Is a Strava Subscription Worth It? What It Adds and Who It Suits

A Strava subscription is worth it when you use what it adds: segment leaderboards, training analysis, route tools and goals. If you mostly record your activities and share them with friends, the free account does that. Here's what the subscription adds, in Strava's own words, who it suits, and how to keep a weekly goal on a free account.

What a Strava subscription adds

Strava lists the subscription's features on its support page. In short:

• Segments: full segment leaderboards, filtered by age, weight, followers or clubs, comparisons of your efforts, and Live Segments in real time.
• Training: custom goals (weekly, monthly, annual, segment and power), Relative Effort, Fitness & Freshness, a Training Log, training plans for running and cycling, heart rate zones, and pace and power analysis.
• Routes: route building, suggested routes, personal heatmaps and offline route maps.
• Friends: group challenges.
• Extras: weather on your activities, perks from brands, and priority support. Strava Beacon, the live location share, works on compatible devices for subscribers and on the Strava app for everyone.

What it costs

Strava lists its plans on strava.com/subscribe. The price depends on your country and on the plan, annual or monthly. A 30-day free trial lets you try the features you'd use before you pay.

Who it suits

• You chase segments. Full and filtered leaderboards and Live Segments are subscriber features.
• You train to a plan. The Training Log, Fitness & Freshness and the training plans are where the subscription earns its keep.
• You plan your routes. Route building, suggested routes and offline maps come with it.
• You want goals inside Strava. Custom goals are a subscriber feature.

Who can stay on the free account

• You record your runs, rides and walks, share them and give kudos.
• You want a weekly goal with something riding on it: steps.org works with a free account (below).

A weekly goal on a free Strava account: steps.org

steps.org is a game, Compatible with Strava, and it works with any Strava account, free or paid. Its weekly goal is its own: you pick your activity minutes for the week on steps.org, from 60 to 300, with 90 by default, and steps.org reads your activities from Strava to count them. Any sport counts when a watch, bike computer or phone recorded it with heart rate or a GPS track. If you already keep a weekly goal on Strava, you can set steps.org to the same number.

Your price starts at $0 a month. Miss a week and it goes up $5. Hit a week and it comes down $2.50. It never goes above $25, unless you pick higher stakes. You're billed once a month, by the day, so a month at $0 costs nothing. Nobody wins money: 30% of what you pay, after VAT and card fees, goes to carbon removal, and the rest runs steps.org. See how the game works.

How to decide

• List the subscriber features you'd use every week. If the list is empty, stay free.
• Use the 30-day trial on the features you listed.
• If what you want is to move every week, you can keep that goal with steps.org on a free account.

Questions

Can I use Strava without a subscription?

Yes. A free account records your activities and shares them with friends. Segments, training analysis, routes and custom goals are on Strava's subscriber list.

Do I need a Strava subscription to use steps.org?

No. steps.org connects to any Strava account and counts the activities you record. Its weekly goal is set on steps.org, so it works the same on a free account.

Pick your weekly minutes. Keep it at $0. That's the game. Get started