Despite Its Drawbacks, Strava Is Still the Best Running App

There are tons of running apps out there, but only a few standouts. Nike Run Club is free, fun, and will never leave you bored. Runna will compel you to tick all the checkboxes on its structured programs, making you faster and stronger along the way. But the best running app of all is the one with mapping tools, in-depth performance analysis, and social features that your friends are actually using. That's right-you just can't beat Strava.

And I say this knowing full well that it has its problems. Mainly, privacy: Unless you find and tweak all the privacy settings, you could end up making more personal information public than you intended. It seems that every new feature comes with new privacy issues, like the weekly heatmap that launched earlier this year, making individual runners in less-populated areas stand out like sore thumbs.

But the privacy issues only exist because Strava has social and mapping features; and the social and mapping features are the best part of Strava. Do I think Strava is a good company doing nothing but responsible things? No, not really. But I've adjusted my privacy settings, and I'm having fun with the app, working my way up the segment leaderboards and using its route-finding tools when I travel. So let me explain what Strava offers that other running apps do not, and I'll cover all the pros and cons so you can decide for yourself whether you'd like to join me.

As we go, I'll indicate where I'm talking about free features, and where you'll need to subscribe to get the good stuff. A lot of the best Strava features are behind the paywall, but the free version is pretty great, too. The premium subscription runs $11.99/month, or $79.99/year, with student and family discounts available.

(And yes, Strava is also a cycling app. We're only discussing the running-specific features today.)

Strava's stats are top notch

If you use a watch to track your runs, it probably gives you some basic information-time, mileage, pace, heart rate. Sync that data to Strava, though, and you'll get much more. It will look at the hills on the route you ran, and add up your elevation gain (your total amount of uphill running) and calculate a grade-adjusted pace.

It will break your pace and heart rate into zones. It will include a note about the weather conditions at the exact time you were running. It will calculate whether it thinks your fitness" is increasing (this is a flawed measure, but it can sometimes be useful) and it will compare your effort to similar runs you've done in the past. The run I did yesterday, around the lake in my local park, was the fourth time I ran that route in recent memory, and Strava informs me that yesterday's run was the fastest of the four.

Strava also keeps track of my weekly and monthly mileage. I want to cover a total of 100 miles this month, and it's telling me now I have 66 miles to go. Runners often keep track of their workload and recovery by counting up weekly mileage, and when I tap on the You" tab in Strava, the first thing I see is a graph of my weekly mileage over the last several months. I can zoom out to the entire past year, and see that I'm running more miles per week right now than I was this time last year (and also that I logged bupkis all winter).

Yes, in theory, you can get most of that data from your watch's app (Fitbit, Apple Fitness, whatever it may be for you) but it's rarely presented as well or as clearly. The exception would be if you use the Garmin app, but most people I know who wear Garmins are interested in Strava for all its other features, so they still use both. Let's talk about those other features.

What you get for free: Splits, elevation gain, maximum elevation, PR efforts, and a pace graph that appears alongside your moving time, elapsed time, and fastest split.

What requires premium: Pretty much everything else, including grade-adjusted pace, pace zones, matched runs, fitness score, and relative effort.

Segments give you a fun game to play with yourself or others

Whenever the subject of Strava privacy comes up, there are always people who ask why would you want other people to see your runs, ever?" Part of the answer is that humans are social beings and like to share parts of their lives with their friends and community. That's a big part of the draw here, too. But the other part is that when your stats are public, you can casually compete with others on segments. And for many of us, that's fun, motivating, or both.

A Strava segment is a stretch of road or trail that exists somewhere in the world. It has a name (in the Strava app), starting and ending points, and a leaderboard in the app showing who has run that segment the fastest. Some segments are challenging uphills; some are popular park trails; some were probably just created because somebody thought of a funny name.

For example, at my local park, there is a short stretch of road, less than a quarter mile, near the dam to a lake. Somebody has designated it as a Strava segment named Dam You. The fastest men's time is 39 seconds, and the fastest women's time is 54 seconds. Click that link, and you'll be able to see who holds those titles.

You'll also see who holds Local Legend status on that segment. The Local Legend is the person who has run the segment most often, regardless of speed. Dam You's Local Legend has run it 33 times in the last 90 days.

You may not realize that you've run a segment until you look at your stats on Strava after the run. But the app keeps track. I've apparently run Dam You 13 times in the past year. I rank #2,644 out of the 5,454 runners on the leaderboard. Climbing to the top of that list would be a serious accomplishment, should I choose to pursue it. (As I browse the page, Strava is now prompting me to set a goal and a deadline to do so.)

That may seem an unattainable goal, but you just have to venture outside the popular parks to find more casual options. I hold Local Legend status on a couple of segments near my house, just because there aren't many people who run them. One is a hill that I found by browsing the segment explorer for the steepest grades in my neighborhood. If not for Strava's segments, I would never have noticed this hill. But now, it's one of my favorites for hill repeats.

I find that knowing about segments makes my runs a little more fun. Sometimes I'll plan a route to try to hit as many segments as possible, or run fast repeats of a segment as an interval workout. And even if I'm slower than the other people on the leaderboard, Strava will tell me how my latest effort on a segment compares to my own previous efforts. It's satisfying to get the little PR" medal when I beat my own best time.

What you get for free: Locations of segments, your times on segments.

What requires premium: All-time best efforts, comparing segment efforts over time, segment leaderboards, seeing how your number of efforts compares to the Local Legends.

You'll have a running route anywhere you go

The times I love Strava the most are when I'm traveling. All that data it hoovers up from your public runs? Strava uses that to create heatmaps of where runners like to go. Then, when you open the mapping tab of the app, you're automatically treated to several suggested routes.

You can filter the suggested routes by length, elevation (flat or hilly), surface (paved or dirt), and difficulty. You can also take a look at a suggested route, decide that you like some part of it but not the whole thing, and create your own route based on what you see.

When you choose or create a route, Strava will tell you its length and give you an elevation profile. It will also tell you how popular the route is, and how long people usually take to complete it.

I can arrive in a town I've never seen before, and in a matter of minutes find a four-mile, mostly flat route (or whatever I'm looking for) that starts at or near my hotel. If I want to find a track, I can just turn on the heatmap layer, and zoom out and look for ovals. I've also used these features to find places to run in my hometown.

What you get for free: Viewing the heatmap from the app, panning around the heatmap, previews of suggested routes.

What requires premium: Searching the heatmap, routes, and segments; viewing details of routes; creating your own routes.

Your friends are all on Strava

Because of all the above, Strava has become the go-to running app for a wide swath of runners, including the competitive and the casual. Your friends who run? They're probably all on it, or they will be soon. If you want to share activities and send kudos" to each other, this is the app for you.

Strava also syncs with all the major apps and devices. Even if you track your runs (and rides, and strength training) with another app, you can set it up to sync everything to Strava. My Strava account has years' worth of workouts on it that I've tracked from an Apple Watch, a Garmin, even a Peloton. When I wore a Garmin Forerunner 265 alongside the new Pixel Watch 3, Strava correctly (I would argue) logged it as a run that Beth and Beth did together.

So if you just want to use the app that everyone is using, this is it. If you want to use an app that provides detailed analytics on your runs, this is it (and you'll probably want the premium subscription). And if you want to find new routes in your neighborhood or on your travels, and compete" against neighbors you've never met, that's yet another sign that this is the running app for you.