Strava Free vs Paid: Is it Worthless? [2024]

Strava Free vs Paid- you might be wondering is Strava free is better enough or is Strava paid worth? In this article, I’ll help you to choose between Strava free and Strava paid. Using a free version is not a big deal but one always wants to know if paying $5 per month or $59.99 per year is worth.  

Strava enables custom fitness goals, performance analysis, race, and the ability of comparing yourself to other users, and many features. There is still going to be a free version of Strava but the difference now is that some features that were free, such as route training and segments functionality are now going to cost you.

Strava Free vs Paid: What are they?

As a free member, you can still upload whatever you want to  in Strava and take part in the challenges, but you won’t  be able to see nearly as  much info on your segment efforts including the leaderboard. You’re now limited to just seeing the Top 10 all-time as well as the top 10 women. However, you can still create segments and use the segment explore function, see the segment details screen and see If you’ve achieved a part in the segment. So, it’s not all gone, only some features are not free.

Whereas, in premium, you’ll be able to see the full leader board as well as, filtering that leaderboard by age, weight, or people you follow. Another feature which is also moved to premium version is the matched run and matched rides that would tell you if you’re faster or slower than the last time.

Now, the biggest change for the standard Strava user has to be the route building function that the company has removed from it and put it behind the paid version. This means that you can no longer create routes for your rides using Strava unless you’re willing to pay.

Strava Free vs Paid: Comparison

1. To be fair though, the route functionality has seen a number of updates at the same time as moving to the paid service. There’s a new base map which is being used, this means that Strava has access to whole load more information on the surfaces you might encounter on your routes. This basically means that you can toggle through the map to show road and unknown surfaces.
2. There is also now the ability to overlay both the global heat map and the segment explorer over the base map whilst creating your routes. This will allow you to cycle down routes that you know are popular with other cyclists. When you’re creating route or make sure you include as many of those big climbs as possible in your ride.
3. Another huge change is that you can now do location search to add a waypoint to your route. The free version gave the ability to add a rough location with a postcode but now, you can add waypoints using an actual address which is obviously a huge improvement.
4. One of the most prominent new feature on Strava is the automatic router builder, this allows you to set a starting point and how long you want to ride and then automatically generates you three route options. The routes have steered clear of dangerous roads and even discovered a few new roads, this is another feature you’ll get with premium
5. The final area of Strava which weighs into the decision of whether or not to get premium can be found underneath the training tab. It includes your monthly activities compared to the previous month which you can break down by sport and most notably now, it also includes a training log. So, this displays the relative intensities of your sessions in the past week and you can use it see all of your past sessions too.
6. The other two parts of the training area on the app are weekly intensity and monthly fitness. So, weekly  intensity calculates your training load accumulated through the week based on heart rate, perceived exertion or parameter data, and monthly fitness assigns a score to your current fitness and compares that to where your fitness has been over the past month or three months or six months or a year.

Conclusion: Strava Free vs Paid

I hope the above article on Strava Free vs Paid has helped you understand whether Strava free is better enough or is Strava paid worth.

FAQ:

Is paying for Strava worth it?

There is still going to be a free version of Strava but the difference now is that some features that were free such as route training and segments functionality are now going to cost you.

Can you use Strava without paying?

Yes. You can have the free Strava application installed on your phone from the App Store.

Can I pay for Strava monthly?

Strava has both free and paid version. It paid version costs $5 per month or $59.99 per year.

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