Strava’s Year in Sport stats round-up is now only available to subscribers, some users with free plans expressing disappointment at no longer being able to access the feature. However, the fitness app insists its “core benefits” remain “as accessible as possible”.
The Strava Year in Sport stats round-up of a user’s activity from the past 12 months is along the lines of similar features offered by other apps, such as Spotify Wrapped. However, while many, like Spotify, give all users the round-up regardless of if they use the free version or pay for a subscription, Strava has put its Year in Sport behind a paywall as a paid feature.
It is a move which has been met with disappointment and frustration from some users online.
“How pathetic does an app need to be to put their ‘Year In Review’ behind a paywall when EVERYONE ELSE does theirs for free as a thanks for using their app?” one upset Strava user wrote on Facebook.
“I think it’s fair to be annoyed when something that was previously free gets put behind a paywall,” another added. “I’m certainly not expecting everything to be free but it’s nice to keep some of the features for free users.”
As an explanation for the Year in Sport no longer being a free feature, Strava has suggested: “With the relaunch of our subscription this year, we wanted to clarify the core benefits of Strava — uploading activities, finding your community, sharing and giving kudos — remain as accessible as possible.
“The benefit of the subscription ensures that myriad activities get transformed into insights that can be tracked, assessed and benchmarked along a fitness journey. The added layer of insights and storytelling, including Year in Sport and monthly stat cards for example, are now unlocked via subscription.”
While some have been frustrated by the decision to require users to be subscribers to access the Year in Sport, some have made the point in the online debates discussing the update that it makes sense to prioritise improving the offering for subscribers.
“I’m quite surprised people are mad about this,” one person wrote on Reddit. “Everything can’t be free, then people can’t get paid. I use Strava most days, it’s pretty much ad-free, I feel like it’s worth the money.”
Another popular comment on that Reddit thread suggested the Year in Sport is “a low-effort summary” when compared with some other app’s round-ups and that “there’s never any interesting insights”.
It has been a busy year for Strava, the tech giant restoring users’ ability to include URL links in activities and posts. The move to restore URL-posting functionality came following a backlash over the decision to remove it, notably from those raising money for charity or who want to link to social media or other community resources.
In the second half of the year, the company’s CEO Michael Martin revealed the social fitness giant plans to go public to make “more and bigger acquisitions”. Strava also briefly took legal action against Garmin, alleging its rival had committed patent infringement over its use of segments and heatmaps, a lawsuit which was quickly dropped.
9 thoughts on “Want to see your Year In Sport on Strava? You’ll now need to pay, but fitness tech giant insists “core benefits remain as accessible as possible””
Haven’t watch this year but,
Haven’t watch this year but, if it’s as tedious as last year, I’d pay to not get it.
Fwiw they’re not missing out
Fwiw they’re not missing out and im sure you could plug the stats into ai and generate something similar looking.
In any case doesn’t everyone just export the data to veloviewer ?
Cory Doctorow coined the term
Cory Doctorow coined the term enshittification to describe platform decay. Need I say more. Might I be so bold as to suggest that intervals.icu is a much better platform for people who actually want to analyse their data. I was thinking about why I hadn’t completely abandoned Strava yet and could only come up with one answer. I like to see what routes people I know have done because I might like to do them as well. That was it. I feel that next year my time with Strava will be done. It’s already ended with Meta.
Hear, hear.
Hear, hear.
They can’t even be bothered to fix bugs I report to them, bugs which affect the paid content. This is my last year of paying for an enshittified product.
At the end of the day, I don
At the end of the day, I don’t pay for a subscription and they do need to generate income to pay the wages of their developers and the costs of running the infrastructure that supports the platform and it goes no further than that.
All I would say is, the year in sport is never going to be a feature that makes me subscribe to Strava. If they want to encourage me to subscribe then they need to work hard on their route planning offering. I currently subscribe to RideWithGPS and it’s much much better than anything I see on Strava when it comes to planning my next long ride. Obviously, the killer feature may differ for others, but for me it would be a decent route planner.
At the end of the day, I don
At the end of the day, I don’t pay for a subscription and they do need to generate income to pay the wages of their developers and the costs of running the infrastructure that supports the platform and it goes no further than that
I agree. They made a pig’s ear of trying to stuff the giant Garmin, and we don’t need to kick them when they’re down. They provide a useful free service to many like me who are too old and too mean to pay. If they take the free service away completely, many people would leave so it’s a calculated judgement a commercial organisation has to make. I was lucky enough to buy Komoot world maps for £20 early this year, before they were taken over by the money men, or whoever. They haven’t withdrawn the basic service, so I don’t mind at all that new features are only available to subscribers. The bosses just have to get it right, and I don’t think Strava are so bad!
I use the free version of
I use the free version of Strava as it has all the data I need (I stopped paying when the leaderboards became clogged with people on ebikes, motorbikes, cars – even aeroplanes! – but that’s another story) and I feel it would be a proper cheek for me to complain about what they choose to put behind their paywall. They’re a business and what they give away for nothing is pretty generous. As others have noted, if you want a “year in” summary you can just transfer your data to Veloviewer. Developers, engineers, server space etc all costs money and yet we all get outraged when we’re asked to contribute. I’d rather give up a few non-essential features than have the whole experience smothered in advertising.
Whatever happened to “it’s
Whatever happened to “it’s your data” from a few months ago, now they lock your previous best efforts behind a paywall. Congrats, you just put out your 3rd best power for 10 minutes! Wanna know what your best was? Too bad chump, you need to subscribe to see your data now
My Stravasauce plugin
My Stravasauce plugin (windows) give me stats like my best power outputs. And the Veloviewer Infographic gives better annual stats. Strava YiS isn’t worth it.