Strava closes the gates to sharing fitness data with other apps

Strava recently informed its users and partners that new terms for its API restrict the data that third-party apps can show, refrain from replicating Strava’s look, and place a ban on using data “for any model training related to artificial intelligence, machine learning or similar applications.”

The policy is effective as of November 11th, even though Strava’s own post about the change is dated November 15th.

Effective November 11, the updated API agreement introduces three key changes that provide Strava users with greater control, security, and a consistent experience:

Stronger Privacy Standards: Third-party apps may now only display a user’s Strava activity data to that specific user. Users will continue to have access to their personal Strava data across apps connected to our platform, though there may be differences in how this data appears.

Data Use Limitations: Our terms now explicitly prohibit third parties from using any data obtained via Strava’s API in artificial intelligence models or similar applications.

Protecting the Strava Experience: Additional terms have been added to protect Strava’s unique look and feel and functionality, helping users easily distinguish between Strava and third-party platforms.

Ray Maker, aka DCRainmaker, points out that Strava has widely served as a middleman to get data collected by wearables to other apps and services. According to Maker, “every single partner I’ve talked to over the last 24 hours has been completely broadsided by this change,” with their only notification arriving as an email on Friday giving a 30-day notice to make any adjustments.

Now, services like VeloViewer and Final Surge may need to find another way to provide the features Strava’s users explicitly ask them to provide, like automatically updated leaderboards, personalized workouts, and “year in review” recaps, even as Strava is beta testing its AI-generated “Athlete Intelligence” summaries that Maker says “tell me something vaguely positive but usually wrong.”

TrainerRoad is one app that promises to guide users through “Effective, Science-Backed Workouts,” based on access to data from Strava, and the team has already commented on the change. In a post on its forum, Nate Pearson writes, “This was crazy news to us, too,” but noted that Garmin users could use Garmin Connect instead and that the team had already been working on integrating other platforms like Zwift and Wahoo.

There are plenty of posts on social media complaining about the sudden shift, but one place where dissent won’t be tolerated is Strava’s own forums. The company says, “…posts requesting or attempting to have Strava revert business decisions will not be permitted.”