Strava is a popular cycling and running app available for Android or iOS. Read our Strava review to find out if it’s the right fitness tracking app for you.
What is Strava?
Strava is a free app available for Android and iOS devices. The app tracks your cycling and running activity using your phone’s built-in GPS.
Then, it integrates that data with social features to become the ultimate social media platform for athletes.
Strava is one of the more popular fitness tracking apps on the market. That popularity comes with some major benefits: many wearable devices specifically promise to be compatible with Strava, for example.
Strava is also one of the best-rated apps on the app store. On the Google Play Store, for example, the app has been downloaded over 10 million times and maintains an average rating of 4.6 stars out of 5.
Some people use Strava exclusively for fitness tracking and never participate in the social media aspects of the app.
Other people frequently compete against friends or strangers on leaderboards. All of these features are available for free, so you can use the app however you like.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the things you can do with Strava.
Strava Features
Strava is a fitness tracking app that’s really good at tracking your running and cycling activity. Here are some of the core features you’ll enjoy for free on the app:
Track Runs and Rides
- Activity Tracking: Get key stats after your run or ride, including distance, pace, speed, elevation gained, and calories burned.
- Map Tracking: View a map of your activity and the distance traveled.
- Personal Challenges: Participate in monthly challenges to help push you farther and achieve your health goals.
- Segments: Strava will segment your run or ride into segments or sub-sections, letting you see how you fared at different stages of your workout.
Social Activity
- Social Training: Follow friends, training buddies, or professionals and view their activities over a week. Encourage and support your friends by giving them kudos or comments.
- Activity Photos: Showcase the best moments of your run or ride by posting photos.
- Friendly Competition: Shoot for a top time on segment leaderboards, where you compete against the world on certain segments of your run.
Connectivity
- Device Friendly: Strava works with “almost all” GPS running watches, cycling computers, and activity trackers, according to the developer.
- Heart Rate monitoring: You can pair Strava with a heart rate monitor to get constant heart rate feedback throughout your run.
- Android Wear: Record and upload an entire Strava activity without using your phone with the Android Wear 2.0 watches.
Premium Strava Features
All of the features listed above are available on the Strava app for free. Strava also offers a premium membership program, where you can pay a monthly fee to access additional features. Those premium features include:
- Personalized coaching that helps you train for peak athletic performance
- Live performance feedback during your activity to ensure you’re training at maximum efficiency
- Exclusive and detailed analysis after every activity that lets you “geek out”
Strava’s Premium plan is priced at around $6 to $8 per month or $60 for one full year.
How to Use Strava
You don’t need a wearable device to use Strava, but it’s the best way to access the premium features within the app. Here’s the step by step guide as recommended on the official Strava website:
Step 1. Record your athletic activity using one of many compatible GPS devices (like your phone, or wearable devices from Garmin, Fitbit, etc.)
Step 2. Upload your activity from the device
Step 3. Analyze and compare your data against yourself, friends, and professionals
You can view the full list of Strava-compatible devices here. Most modern Androids and iPhones are on that list, as well as the vast majority of wearables and GPS trackers on the market.
You can add runs and rides manually to Strava even if you don’t own a GPS device. Strava lets you enter the type of activity as well as your time and distance.
This is how some people use Strava to track indoor workouts – like treadmill workouts or spin classes. Some people even use Strava to track their yoga workouts.
About Strava
Strava is a San Francisco-based app developer. The company is headquartered at the following address:
500 3rd Street #110
San Francisco, CA 94107
Strava also maintains an office in Hanover, New Hampshire. You can contact the company by email at [email protected].
The name “Strava”, by the way, comes from the Swedish word for “strive”. The company’s About page describes itself as “the social network for athletes” and “a global community of millions of runners, cyclists and triathletes united by the camaraderie of sport”.
You can download Strava for free today for Android here or for iPhone here.
