’ll see a lot of companies just shut off the API entirely, and perhaps that’s Strava’s goal. Though, I fail to see how that benefits paying Strava subscribers, and thus Strava’s bottom line. Strava seems to be working very hard to kill off the community of tens of thousands of apps that arguably made it so popular.
No AI Usage & Analytics:
The next issue is just as crazy as the the others. It says that 3rd party apps may not use artificial intelligence processing in any way, for your data coming from Strava. Specifically, it stays the following:
“You may not use the Strava API Materials (including Strava Data), directly or indirectly, for any model training related to artificial intelligence, machine learning or similar applications.”
Of course, the term “machine learning or similar applications” basically means “you may not do any processing at all” on it, especially when combined with the above ‘no analytics’ clauses.
This particular line item immediately kills apps like TrainerRoad and Xert using data from Strava, but also countless other apps that pull in your own workout data via Strava, and then use some sort of processing to analyze it. Machine learning is hardly new or fancy. And putting in there “similar applications”, what on earth does that mean?
TrainerRoad and others use “AI” (however they want to define it), according to their marketing, and thus, in less than 30 days, they’ll have to cease their entire platform, or, disconnect Strava.
In the case of platforms like TrainerRoad, I suspect they’ll simply disable Strava altogether, and force everyone through direct connections. This will be fine for Garmin users, but as of right now there’s no inbound connection for Wahoo users (though that’s coming). And for people pushing Zwift workouts to TrainerRoad, that too will break until TrainerRoad completes their API connection in January.
But that won’t solve the larger issue TrainerRoad and other companies face, which is having to pull in the other 3rd party workout data types. TrainerRoad doesn’t have a connection to Suunto. Or Polar. Or AmazFit. Or Google. Or Fitbit. Or…I could do this all day. Strava solved that, to the benefit of both consumers and all companies involved.
Now Strava seems to want to own the “AI space” with its always-helpful AI insights that simply re-word my activity titles and tell me something vaguely positive but usually wrong.
Update from Strava (Nov 19th):
After publishing this post and video, Strava has issued an update in response. Note, they didn’t reach out or respond to me with the text, but did respond to The Verge where the updated text was originally issued, before publishing it on Strava’s own newsroom site. The Verge e-mailed me the update with permission to use, prior to Strava’s posting. Here’s the full text of the update:
Updated on Nov. 19
We wanted to provide some additional context around the changes to our API Agreement and the impact for our users and developers. We currently anticipate these changes will impact less than .1% of applications and proactively notified the majority of those affected last week.
Enhanced Privacy and User Control
Privacy and user control are at the forefront of our platform. As a result, we are committed to evolving our API practices as regulatory requirements and user expectations shift. This includes the decision to limit the ability of a user’s data to be displayed by third-party apps in ways the user may not expect. Specifically, we want to thoughtfully address situations where users connect to a third-party app and are unaware that their data is being surfaced not just for their own use and visibility, but also to other users (for example, in a public feed or heatmap). The latest API changes address this scenario and provide a more consistent framework for Strava user data.
Training AI Models
We believe in the potential of AI to transform the athlete experience–whether it’s delivering more personalized insights to help you reach your goals, generating route or training recommendations, or countless other possibilities. But innovation in this space must be handled responsibly and with a firm focus on user control. As part of our generative AI features, we are committed to implementing thoughtful solutions that prioritize user control and the ability to opt out.
Third-party developers may not take such a deliberate approach to training AI models and as a result, we believe the best decision for the platform and for users is to prohibit the use of data extracted from Strava users in this manner. Our previous terms already disallowed the use of Strava user data in model training and development but we’ve made this more explicit in light of the increasing activity in this space.
No Impact to Most Developers
We recognize that our platform thrives because of the creativity and dedication of third-party developers who build tools to complement and extend Strava’s capabilities. We are steadfast in our commitment to fostering this ecosystem. We anticipate that these changes will affect only a small fraction (less than .1%) of the applications on the Strava platform–the overwhelming majority of existing use cases are still allowed, including coaching platforms focused on providing feedback to users and tools that help users understand their data and performance.
Collectively, these changes reflect our commitment to ensuring that Strava remains a trusted platform for athletes and developers alike. That means holding ourselves—and anyone building on our platform—to high standards.
However, ultimately, it doesn’t actually change things – in fact, kinda doubles down on it. In it, Strava basically says three things:
A) 3rd party apps can’t show data beyond the user itself. Just as before, this still breaks coaching apps. Strava tries to confuse people by saying “the overwhelming majority of existing use cases are still allowed, including coaching platforms focused on providing feedback to users and tools that help users understand their data and performance.” – however, what they’re actually saying is 3rd party coaching apps can provide feedback, as long as that’s computational feedback. Coaching apps still cannot let human coaches see the data. Had that been the case, Strava would have simply said that, and notified coaching apps. They’ve done neither, and multiple coaching apps I’ve talked to have confirmed Strava hasn’t changed their position, but has scheduled meetings to talk about the impacts.
B) Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is still prohibited. Again, Strava tries to keep distracting people by saying “training models” is not permitted. Yet the terms are very clear, both training and usage isn’t permitted. Still, as any company can tell you, even if it were just training (which again, it isn’t), these models can’t get better without training on the same data for whatever application purpose they are using. After all, last I checked, Strava themselves doesn’t give us permission to allow/deny their access to our data for AI training purposes.
C) “No impact to most developers” – In the update, they say “We anticipate that these changes will affect only a small fraction (less than .1%) of the applications on the Strava platform”. Except, that’s the most disingenuous way of writing it. Strava has tens of thousands of connected applications, the vast majority of which are tiny hobbyist applications that may have 1 user or a handful of users. Instead, it’s the big-ticket applications that matter here with the most users. Strava isn’t saying 0.1% of users, just 0.1% of applications.
–
Ultimately, it seems like Strava’s API itself needs an update if Strava believes users need more control. And to be clear – I’m 100% behind giving users more control. Strava could easily add check-boxes for “AI data usage” and “Show data publically” to the 3rd party platform API authentication dialog (just like they do today for other features). They could easily require 3rd party developers to ensure consent (just like they do today for other features). And they could easily require developers to adhere to various rules (just like they do today).
Going Forward:
Based on these API terms changes, I don’t see how any apps can leverage Strava data going forward. Especially with the specific line item of “You may not process or disclose Strava Data, even publicly viewable Strava Data, including in an aggregated or de-identified manner, for the purposes of, including but not limited to, analytics, analyses, customer insights generation, and products or services improvements.” – that’s fundamentally what any app does: It processes your Strava data and provides some sort of analytics.
Perhaps Strava will try and argue otherwise. In fact, I e-mailed them last night asking them to clarify these very questions, since these seemed pretty broad and impactful. The response was nothing more than sending me to the already-existing page about the API updates.
I feel at times that Strava wakes up each morning, heads to work, looks out over the San Francisco Bay from their offices, and asks itself: How can we anger our users and partners today? How can we make everyone’s life more difficult today?
Every time Strava does something good (such as last week’s night heat maps), they immediately go and ruin that good love with something to upset their user base. And obviously, that’s their prerogative as a company. But it just seems that no company in the sports tech space spends as much time and energy proactively trying to anger their users as Strava does.
I go back to Strava’s new CEO in his keynote address at Camp Strava this past summer (7:22 in video), where he said:
“If you envision the whole active community, along with the connected fitness industry as sorta like one giant cycling peloton…then Strava should be leading the way. We should be your lead-out rider, blocking the wind, creating a slip-stream, helping the whole peloton move faster, and more efficiently.”
I’m unclear on how these changes fit with that recently announced vision.
Ultimately, I use and significantly enjoy the core of Strava as much as most other people. I’m on the platform daily. But man…c’mon Strava, just do better.
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It was time to leave Strava several years ago when they started locking your data behind a paywall. I exported my data at that time, deleted my account, and haven’t looked back. This latest move by them just shows that my choice was the correct one.
Isn’t Google getting in trouble for making a monopoly of the market? Strava seems sus under that lens.. I guess I’m supposed to email them this.
Realistically, Strava is nowhere near a monopoly.
Strava has a very dominant and, really, a unique position.
There are numerous other options for activity tracking. They are big, but not unique.
> Strava has a very dominant and, really, a unique position.
> > There are numerous other options for activity tracking. They are big, but not unique.
Strava’s *position* is unique. I can’t speak for anyone else, but every runner I know uses Strava. Most run with a Garmin, but many almost never use Garmin Connect (not even for looking at their own activities).
I don’t know anyone irl who uses Garmin Connect’s social features.
Outside of strava, I also think it’s fairly uncommon to use secondary (*) platforms for data analysis or activity tracking, like veloviewer, smashrun, metathon, or runalyze. I’m fairly sure I’m the only runner I know (irl) who’s even heard of those apps/sites. Then again, that type of person won’t be affected by these changes at all.
(*) By “secondary” platforms, I mean platforms other than the app associated with the recording device (e.g. Garmin Connect, Apple’s Workout and Health apps).
> Strava’s *position* is unique
(“position” = market share / userbase)
I have a good number of friends that regularly use Garmin’s social features. We have frequent challenges, we upload pictures to our activities, and have comments about local segment leaderboards. I actually prefer Garmin’s features to those of Strava. Garmin’s maps and route creator feel much more polished when compared to that of Strava.
Don’t worry we’re welcome back at any time :)
If you train for real Strava is not the tool. You will use Trainingpeaks or something that actually helps you improve every day.
Strava is for getting kudos from your pals.
> Garmin’s maps and route creator feel much more polished when compared to that of Strava.
I have to vehemently disagree here. I think the Garmin route creator is terrible compared to Strava’s. For me, Strava’s route creator beats Garmin’s by a mile on usability, aesthetics and features. I actually wouldn’t refer to anything that Garmin makes as “polished”, no offense. To me, a Garmin running watch is a great tool for running (although there are always issues), and the Connect app/website are ok when I want to look at certain data (only because the exact data I want is unavailable elsewhere, not because Connect is a great experience). “Polished” is the last word that would ever come to mind when I think of that stuff.
Even the limited route editor on the Connect mobile app doesn’t seem to work properly when it comes to do the one of the few things it can apparently do, which is delete waypoints. For example, if I try to delete the last waypoint of a 24 km run, the Connect app will recalculate the course so it ends up being 38 km. If I try it again, but first change the routing method to freehand, the course recalculation process seems to go on forever (I gave up after waiting a couple of minutes).
Meanwhile, the course editor on the Connect website doesn’t really have a way to edit waypoints as a list (as in the Strava website, and allegedly, the Connect mobile app) — they can only be edited on the map itself, which is a bit more limiting. I don’t see a way to add a waypoint from an address, which is something that Strava supports.
I could be wrong, but in the Connect route creator there isn’t an obvious to traverse a loop more than once, since clicking on the course track always adds a new waypoint. When you click on the course track in strava’s route creator you have the option of either adding a waypoint, or extending the course to the that point. Not that it’s a great experience to navigate a course with a loop that’s repeated more than once, but is also just one part of the overall course, but that’s another story.
As far as the social stuff goes, everything that Garmin tries to do, Strava has already done better imo. (For example, segments.) To be fair, I think Garmin knows it will never catch up to Strava, so they probably don’t put a lot of work into it.
If you stick with Garmin’s social stuff and never use Strava, you also miss out on connecting with people who use Apple Watch. Let’s face it, most people under a certain age who are just casual runners or cyclists are def not going to use a Garmin, especially if they started within the last 5-10 years. I know a few casuals who switched from Garmin to Apple, and plenty of ppl who never used Garmin at all. A lot of ppl who don’t use Garmin don’t even understand why runners wouldn’t just Apple Watch.
> If you train for real Strava is not the tool
> Strava is for getting kudos from your pals.
That’s what most ppl use it for. Lots of ppl run exclusively for likes, too.
But I know a few ppl who can run a 2:30 marathon or win a local 5 miler. They’re not elites, but they’re not hobby joggers either.
They exclusively use Strava. Although they wear Garmins, they prefer to look at their data in Strava as Connect is too “complex”. They don’t use any other apps or websites, like TrainingPeaks or runalyze.
To me, it says a lot that there are Garmin users who apparently almost never open the Connect app or website, and look at everything in Strava. I’m pretty sure I know of lot of runners who do just that.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my training gains always came from improving my diet, managing my overuse injuries, running hard workouts in a competitive group, and following a proper training plan.
Although there are apps and sites that can help you with some of those things, I don’t think it’s impossible to train properly without using TrainingPeaks (for example).
Interesting… But yes, I feel that GC’s website and route maker are much more polished and user friendly when compared to Strava’s. Garmin’s maps are much better than the ones that Strava uses. Garmin’s course creator tools are much easier to use and have more options when compared to the tools that Strava has. I tried to use Strava’s webpage to automatically create courses of certain distances. The routes that Strava created were also a disaster. If you are able to get it to work for you, then great. It didn’t give me good results.
Another thing about your comment- I am missing out on connecting with people with an Apple watch. I’m totally fine with that because EVERY person I followed with an Apple Watch had bogus activities. Some examples of their bogus activities were “pickleball” while driving down the road, two activities at the same time, and even “swimming” while on a plane. I don’t know what’s up with those watches, but my Strava feed was full of trash from AW users. I don’t miss that in any way.
Good to hear to Garmin’s route creator works better for you. I don’t auto-generate routes; I always create them manually. So I’m not in a position to evaluate Garmin vs Strava with respect to auto generated routes.
From my POV, polished means aesthetically pleasing and relatively free from bugs, with great attention to detail. That’s not the experience I’ve ever had with anything from Garmin, although I realize others may have different experiences.
On the contrary, I use Garmin stuff in *spite* of the bugs and lack of polish. I don’t think Apple is perfect, but at least it can be said that they’ll refuse to add features until they can get the user experience right. Contrast with Garmin, which often adds features in spite of a poor user experience (imo).
Case in point:
– Apple Watch doesn’t play music from its speaker, supposedly because Apple doesn’t think it would be a good user experience (the speaker isn’t powerful enough).
– Garmin’s Fenix 8 forums are full of complaints that the speaker is useless for voice calls and the voice assistant, bc it’s too weak
(Yes I know it’s not a direct comparison, especially since Apple Watch does allow voice calls through the speaker.)
Even DCR has a video where he demonstrates recording a voice note on his Fenix 8; when he plays it back, the volume is apparently so low that he has to put his ear directly next to watch to hear the audio.
And from personal experience, the new audio notes feature for workouts sounded great, until I tried it in practice: the volume was so low when played back through earbuds that the feature was useless. (My earbud volume was set at a level where music and Garmin audio alerts were clearly audible.)
“From my POV, polished means aesthetically pleasing and relatively free from bugs, with great attention to detail.”
Yep, I would agree with that. That’s exactly why I said what I said. Garmin just works. Strava AND Apple have both caused me nothing but problems.
I also manually create routes with Garmin. They are much easier to create with Garmin’s website. Strava’s website is just… clunky (the opposite of polished). My routes often disappeared in the middle of creation with Strava’s system. Multiple times while trying to create a route manually, Strava would add a point at some random location that I was trying to avoid (one again, NOT polished).
We’ll just have to agree to disagree.
> Garmin just works
Maybe for your specific case of creating routes, but I can’t agree with that in general. I could point to a million bugs and issues with poor design over the year, as well as new bugs which are constantly popping up.
Imo people who don’t think Garmin has an issue with software either use very little of the functionality (most people), or are used to stuff that doesn’t work well (also most people imo). When something doesn’t work well, Garmin users tend either not bother to use that function or they find a workaround.
Garmin has had a very long rep of being good at hardware, but not so good at software. And again, I know many runners who use a Garmin, but almost never open Connect. Says a lot that people refuse to use the software which “comes” with the device in favour of 3rd party apps, especially since Connect is supposed to do everything for Garmin devices (unlike say, Apple’s Workouts app, which afaict, isn’t supposed to be everything for every user, as 3rd party apps are supposed to fill the gaps).
> My routes often disappeared in the middle of creation with Strava’s system. Multiple times while trying to create a route manually, Strava would add a point at some random location that I was trying to avoid (one again, NOT polished).
If that’s your experience, I can’t argue with that.
Again, I’ll say that when I do something as simple as deleting the final waypoint in a route in the Connect app, the route is either recalculated in a nonsensical way (so the length almost doubles) or the recalculation just spins forever. When I delete the final waypoint in Strava, the route just gets shorter, which is exactly what I expect.
If route editing doesn’t work in the Connect app, they should just remove the feature instead of leaving it in a broken state.
It’s also baffling that the route creator in the Connect app would show a list of waypoints (although editing them does not work properly), but the route creator Connect website does not.
And again, I pointed to functionality that the Strava route creator has which the Connect website does not:
– waypoints as a list, so they can be easily viewed, and reordered. Can’t reorder waypoints in Connect
– ability to specify an address for a waypoint
– ability to easily retrace your steps or traverse a loop multiple times, for a limited section of the course. This isn’t really convenient in Connect, because again, clicking on the existing track only ever adds a waypoint, it never extends the course to that point. Ofc there are workarounds for this, which again proves my point that Garmin users are complacent when it comes to stuff like this: “X is broken, no problem, there’s a workaround!” Or “X is broken, but no worries, I don’t need X!”
Honestly I would even rather use a free 3rd party site like onthegomap.com over the Connect route creator.
“It says that 3rd party apps may not use artificial intelligence processing in any way,”
Does it? I read it as Strava not allowing 3rd parties to use Strava data to -train- AI models, but an AI model trained by data that isn’t provided by the Strava API can still be used.
Per the e-mail, it’s clear they mean both training and non-training, saying:
“Our previous terms already prohibited the use of Strava data in large language models and other AI applications but we have made those restrictions more explicit in light of the growing activity in this space.”
(Note: Their previous terms actually didn’t prohibit that either, as it never included the terms AI, artificial intelligence, or large language models.)
But… not for analytics…
Just cancelled my subscription too. It seems that’s the only option to express dissent if we’re banned from posting on this topic in community forums.
It would be fun if Garmin added the same AI/data processing clauses for “Garmin’s” data that is pushed to Strava. How many premium subscribers will be forced to cancel?
I am build an alternative, that will easily allow apps to just change the urls and everything will work as usual, data will go from through device to third party apps, as if it had gone through strava.
link to activityconduit.com
If you add options to randomize location, heart rate, speeds etc before reuploding to Strava I’m in.
I disagree that that is what they are saying — I was thinking what Onno said: Strava seems to say that data can’t be used to *train* models.
I’m sure the default for most AI/LLM processing in this area is to ingest the data, but AI can be used for analyzing data without ingesting that data for training and ongoing learning, but that seems to be Strava’s point.
I don’t read the follow up email as you do; they are saying (in my read) that because they can’t rely on third party devs to use the data responsibly (from their perspective), their default is to “prohibit the use of data extracted from Strava users [for training AI models]. If you think their messages are not written well, I’m 100% with you.
“We believe in the potential of AI to transform the athlete experience–whether it’s delivering more personalized insights to help you reach your goals, generating route or training recommendations, or countless other possibilities. But innovation in this space must be handled responsibly and with a firm focus on user control. As part of our generative AI features, we are committed to implementing thoughtful solutions that prioritize user control and the ability to opt out.
“Third-party developers may not take such a deliberate approach to training AI models and as a result, we believe the best decision for the platform and for users is to prohibit the use of data extracted from Strava users in this manner. Our previous terms already disallowed the use of Strava user data in model training and development but we’ve made this more explicit in light of the increasing activity in this space.”
Maybe this is in answer to a recent flurry of articles about the so-called “Strava leaks” (already reported on a few years ago) where stupid military personnel, head of state bodyguards etc were posting public, geo-localised activities on Strava, revealing confidential locations.
Probably they’re just trying to prevent AI companies to scrape their data for free and have a “plan” to monetize the data themselves.
But for sure, between the debacle of their recent routing “upgrade” and this, they really aren’t making a lot of friends.
You can do that by logging into strava and mine all the data you want.
Preventing AI companies from scrapping their data for free – This is actually what Strava are doing with Garmin (and others) data to sell their premium subscription. The hypocrisy by Strava is unreal hey.
Well, I for one, will break my garmin connection to Strava. Thanks for all the fun strava.
If you can’t even process and use machine learning on your own data coming back from Strava, I’m not sure if that would even be legal in the EU?
For a company with a business model that’s 100% dependent on Garmin and Apple sending them data from their customers devices, Strava is pretty hostile towards everyone needing data from them. At some point that might backfire in pretty spectacular fashion.
Be really interesting if Garmin and apple did just this and stopped Strava using data received from 3rd party devices.
Exactly what I was thinking. And Garmin could open up their system to non-Garmin users, for a small fee.
Exactly this. Aside from their own phone app Strava’s existence relies on data they sponge from device mfrs, partners, etc. Imagine if that were suddenly turned off…
I guess there’ll be no more partner/sponsor programs for LeCol and the rest…
“Do not discuss the community things you don’t like in the community.”
And this ^^^ is batcrap crazy 🤦♂️ Combined with the rest it’s remarkably isolationist and authoritarian…, seems to be trending lately…
BTW I never got this email from them (paid subscriber).
Garmin would never do this – that would annoy so many of their customers that rely on Strava and they would definitely lose sales to other device manufacturers that still supported Strava.
If Garmin were to reverse course and suddenly allow other apps to push their data to Garmin, this could be their chance to have Connect make a move on Strava.
It is… like the way Strava behaves… (Relive, IronMan Virtual, etc…)
the competitive advantage of strava is having so many apps built on top. with these changes they are killing most of them. that’s crazy. For all the affected companies,
for all the apps that need to transition, we are happy to help with Terra API
“the competitive advantage of strava is having so many apps built on top.”
What’s the competitive advantage there? Strava’s “data hub” functionality doesn’t require a subscription.
People use Strava due to the mass user effect. If you lose users, Strava loses relevance. Be it from a social platform standpoint (who’s who), from a routing standpoint (heatmap/etc data becomes less useful), or from a Segments standpoint (nobody is there that matters).
Strava fundamentally needs both free and paid users, no matter how much they try and tell themselves otherwise.
I’m seeing still seeing segments, PRs, data, etc. on people I follow, using Garmin, Zwift, et al. – does this mean this hasn’t gone into effect yet or … have the third-parties complied in some manner?
Hi Ray
100%, it is a social database. Now trying to accelerate and secure its AI features. These features are provided by others as well, but not the social aspect. Poor execution of strategy, if there is one.
Strava still happily lets these apps put data INTO the Strava platform (and then considers this Strava property).
The problem with the announced changes is taking the data OUT of Strava and doing anything useful with it.
30days deadline for the apps
Wow, what a cluster. I’m on Wear OS, using the SportWerks app, and have all my workouts shipped to Training Peaks, where I’ve had things for over 15 years. Just for fun, since SportWerks allows me to, I’ve also had those workouts shipped to Strava as well for the last two years. I’ve often wondered how a company with the money, size, and might of Strava can put out an app (the Wear OS Strava app) that is so incredibly lame that it’s not even worth the “free” that it costs. After reading this, I now realize why, and that there’s a lot about this company that I don’t want to be around.
I’m about to switch to SportWerks. How seamless is the TP integration? (I’d be using Intervals.ICU but…)
Absolutely no issue at all. Best of all, the workout is shipped as soon as you tap the “keep” button on your watch at the end of the workout. I usually get the ding on my watch before my HR has come down 20 bpm! I can see everything that is of value to me on a second-by-second basis (HR, GPS location, stride rate) and my “laps” in SW I have set at 1/4 miles so I also see my split times. Again, not to beat a dead horse, but how can a solo dev, working in his spare time, put out an app so powerful and flexible, and Strava puts out a POS that my old TomTom watch (circa 2015) was better than?
Sounds good and sounds like the only thing I need to really dive into is getting data from Wear OS to Stryd Powercenter.
Thanks!
No worries. I’ve done a boatload of testing for this dev (entirely unreimbursed) simply because I want the best available app for our Wear OS devices and the pickings are so slim! Let me know if you have further questions.
I forgot to mention: SportWerks also integrates directly to intervals!
Strava seems like they’re hellbent on being the Dallas Cowboys of social networks. Flashy, lots of fun things to look at, but getting worse and worse at the core product offering.
This is a brave move from STRAVA ….
apart from collecting my data I do very little on there … I borrow other people’s routes / rides.
All my analytics is done either by my coach or by me using veloviewer.com
I view the annual subscription of 75€ as a payment to use Veloviewer (plus 10£ for Ben), not to use STRAVA.
If I can’t get what I get currently from Veloviewer because of their change it will be bye from me …
It’s unfortunate that they didn’t respond to you. I wonder if we’re over-reading the terms of ‘can’t do any analysis’ as an individual. The terms indicate that you can’t show any data to anyone other than the user…I feel like the *intent* of the analysis statement was to not do any additional analytics, etc. and show to others, etc. Basically it feels like VeloViewer is still in the realm of acceptable (sans end of year stuff). As I’m only looking at my data.
That said, the API provides convenience, but just as easy for someone like VeloViewer, others to basically say “manually export your data like this…then use our upload feature” and boom, they are NOT using any API agreement :-)
I agree it feels like intent vs what’s written is disconnected here. But that’s a section they revamped from previous, to make it more restrictive.
And again, as you noted, they had the opportunity to clarify, and chose not to.
The API agreement is also not that clear. See those 2 bullet points out of the agreement:
– Strava Data provided by a specific user can only be displayed or disclosed in your Developer Application to that user. Strava Data related to other users, even if such data is publicly viewable on the Strava Platform, may not be displayed or disclosed.
– You must always respect Strava users and comply with their privacy choices. This includes not sharing a Strava user’s data with other users, end users of your application, or third parties without explicit consent
Goodbye Strava – I have been a premium user for years on end and I will not review my subscription based on this.
I love Strava, as do so many of my friends, training partners and club members. It’s a great place to connect and chat, and spy on how much faster than me they are! I understand they have to make Premium worth it and that means stopping third parties copy features but they are now stifling innovation. Killing Veloviewer will not go down well with a whole bunch of people including the pro cycling teams!
It strikes me as childish behaviour and and a blatant attempt to trap users into their system with no other opportunity to analyse metrics. I wouldn’t mind so much if they offered better analytical tools but they don’t. Veloviewer is great for getting nerdy and it genuinely helps me understand my performance when I’m being super critical about training efforts and races. Strava’s metrics don’t allow that.
I have Garmin devices so I guess Veloviewer could adapt to use that data instead but this just makes everything harder or even impossible for others.
We are a community of athletes who want to be fit and healthy – Strava doesn’t own that and this will backfire badly. U-turn within a week I reckon.
Do you remember when they killed Relive?
Every few years Strava does something similar
For those that don’t remember: link to dcrainmaker.com
And even further back: link to dcrainmaker.com
Im a paying user of Relive, Garmin integrations rules ;-D
Hope either Statshunter or Veloviewer integrates Garmin direct, I will gladly pay for it.
They also bought and then killed Fatmap. Away from cycling it was an incredibly useful route planning tool for many activities. It was extensively used for winter mountaineering as one of the overlays calculated avalanche risk based on depth of snow, angle of slope and wind direction. All Strava have done is kill the original app and incorporate its 3D mapping in its incredibly dull flybys that are not a patch on the Relive ones.
I loved Fatmap, used it a lot for winter maps and other stuff. They just bought it and killed it…. It’s becoming a shit place to be this Strava….
Agree, the end of Fatmap was a huge blow. In fact, Fatmap was what got me into Strava Premium subscription in the first place.
Killing Fatmap put me on the verge of canceling my Premium subscription at the end of this year. And these new API terms, even if not (immediately) implemented to the full extent, has pushed me over the Edge.
I wonder if Ray will now lose his Strava account, given he had critical comments about these changes to the user community… 🤔
Oh Noo ! Ray ! I hope you don’t lose your account before the annual Getting the Christmas Tree Home via Bike post
Thankfully said removal only applies to the Strava Community Hub, their forums.
Let me translate that for you…
“We don’t want you criticise our product on the community hub – or bosses or investors might see and get upset if they think we’re screwing up the business”
Strava was literally made off the back of data sharing APIs from Garmin, Polar etc. If these didn’t exist, Strava wouldn’t be where it is now. Also Strava has thrived from 3rd party devs enriching the experience. Now they think they’re big enough, they’ll kill it off.
Pretty much that. I actually started on Strava because I had an early WearOS watch and Strava was one of the few on-watch GPS activity tracking apps at the time (Endomondo was the other one). But clearly the vast majority of activities on Strava come from other devices/platforms.
So their logic appears to be: You can import your data into our platform but you cannot have another app/platform take it out via the API for any meaningful use.
That might be ok for free accounts but is not acceptable to me as a Premium subscriber.
What a weird move.
They should embrace the position they are in. Instead only make themselves the data hub for subscribers. So if you are a Strava subscriber the apps linking to it, with your permission, will get the data. Then they can make more money, instead of less as now I’m considering terminating my subscription.
I agree.
Strava has become THE data hub. It’s understandable that they do not want that cost w/o a reward. I think “data hub” services should be free to subscribers or available at a nominal cost as a standalone product.
Likely other apps that might be able to act as hubs so Strava isn’t the only one and we can pick and choose. For example, huopt.com has an interesting high level overview of all of my activities.
to be honest I don’t use strava a lot.
I had the subscription as a way to support them because they were doing a good job and to make some routs a couple of times a year.
I cancelled it so it will not renew in July. I hope they change their mind and apologize their users.
Is there a market for an agnostic “fitness data exchange”? No social, no analytics, just one spot that has all the integrations to all the fitness data sources and all the data consumers (including Strava). Wouldn’t compete with any of them, just a clearinghouse. Built on the concept of “you control your data”. Maybe set up as a non-profit joint venture funded by the ecosystem players?
Otherwise we just end up with a giant spaghetti web of one-off integrations between data providers and consumers.
I mean on iOS I would argue run gap is the closest thing with that app. It has a huge selection of other apps you can send your data too. In a round about way, Apple Health does this as well pulling in all the information but it’s difficult to know what’s in there. I have workouts all the way back to 2015 in Apple health pulled from other data sources and stored in there. Other apps to run need to read Apple health which right now doesn’t seem to have wide spread use at least with my apps.
It ends up being a political/competitive issue more than a technical one, as there are plenty of apps that can do some data integration. RunGap has the right messaging, but since they also offer some analytics/visualization, other apps that do the same might not want to participate. Same issue with Apple Health.
You’d almost need a branding where every data provider and consumer is “COOLNAME-compatible”, and the “COOLNAME” data exchange almost happens behind the scenes. You record a workout, it’s automatically loaded into the exchange, and you as a user can decide who it gets sent to. Maybe even the Garmins, Zwifts, etc would expose that data-rights-sharing directly in their own apps, but all control would be by an independent entity that ensures your data sharing preferences are followed.
It would be extremely expensive to run while extremely hard to monetize. A better solution would be for platforms like Garmin to have their own API so you can use third party plugins to export your data to whereever you want.
It doesn’t have to be expensive if you’re just a data clearinghouse. Storage is the highest cost. You could set it up like many of the open source foundations, where the major industry players pay to run the foundation but the governance is independent. It saves them having to maintain a web of one-off API integrations. It’s a win-win for the industry if they could look past their noses.
We’re seeing some companies try this, tryterra.co being one – though, I’m a bit skeptical there. For one, the pricing is kinda crazy for smaller companies (and barely functional for bigger ones). And two, I’ve talked to at least one company that’s listed as being compatible, but has zero knowledge of how they’re on the list, and certainly isn’t using an official API of that company.
Nice find! Try Terra definitely has the kind of functionality that you’d want in a fitness data clearinghouse. As you pointed out, the issue might be in being a venture-backed for-profit company… your “partners” might be reluctant to connect to you due to costs or competition, and your investors will push you to “monetize” the data more, taking you away from a mission of responsibly managing users’ data. The industry as a whole has to want to invest in an independent agnostic entity to broker fitness data. We can all dream…
The data exchange idea can just be a pure subscription model. Other apps and you can push data in, and push / pull data out. With some privacy settings on the data that can pulled out by each app. No complex analytics or visualisations.
There was something similar called EDI (electronic data exchange) back in the late 1980s. It’s a basic publish / subscription model that’s well understood.
Create a stable versioned API, employ industry best practice security and privacy controls and away you go.
Yes, the EDI analogy is a great one! Some pub/sub with encrypted storage. Technically not too hard… getting everyone onboard is tricky part.
Huh. Well I guess it’s their data, and they can decide how much to make it extensible, or not – they’ll have to live with the consequences though. I wonder if 12 months from now we’ll be looking back and saying, ‘man that was a dumb decision they made to kill off their overall API ecosystem’.
I’m guessing their management felt like too many other players were just existing solely off the Strava data and wanted to put an end to that model. Unfortunately, that’s a short-sighted move and it mean the beginning of the end for Strava. Time will tell….
“Well I guess it’s their data”
Yeah, as in not the user’s data. Who apparently cannot in any way authorize an API client to analyze that data, or show it to someone else. Reducing apps to brainless third party client app. And what if the user’s mother happens to get a look at that third party client, or the user’s grandchild? Has the maker of the app broken the API agreement?
And no, “that’s not how it’s meant” does not matter. What matters is what it actually means, and if that’s not what they intended, tough luck for them.
Is it their data ? when you upload a photo to Apple or Google storage does that photo belong to Apple or Google ? the data belongs to you, yes they are the gate keepers of the data, and they need to keep it safe, but not allow you, to send your data to another platform for analysis is simply not correct
Is it their, ie Strava’s, data?
You created it, you uploaded it… you own it under EU GDPR as I understand GDPR. They are solely a Data Processor and / or Custodian.
They need to insure it is protected, not stolen, sold or inappropriately used, but they cannot prevent you from giving someone else access to it OR processing rights over it, NOR can the prevent you removing it, interrogating it, requesting its removal, deletion or correction.
I’m not a GDPR lawyer, but I do work in a dara environment and this feels like an overstep from Strava…
You will still be able to do whatever you want with your data, you just have to manually export the fit file and upload it wherever else. Strava probably thinks that many people will be too lazy to consistently do that, and that’s probably true. It’s the automatic pull through the API that’s being closed. Personally I wouldn’t be objecting if they made API pulls to 3rd party apps a paid-only feature but closing it basically entirely is very wrong.
Storage has different TOS than social platforms. Facebook has usage rights to anything you post (mainly for their algorithms to feed it to other people if you have a public profile). Strava probably has similar language.
“Strava benefits because they’ve become the defecto platform of choice for consumers…”
I vote me make “defecto” the new way to describe something that everyone uses because it’s the only option, but it’s a crappy option.
I noticed the exact same typo. I was also going to point this out, but I fully expected Ray to reply with, “I said what I said.” LOL
Do you think anyone like TrainingPeaks or other could jump in that space and build itself as a data inbound/outbound hub replicating Strava API stuff and find ways to profit from that?
I’m a cheap bastard, but I’d gladly pay $2/mo for “data hub” services. Much more than that and it starts to influence my decisions WRT what watch I buy.
Yep some hub platform needs to exist that does nothing but route workout files in and out.
Intervals.icu has an open API and plans to integrate with as many platforms as possible. Certainly matching Strava’s penetration is a long way off. But the goal is to make Intervals.icu the best data and analytics hub for athletes, coaches and sports scientists. And that means keeping it open.
Lots of potential data hubs out there already (TrainingPeaks, Intervals.ICU, whatever the Apple platform is called, etc.). The issue is that most apps are solely built on the Strava API and would need to create connections to these other platforms – most of which are much smaller scale than Strava, might or might not have proper APIs, etc.
Strava has thrived because of the easy import of workout data from other platforms, the social aspect, and (for select users) certain functions (segments/routes, heatmaps, etc.) – and because missing functionality could relatively easily be offered by third party developers.
Will be interesting to see how the Strava user base reacts to the removal of the last point.
This is what Rungap does, it basically connects to everything and you can control where your data goes. However, it could be shut off by any of the APIs it connects to such as Garmin.
If I could use intervals to track my historical segments (I don’t care about other people’s segments, but, for a ride (or virtual race), I like to compare how I did today compared to how I have done in the past and look at what I can expect to do on a certain effort based on what I’ve done in the past), I’d skip out of Strava tomorrow and never look back.
If Garmin would accept outside data, I’d probably say close to the same thing about it (it won’t take TPVirtual data though).
Same with Training Peaks, though I’d have to learn to use Connect or Training Peaks more than I do now.
I’ve never been one for the social aspects of Strava. I used to use the heat maps to help plan routes, but I haven’t done a long or training ride on the road since getting hit by a car on a training ride 3 years ago.
We have reached out with a lengthly email to Strava for clarification and confirmation that these changes do not impact RunGap. They have replied that RunGap has not been identified as being in violation with their updated API Agreement and no action is required.
Great summary of a huge issue.
Nitpick:
“ow Strava seems to want to own the the “AI space” with it’s always-helpful AI insights that simply re-word my activity titles and tell me something vaguely positive but usually wrong.”
“it’s” = “it is”. You mean the possessive “its”.
“You may not process or disclose Strava Data… for the purposes of… products or services improvements.” – I *love* this part, it is ingenious!
I just canceled my Strava subscription and recommend everyone to do the same.
If a rising tide raises all ships, seems like they pulled the drain plug, or are at least letting the tide out for a while. Any thoughts on how many users this will affect ? Would need some data that they will probably not disclose, but you could do a survey of users that might be accurate if you get a bit enough n (unless that data is restricted/limited by this too, haha). Just curious about how many users they’ll lose over this. My sense is not enough to make a dent in their revenues.
btw did you get a break on the annual subscription rate since the move, or are you still registered in the overpriced US market ?
link to dcrainmaker.com
So basically Strava claims ownership of any data that a user uploads to Strava from elsewhere – e.g. a Garmin recording – , to the extent that they will actively prohibit any further processing of any data where Strava has functioned as an inbetween hub? And this would this include basic calculations like training load? That sounds.. extremely limiting. To the point that Strava loses its raison d’être.
Cancelled my subscription. Time to get off the platform completely. I guess the super(ficial) “dark” mode feature was them adopting even darker patterns.
I guess the only thing we can do is cancel our subs and hope the hit to the bottom line makes a difference.
About time that users just leave Strava. Garmin connect does the same. If it wasn’t for checking on friends routes…, which I recreate manually anyway not using strava.
This is like kidnapping, no thanks
Farewell Strava
Strava only gets my data because it links to my Garmin. Does Strava expect others like Garmin to do nothing about this?
It’s interesting too see that while we’ve see so many Sports Apps being launched since the Zwift boom, to try and get some market share, we still haven’t seen one App trying to compete with Strava.
All it would really take would be an App with a better segment management system, maybe done via AI, which is all people really care about on Strava. The social media part of posting rides is easy…
What is Wahoo or even Garmin waiting??
Garmin tried, its all there:
-Garmin Segments
-Livetracking (Strava Beacon)
-Friends
-Groups
-Feed
-Pictures to activities
-Gamification (Challenges, Badges, Leaderboards)
But do you use it?
Sometimes I attach a pic to an activity in Connect, but for me and not my 3 connections.
But the problem was it was limited to Garmin watches. So not everyone you knew would be there if they have another brand. I think that was short sighted on their part–sync your apple watch to Garmin Connect and maybe you buy a Garmin when it dies.
I post pictures to my activities when it’s relevant (beautiful scenery, for example). I love chasing badges and challenges Garmin provides. I don’t care about segments – neither on Strava nor anywhere else. I don’t have anybody to send LiveTracking links to. And I don’t have a lot of people who would be interested in adding me back on Garmin and, coincidentally, I don’t care. It’s my training log, I don’t want it to become another social network.
Yes, but too many people use Strava so Garmin, whom I think came to the party too late, so Gamin’s version just seems to wallow there. This article has made me think ‘what do I use Strava for?’ answer, not much. I use Garmin for analysis and route making.
I went to the “Apps” section at my Strava profile an found this (translated from spanish):
“… There’s an app for every kind of person. Among such a wide variety, some allow you to analyze unique performance data or find a nearby friend who runs at the same pace as you…”
Maybe they should stop claiming something they don’t allow apps to do…
Seems sketchy for Strava to claim ownership over data that originated from me, and to place constraints on how I choose to use it, even though it comes via their platform.
100% correct
Why should Strava have to send your data to another app? If you want to use that app, upload your data there.
@Duncan That might be acceptable for free users of Strava. The removal of that existing feature is not acceptable to me as a Premium subscriber – hence Premium subscription canceled.
Strava wouldn’t survive 6 months if that same limitation was imposed on them. What if Garmin said to Strava: Nah, you can’t do any analytics whatsoever on the data obtained through our devices and we give you no direct way to get this data. Users will have to manually upload their fit files to Strava if they want that.
Read David’s reply for your answer, almost all of Stravas source data cones from 3rd parties, if Garmin, Wahoo and Hammerhead did tte same Strava would be dead, they couldn’t process segments or anything else, it is utterly buzzard
Strava is just copying Reddit’s API playbook – to kill of any external API app integrations and to fully control their business’s data for AI. Reddit had a massive backlash but it worked for them eventually, I’m sure Strava expects the same.
Very different use case and Strava doesn’t restricts AI processing, it disallows *ALL* Strava data usage – basically, you can push data to Strava but can’t pull from it anymore.
I agree it doesn’t make sense, especially as Strava is really just a downstream app too. But I bet this was the MBA style thinking here. Probably looked genius in the boardroom PowerPoint. :)
100% this is the play, anything else is convenient coincidence.
6 months from now Strava will announce a program to allow AI companies to purchase “their” data for AI model training.
Problem is that most of Strava’s data comes from other companies (Garmin) APIs. Hardly anyone uses their app to record/create data.
I still remember Relive, we cannot even post links, and now even use 3rd party apps… Canceled my subscription for now. Strava reminds me of old Twitter lock-in and API changes, it went only downhill.
I just cancelled my Strava. If they want to play it this way, I’ll just stop using it. I can sync my stuff from Garmin to Intervals. I don’t need Strava. The leaderboards were fun, and the route building was quite good, but I can manage.
Strava must understand that they are using OUR data, and if I want to share MY data with someone else, that’s my choice, not theirs. I guess this is gonna cost them users.
Couldn’t stomach all the changes… finally switched off the auto-renew. They got my annual fee. In July I’ll find another platform, like Hybrid. There has to be a better option than Strava at this point. The last AI push, segment scrub and hazardous trail roundup killed it for me.
It’s actually pretty amazing how poorly Strava is managed. How do they repeatedly make ridiculous decisions like this?
What is the definition of Strava Data ? the fit file I upload is not Stravas it is mine, all Strava do is store it, process it and use it to derive their own data. I can understand if they do not wish anybody to use their heatmaps or any other analytics they calculate, but to gate fence my data is not acceptable.
I’ve been a strava subscriber since day one they introduce a fee, I believe in supporting and paying for the services I use, this money goes towards providing a better service, when they effectively use my money to reduce my service, they force me to question my subscription.
It is due to review in 3 weeks, I’ve already cancelled it. Strava has committed suicide here, I also work in the software business, if a partner dumped this on me with 30 days notice I would instruct my team to not comply, but to remove integration.
Strava have forgotten something important, almost all of their content (certainly cycling) is provided by 3rd parties, only people who use their so-so App generate the content directly, they never truly own the data, very very sad.
The thing that always bothers me about these sort of changes with Strava is that their entire existence is dependent on Garmin, Polar etc. being an open ecosystem. I think it would be nice if Garmin et al would change their terms so that data used from their API must remain open.
I was one of the first 10K users of strava and early on encouraged others to join. Now I encourage people to not pay because it’s a company that is ridiculously tone deaf to its users.
strava seem to have really lost the plot. i guess they’re trying to find a way to make a profit out of the service they provide which is fair enough but in doing so they are destroying that service. its not as if strava themselves provide any meaningful data analysis, their value is in segments and social media.
anyway, i don’t see that it is “strava data” mine is actually garmin data which then feeds into strava so i await garmin’s reply in kind to strava. other people’s data may be from other platforms. some will actually be recording direct in strava in which case i guess it is strava data but strava are fortunate to have data fed to them from other platforms so should be open to feeding it on.
on a side note, the popup ads at the bottom-centre of the page keep stealing focus from the comment entry box. would be great if that could be avoided while maintaining your income
Just become a subscriber
What a dick move. I not only cancelled my subscription, I also sent them a support email requesting refund for the ‘unused portion’ (renewed in September) of my annual subscription fee, as it’s pointless without 3rd party integrations.
Strava just refunded my annual payment (which had been renewed early September)
I had been a Strava subscriber for over eight years, and just cancelled a few days ago because sites like Intervals.icu and VeloViewer have done a much better job implementing Strava’s “premium” features. I realized I’m not really paying for anything of value with Strava compared to the free version. This is probably part of why they are making the API change – if you can’t beat them, cut them off at the kneecaps, right?
Thanks for the heads up.
Tried to cancel my subscription on the website, it isn’t possible.
It only loads a blank page. Only way is to write an email according to that Chatbot supportthing.
We should all fill a complaint wich European Customer Protection, cancellation has always to be as easy as subscription.
stumbled over the same thing: It’s actually not “change membership” but “cancel membership”, the button you’re searching for. This will keep up the premium features for the time of your subscription and then fall back to the free tier. “Membership” means “Paid Membership” in Strava terminology.
That’s so crazy, and sound like it will kill off two of the main apps I use – wandrer.earth (has leaader boards and processes data) and activity fix (processes data to update information on the stava activity). And these are both so key to what I like to do, keeping me motivated and improving post activity workflow.
sigh!
As a recreational rider, I’m tossing Strava into the same bit-bucket as my deleted Twitte… er…X account. They are free to leverage that as best they can.
Well.. looks like we know what the q&a session this Saturday is gonna be focused on hahah
Without Garmin, Strava would probably never have existed. It certainly wouldn’t have reached the level of ubiquity that it has. If Garmin pull their links to Strava, Strava is dead. And there’s no reason why they shouldn’t; Garmin’s own Connect app does a better job of performance analysis than Strava does and it would be relatively simple for Garmin to give more access to the app for data from other data providers, such as Apple Health – especially if Apple decided that Strava was no longer worth supporting. Bring Polar and Suunto in and allow users to bring their data into whichever proprietary app they wish and Strava would have nowhere to go but bankruptcy. Maybe that’s what they’re after?
I’ve been a premium subscriber since they first offered subscriptions, but I just canceled.
I’m okay with the demise of any company that takes your data and says, “this is now our data, and you can’t use it anymore.”
I stopped using Strava about a year ago. All I did during my workouts was plan a clever description for Strava. Every workout was a race, and I wouldn’t do things like re-tie a loose shoe or stop at a water fountain because I didn’t want to slow my averages. And then I’d spend leisure time counting kudos. I’m a much happier athlete now that I’m not performing.
Yes, that says much more about me than about Strava. But try a Strava-fast for a few months and see if the workouts don’t get a lot more enjoyable.
Aaaaaaand this kind of stuff is why I pulled the Strava plug this summer
Someone guide me – if I cancel my subscription what’s my best choice for routing road bike, MTB, and trail running? Ideally also syncs to Garmin like Strava does (for now).
RideWithGPS. They have amazing routing, some analytics, and are bootstrapped and profitable. I’ve paid more to RWGPS than I ever did to Strava. Oh! And… if you send them a message asking a question, you’ll get a response within 24 hours (at least that’s been the case for me).
I’m still amazed at how much money Strava has taken on while other apps still manage to do more with less. It’s a Tech-bro Black Hole.
Komoot or Ride With GPS are good options.
RWGPS good for running as well? Trail running routes + heat map is basically why I pay for Strava at this point.
fetcheveryone.com routing options, analysis and a chat forum etc etc etc – free
Well… that’s fair enough. The running will be a challenge since RWGPS focuses on cycling. There has to be a good running option out there already? Since I don’t run, I can’t speak to it, though.
Buying a cheap Garmin watch get’s you free unlimited access to to Garmin Connect, which is where most of Strava’s heatmap data for running comes from.
Just go with Garmin. They have route creation and heat maps for road biking, MTB, and trail running. Many of their watches have course guidance, live segments, round-trip course creator, and popularity routing built in.
Screw this. Canceling my sub – ain’t their data, it’s mine.
My guess is that there’s a TrainerRoad deal and integration announcement incoming and a lot of these changes are driven by TR wanting to build a moat around this data stream
But TR is arguably the one most impacted here short-term?
I’m confused, how is TR building a moat?
TR CEO posting in the TR forum on this topic just now:
“This was crazy news to us, too. We’re still understanding the full implications; but for now:
Good news – We’ve been syncing Garmin Connect for a long while now. When we have both a GC and Strava ride file, we de-dupe them and use the GC .FIT file for processing/training/displaying. This is because Strava edits the data and takes a few things out.
More good news – We were already working on pulling rides from Zwift directly into TrainerRoad.
Even more good news – We had direct pulling from Wahoo on the roadmap, but now that’s obviously moved up to be worked in parallel with the Zwift integration.
For now, I recommend Garmin users make sure they have Garmin Connect synced”.
And this is a great example of what will happen all over the place. Strava have made themselves irrelevant, which (as far as I am aware) is not the most robust business model. In fact, the only people without a route through this might be those who use the Strava app to record their activities direct.
In theory, a deal with TrainerRoad would include exclusive rights to access Strava data, thus excluding alternatives. Not really a “moat” in the business/tech sense though.
Heh, in case you ever wondered what a super annoyed DCR would be like, watch this video.
If I were making a third party app, I wouldn’t even put half a thought into maybe offering a compliant version of my client, just focus on migrating to the hardware makers’ clouds, on preparing users that Strava connection might go away.
Wow, those people *really* don’t understand the market they happen to dominate, apparently out of luck alone.
November fools day?
This seems like the problem with having one main company controlling a space like this. They can pull the rug out at anytime. Will be interesting to see if they shoot themselves in the foot at the same time.
Strava is becoming increasingly worthless
Is Strava contemplating an IPO in the near future? Because this smells like something a company preparing for an IP would do.
Take an action that massively impacts their revenue ? who would consider investing in a company run by people who make decisions like this
I think Garmin, Wahoo, and all the other device makers should adopt a similar policy – no access to “their” data without permission. Then immediately grant permission to other analytics platforms -Trainer Road, Training Peaks, etc. and cut Strava completely out of the picture, so the only data they get is from the Strava phone app. I doubt many of their users (an fewer still paid users) are using their phones as primary fitness devices.
I think if Garmin alone did this, Strava would die, and I doubt it would hurt Garmin at all, and might drive users to their site.
Well said
This will hack off Garmin users more than it’s worth – Garmin would be saying “you can’t upload to Strava automatically”. Garmin/Strava customers will complain . . . and Garmin’s response is – “Well Strava started it”?
Garmin (and other co’s) are pushing data to Strava, whereas Strava is preventing pulling data from it.
As a Wahoo user and TR subscriber, I just learned today that the only way my outdoor rides were getting to TR was through Strava, and that there’s currently no way to bypass this soon-to-be closed portal. I want to extend a big “FU” to Strava for this policy change, with an extra emphasis on the “U” for the short notice and timing.
But I also have to take TR to task a little bit for relying on a company that clearly has ambitions (however misplaced) to become a competing training platform as a conduit for their Wahoo data.
I hoped to get my app finished this year, but now I’m questioning the value. It uses a machine learning model and completes some analysis of your performance.
That they can do this without fear of having their lunch eaten by a competitor just shows what a monopoly Strava has.
Disappointing. I canceled my Strava subscription last week because the watered down heatmap is no longer useful when planning less popular routes (which only accumulate public tracks over more than one season). Luckily, all the apps I use are connected directly to Garmin, and I just severed the link between Garmin and Strava.
I won’t be missing the made up AI insights either.
Strava premium user from the beginning, along with my wife. If these changes are as bad as reported, we’ll cancel our premium accounts and use Garmin Connect. I also use Golden Cheetah, which is ridiculously powerful. Another company destroying their loyal user base.
The thing here it’s not Strava’s data – it’s my data. It’s pretty much the same with their very badly worded terms and conditions about what they can do with *my data* re them doing AI on it. Which basically says anything they want, even if they claim they don’t do that. Already I’ve stopped giving them most of my data because of that; this will just drive more people away.
Veloviewer premium is the only reason I paid for Strava. I just cancelled my Strava membership which was set to renew in 2 weeks.
By the way: I didn’t get the e-mai
Is this announcement for subscribers only?
Neither did I. I will have to relearn how to use GC. Looks like they changed the UI and I cannot find anything. What a PITA.
I believe it was sent to everyone registered in Strava Developer Program.
Well here’s the thing. It’s not Strava data. My activity data is mine, I share it to the Strava platform. Their action means I will cancel my Strava subscription for which I’ve been a long time subscriber!
Madness.
They are going to do the same as reddit. Cut off access to the data and then start selling it
Enough is enough. I just unsubbed, and wrote them the following support ticket, as well:
Hi all,
I’m canceling my Summit subscription after close to a decade. The “before you go…” page said that I ought file a support ticket if something is wrong, and I figured that I owed y’all the courtesy of telling you why in a little more detail. Basically there are two things that have pushed me in the direction of cancellation:
1) This new “AI” thing is deeply offensive in a lot of ways. I ride my bike to stay healthy, and also, as a means of transportation that lowers my carbon footprint. The concept that every single time I ride my bike, some computer performs an enormous amount of work and burns an enormous amount of power (“AI” now uses as much power as a small country!), just to write a sentence that I already knew that often contains falsehoods (the other day, I had a third-best 20k time, apparently; the “AI” told me I set a new personal best?), is absolutely insane. It is unhelpful and contributing to the destruction of our planet. I cannot imagine that the NPS metrics on the “AI”‘s helpfulness are above 0, and it is shocking to me that you have not disabled it by now until you could make it actually provide useful insight, rather than being simply patronizing to people who are paying you money.
2) Strava’s new plan to kill every single app that I use with *my own data* (and the data of my friends that opt in) is unreasonable. TrainerRoad will no longer be able to aggregate my Strava activities and analyze them; the Page Milling and On Orbits leaderboards will have to end; VeloViewer will no longer be able to tell me what percentile of a cyclist I am; my friends and I will no longer be able to go for a Tuesday night group ride and have some friendly competition by adding together segment times with a small app. These are not your data. These are *our* data. It is fundamentally hostile for Strava to tell me that I may not use and analyze my own data anymore.
I would love to keep paying money for a service that I love. I have paid for Strava before it even got me anything useful or different because it brought me joy to see my friends being active. I have stuck with Strava through the VC era of bad decisions. But enough is enough. I’m not going to pay for a service that fundamentally disrespects me. If Strava changes their minds, hey, I’m not up for renewal until May; I’ll pay by then if I can do what I want with my data. But if Strava keeps going down this path I just don’t see why I should be a part of it. I beg of you: it is time to care about your users! I want to love Strava and I am sad that y’all keep doing this kind of thing.
Best regards,
joshua
After getting the email from Strava, I canceled the renewal of my paid subscription, which I’ve had since 2016. Enough is enough.
Now I have to figure out what the alternatives are, especially for 3rd-party platforms like Wandrer and VeloViewer Explorer tiles, as well as route planning.
May I suggest checking out http://www.fetcheveryone.com as an alternative? The owner/developer builds analytic tools, route mapping, as well as user training based games. There’s active forums and blogs, plus training portfolios. See an example of my July cycling infographic.
It’s free to use (supported by donations) and has user voted feature development and implementation. Also Ian is a really nice chap!
That’s like recommending someone goes to a nursery when they can’t get into university. The analytic tools in Fetch are at the best noddy built on a decidedly iffy dataset. And as a solution it completely misses that noone is going to build an api to collect data from Fetch for their third party app which is the main issue Strava has created.
I am most offended by their justification. Doing this to protect user’s privacy. That is pure b****it. It is only done for Strava to earn more money.
I find it legitimate that they do not want to be a free data brokering platform. DCR is arguing “Garmin and others can not handle the scale at which Strava does it”. Fair enough.
In a similar way, many platforms with major content (NY Times, Reddit, …) do not want AI players to use all their data for free to train models. Fair enough.
But please be a management team that communicates honestly and transparently. Simply state that you want to earn an honest buck, no issue with that.
A company lead by a management team that insults its customers by lying to them is doomed.
The policy of Strava is quite interesting, because the data they use to create the heat maps, suggestions, routes, leaderboards is OUR data, not theirs.
I do understand that providing data to others can be somehow risky, but they are not in a position to decide what someone wants to do with its heart rate or power data…
This has given me the impetus to cancel my subscription renewal (although it remains active until it expires). They ask you why you want to cancel so I told them it was this decision. If enough people do it they may get the message
I like Strava but I cancelled my paid membership years ago over a similar move to this when they basically tried to claim ownership of all our data (despite the fact that all of this data comes, necessarily, from 3rd parties). The amount of data that Strava tracks on its website is minute. I’m fine letting Garmin send my workouts to Strava but I am pretty sure I long ago ended any data coming in from Strava to any other platform.
This is making me consider if I want to keep Strava at all. The only thing I “need” it for is getting data out of iFit more easily but I can download direction from iFit if needed. Now that I have Runn on my treadmill…that’s not even necessary anymore. I’m not particularly active on Strava at this point other than looking at other people’s workouts. Which…fine.
After thinking on it more…I went and turned off all of my connections into Strava. There’s literally no value added to me to Strava collecting it and since they seem to want to own my data…I’m good.
I took that a step further. I deleted my account and all the data that went with it, then removed their app from my watch and phones. It was only a secondary storage for me anyway, and I’m sure they won’t care because I’m not a paying customer but I have a feeling that there will be enough people doing this for someone to notice.
@TimmyB The only reason I haven’t done this yet is that I have some friends I follow on there. But not many so I may follow sooner or later. The thrill of a million kudos for a workout is long gone. I cancelled my premium years ago over this behavior so I don’t get any benefit from leader boards.
Most of my friends are on Garmin and my data is there and TrainingPeaks.
Yeah, I don’t have any friends, so… :D
Strava forgetting that this is MY data, not THEIR data.
Strava must be looking at Twitter/X right now thinking “Look at them there’s no way they are going to lose their customer base by ostracizing them” as millions flock to Blue sky…
Veloviewer is the reason I pay my Strava subscription.
I will go where they go.
This is how I interpret Strava’s move here. Building a moat around their key selling point, to most users they offer a social feed of activities (which has a lot of value) all the other metrics/functions Strava offers are kinda meh but the reason most people keep using it is nowhere else brings everyone’s activities together at the scale they do.
The town square for all runners/cyclists/etc and we’ve all seen (X) how quickly that can be destroyed so they are making a very crude attempt to stop another company threatening their position. All the side effects on coaching apps is collateral damage which they think is worth taking.
I think most commenters here are a bit different to the bulk of Strava users, I think the vast majority won’t really notice or understand this annoucement from Strava. I’ve now taken steps to fully disconnect from Strava and use other services, but I was already moving in that direction anyway, the social aspect just doesn’t appeal to me like it used to and my sub ran out this month.
You may be right… but do you think those “social network” users are willing to pay the subscription? How will Strava make money? If they made API a paid feature I could understand it much better….
So what would happen if Garmin does the same thing and says to Strava:
You can no longer use any data from a Garmin device?
Would run Strava out of business almost instantly, no?
Maybe Garmin could step in to help all us athletes who use Garmin devices…..
Just a thought……..
THIS would be beautiful
The sad reality is that had Strava basically shut down offices five years ago (or make it ten even) and handed the existing tech to a minimally staffed maintenance team, I would probably have kept paying my subscription until old age. Few things they have done in recent years haven’t made me doubt that the money is well spent, it’s as if they were aiming for a customer that definitely isn’t me.
I see problem with historical data.
If a company that currently uses Strava API wants to keep their historical Strava data, they can IMHO refuse new Terms&Conditions, stop using Strava API and keep what they have.
On the other hand if they accept (for some reason) new Terms&Conditions, they must delete historical data.
These changes are not uncommon in my world of connecting to apps via APIs to collect and aggregate data. Unfortunately, multiple regulatory bodies across many countries quietly release privacy requirements for anyone using AI, so anything that references AI is entirely understandable and not within Strava’s control. Also, clear definitions of ‘use’, ‘analysis’, ‘insight’ and ‘enriched’ and ‘derived’ data are something we’ve seen. So, reporting how many miles ran last week is not an analysis but an insight. While this change seems disappointing, it aligns with many other data holders who aggregate people’s data. The fine line between collecting data, allowing data collection and regulating data is a harsh new world, which Strava is right in the middle of.
Then the reasonable course of action by Strava would be to a) request its users to provide updated consents to sharing their data with third parties, and/or b) insert additional privacy and data protection obligations on these third party users in the API T&Cs.
The fact that Strava has not done this is indicates that a) they are unaware of where users see the value in Strave (the data hub aspect), b) they are looking to implement some of these features themselves (eventually) and monetize that (e.g., the AI commentary, useless as it maybe right now), and/or c) they are lazy/don’t care.
I suspect it is a combination of all three.