Strava just killed its free API, will require a subscription if you want to build on top of it
(communityhub.strava.com)
from OpenAltFinder@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 01:57
https://lemmy.world/post/47699066
from OpenAltFinder@lemmy.world to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 03 Jun 01:57
https://lemmy.world/post/47699066
…strava.com/…/an-update-to-our-developer-program-…
The gist of it is that Strava just killed its free API, and will now require developers to have a subscription.
At Strava, we care deeply about developers, and the health of the developer ecosystem. There are now 241,000 Strava API developers, up from 185,000 last year. Starting today, all current and future applications will automatically receive access to the Standard developer tier. This allows you to serve up to 10 athletes and start building immediately, completely eliminating the previous queue.
This essentially kills thousands of tools people build using the free API.
If you’re looking to move away from Strava, so far I’ve found four open source alternatives:
- CubeTrek - Open-source GPS track manager with 3D topography visualization for outdoor activities.
- Endurain - Self-hosted fitness tracking service for running, cycling, and more with full data control.
- RunnerUp - An open source run tracker for Android.
- Geo Activity Playground - Data analysis and visualization based on GPS tracked outdoor activities.
- OpenTracks - A privacy-focused sport tracking application for Android that records GPS tracks and supports Bluetooth sensors without any internet access or ads.
threaded - newest
Wait so is this going to affect my Garmin sending info to Strava?
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I think that’s an April fools article. Check the update in the first paragraph.
Yeah my bad, I didn’t properly verify that.
EN SHI TTI FI CA TION
I switched to CubeTrek 2 years ago and have been generally happy with it. I sometimes miss the social aspects, but then I just text my friends and we ride bikes together anyway.
Because of investor pressure to generate actual meaningful revenue, Strava is going to rapidly enshittify leading up to their IPO and after it. The unfortunate thing is that they’ll largely get away with it, because there’s really no alternative for users to move to.
There are lots of alternatives. Apple has one Garmin has one. Google has one. etc.
Garmin requires Garmin devices to be if any real use. Same probably goes for apple. The reason strava is popular is everyone can use it, no matter their phone/device.
Edit: not advocating for Strava or saying it’s good. I don’t like it, don’t use it anymore.
I think Strava is just popular due to cultural inertia more than anything. Garmin, Coros, Fitbit, Apple, even phone apps. Not really hard to export data and move. 90% of what I saw on Strava before closing the account was Zwift garbage anyway.
Strava has the unique position that it is the de facto provider nearly everything does sync to. Even some chinese bicycle computer will sync to Strava, your obscure fitness tracker will too and that nice little app will also grab your data and display it. This nice ecosystem will end with these changes.
There are many alternatives for tracking and analyzing performance data, but I’d posit that that’s not what most Strava users do there. For most of them, it’s a social network, and that’s it’s focus as it goes public. There’s no alternative “athlete focused” social network that allows planning and organizing group activities, has tight integration of activity info (e.g. tracking that the group bike ride averaged 20mph over this route, or that person X and I competed in the same park run, and here’s the finishing time for each of us, along with a few photos and some performance data like pace and heart rate).
All of those I listed have social features
Social features do not make a social network. Maybe it’s just where I cycle (Northeast and Northwest USA) but approximately 100% of the people that I ride with post their rides to Strava. That is what makes it a social network.
Further, all of the alternatives that you listed have limitations that prevent them from being viable alternatives to Strava even if people were interested in migrating. Mainly these are related to device integration.
The alternative is stop using. Like every other platform that enshitified, once you know you can live outside the ecosystem, you can live free.
Hell, Runkeeper was a thing with a social network before strava and still exists.
It even gives cadence which strava doesn’t do (at least not the free tier), but the Apple cult picked up Strava and it became the runner’s status symbol as Apple devices are yoany people in America/Sweden/etc… and then that spread over the rest of the world.
It seems watches like Garmin Watches are not affected by this:
Yeah, until they need to squeeze more blood from the stone
They tried to pick a fight with Garmin and backed down real fast.
Hey guys, just so you know. In the future
If private company = company will fuck you over to your and their own detriment.
Public companies are almost more likely to do this, no? They have shareholders to appease instead of just private interests.
Pretty sure he meant something like “not a nonprofit or government entity.”
Nonprofits and government entities are just as happy to fuck you over, in my and relatives’ experience.
“Just as” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, IMO. Can they be subverted against the people they are supposed to serve? Of course. Is it as likely as a for-profit corporation doing it? Hell no, I’d say.
Depends on how they’re organized. If they’re accountable to their community, organized with as little hierarchy as possible, and have rotation of leadership while filling its roles from the members, they’re good. But it’s very rare. If the heads are appointed top-down by the government or self-selected, which is more common, there arise same issues as with companies.
Huh? Are we not all trying to promote Lemmy and reduce Reddit’s power? What examples do you have? Being nonprofit and especially FOSS is a huge factor.
NGOs advertising themselves as offering legal help to vulnerable people promise help and later do nothing but saying in the media how helpful they are, or refuse said help. Playing bureaucratic football when the person is question is member of multiple vulnerable groups: why you go here for help, go there. Other NGOs trying to take control of grassroots youth movements after offering to help with some resources. More NGOs serving as PR vehicles of their solo leaders while pretending to advance human rights. Names: Insight, KyivPride, LGBT Military, EcoAction, many of them tbh, because it’s all the same “community”.
Regarding government entities, there are constant attempts, for years, by state companies providing water, to write generated or fake values for previous month so that you can’t report correct lower values and have to pay more. Do we consider police a government entity? Haven’t helped a single time, but harassed more than once.
About Reddit, I haven’t used it much and I can’t say anything about it besides it not very interesting. Lemmy developers are notorious assholes when it comes to anything about my country, so I’m not trying to promote it. I use other fedi tech because I like it and contribute.
Huh, interesting… I hadn’t thought about that before.
They mean go use NGOs.
For profit companies should be illegal
I use endurain since day one and it’s growing fast and good. Dev is very dedicated and progress is significant and solid.
Said so, I always despised Strava and never used it. But I use Garmin platform since I own many garmin devices for run bike and more … And after all these years Garmin stuff, also on software side, keeps being non enshittified
It will be even better once gadgetbridge finishes support for sending to endurain. Then we won’t even need Garmin!
You do realize gadgetbridge is entirely volunteer-driven, right?
As is most FOSS software. I’m not sure what point you are trying to make. GadgetBridge is actively working on the feature and I’m genuinely excited about it.
Yeah that’s true. However it is being worked on, with a PR open from one of the core devs. codeberg.org/Freeyourgadget/Gadgetbridge/…/5809
Looks like it might get merged soon? Since the WIP tag got removed 5d ago.
Once this goes in and hits nightly, I’m immediately setting up Endurain.
Sorry to say that most sport devices are not supported by gadget bridge
Its FOSS. Be the change you want to see in the world.
Well, due to hardware encryption keys and such, it’s not that easy… Also many devices supported only works after sniffing the keys from the official apps. Which is not a viable approach in my opinion…
Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Garmin is still one of the most open brands, you can always copy activities from USB cable if you don’t want to use the proprietary Garmin app.
I was a paying customer for over 10 years and it just got worse and worse. I quit several years ago and haven’t looked back.
As it turns out, I love and I have always loved cycling and don’t need anyone else to see that.
I’m not saying that anyone else should behave the same way, you do you, but it was so freeing to just ride for the love of riding. No more “600m of circles” to make it to 200k, no more kudos to every workday commute, just the open road (or trails) and the freedom it provides.
Yes, I no longer race, but I do privately keep a record of my efforts and rides, but they’re now a side effect of the thing I love - not part of the focus.
Yeah, I recently got Strava, but I’m about at the point of ditching it. I run alone. Garmin keeps any stats just fine, and doesn’t inject any social media into it. I have a couple friends on Garmin, but I have to actively look for their stuff, and they for mine, which is exactly how I like it. Otherwise, I run, and then I can go see how things look, and it gets added to the archive.
Eh the social aspect never was the point for me. It was more tracking progress. That said this was a good reminder to cancel my sub as I haven’t used it enough in the last year to justify it. If anyone has self hosted options I’d love to see those.
Well said
I’ve got an IFTTT applet that works with Strava. Crossing my fingers.
Yeah, I mean, that was inevitable.
I just saw an AP alternative launched a couple days ago: https://fitpub.social/
How does this compare to Endurain? Endurain isn’t ActivityPub, however curious about other features.
Definitely a +1 to FitPub that they’re on codeberg vs GitHub 🤣Endurain migrated to Codeberg and I’m just blind. Github is just a mirrorI mean there’s zero information about Endurain on their site so…I have no idea.
Thanks ! I was searching for an alternative.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
2 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
[Thread #332 for this comm, first seen 3rd Jun 2026, 14:10] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Can you explain what Strava is?
It says all apps will have automatic access to the standard tier. How is that killing anything? It sounds more like they’re removing an approval process.
Edit: ok but further down it also says “subscription required”. I’m confused.
next sentence
Yeah that’s why I’m confused. It says it’s automatic, then later says a subscription is required.
I guess the automatic has the 10 user limit. and the subscription is needed for a proper app that people use.
How many people are personally operating more than 10 athletes? Are there that many enormous super-athlete families that all rely on Strava?
It’s for the API, meaning when you code an app and use strava you have a maximun of 10 users, everything else is just gone.
10 users using your app isn’t much.
So each person gets their own API key when installing some custom app. This is normal procedure. I’m not seeing an issue with that part.
That is absolutely not normal procedure. Apps generally use one universal API key per API surface, not unique keys per user.
For first-party apps. Most second- and third-party apps I use require people to have their own API keys.
normal procedure? where exactly have you seen that be done? for that every user would have to register a developer account and fumble with an API key
Then on june 30th
So do all future applications automatically receive access or is a subscription required??? Repeating what it says does not provide any clarifying information!
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I missed this one. Was it like Heroku used to be or something?
And the garbage takes itself out.
Maybe something to do with the location leaks from private strava accounts? Public figures and aircraft carriers and such. It may provide some kind of control to put this behind some kind of control. Not solving the problem though.
Who?
RunnerUp is an app ive been using for a while and it does the basic gps tracking for your activities and even has an option to tell you if your pace is slower or faster than you set. You can connect it to your Strava account to upload data to if you want, but otherwise the data is on your device. I don’t know about smartwatch compatibility, but I use the phone app and just put my phone in my Nathan’s Belt.
I was a happy user of Endomondo before underarmour killed it.
I want it back. I hate using strava.
Whether it’s a back-alley transaction or a multinational corporation transaction “the first one is free” is a marketing tactic that seems to work time and time again.
Another great alternative is Geoactivity Playground if you use Strava to get overall statistics for your rides. You can import a Strava export or simply put some GPX files in a folder. It’s great:
github.com/martin-ueding/geo-activity-playground
Build a product -> make it free or very affordable -> create dependency -> collect user data to improve product resulting in more dependency -> create a near market monopoly if possible -> make it paid only or make the free version a lot worse so users have to pay -> cross fingers that no alternative emerges or just buy it and shut it down if you can.
Always the same pattern.
not sure who is worse, the users. who enable this stupidity, Fool me once… or the developers who deny it will happen .
For my use case on my bike, a Nokia XR20. phone in a DIY case with a Quad lock mount to show maps and record rides. My normal phone for recording hikes etc
Imo it’s mainly the low key developers using some free API and dreaming it will always stay free. This kind of developing is often basically volunteering for big private companies. Users just use whatever is big, easy available. They have less choice. Developers know what they are putting their effort into, re-enforcing it even more while gaining little from it.
OpenTracks
On Fdroid
f-droid.org/…/de.dennisguse.opentracks.playstore
f-droid.org/packages/de.dennisguse.opentracks
f-droid.org/…/de.storchp.opentracks.osmplugin
f-droid.org/…/de.storchp.opentracks.osmplugin.off…
Good find, here’s the repo too: codeberg.org/OpenTracksApp/OpenTracks