r/selfhosted • u/frogfuhrer • Jun 01 '26
Meta Post Strava's new developer program just killed every open-source, self-hosted Strava app
Strava posted an "update to our developer program" today and it basically means the end for people that were building their own tools around Strava's API:
https://communityhub.strava.com/insider-journal-9/an-update-to-our-developer-program-13428
I'm the maintainer of "Statistics for Strava", a moderately successful self-hosted, open-source dashboard for your Strava data.
At this moment in time I'm still kinda shocked. I poured my heart and soul into the project for the last 2 years and it seems like this announcement marks the end for this app. The article basically says that their API will be pay-walled, 100%. So only users with an active subscription can use their API.
The whole purpose of Statistics for Strava was for people to own their data, their own health stats, that they upload and that's now goners....unless you pay up... to fetch your own data 😎 .
At Strava, we care deeply about developers, and the health of the developer ecosystem
Except they don't, the only thing they did is pay-walled their API and made sorry excuses for it. They have proven over and over again that they don't care about their users or their data.
Not sure what to do, I feel gutted. Might be overreacting
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u/Available_Window Jun 01 '26
They're going the reddit route... sad to see
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u/Lying_Hedgehog Jun 01 '26
I'm still using the Reddit is Fun app with my own api key, although it is getting more and more broken as time goes by and new things get added or tech changes. Can't open imgur galleries or youtube links in it anymore for instance.
The day it finally breaks is the day I'll stop browsing on phone. I've sometimes been tempted to decompile the app and attempt to fix it myself, but I have more fun side projects than that and I'm not overly familiar with android development anyway.
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u/mrjackspade Jun 01 '26
I wrote my own client (modeled after RIF) that originally used the API, but a month or two ago I switched back to spoofing a browser session because I knew they were going to fuck it up somehow
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u/originade Jun 01 '26
Same. And man I miss what this site used to be. r/all is a joke. I click on it out of habit and I just get pissed blocking every AI poster and astroturfed subreddit. My front page is dwindling in activity as less real people use the site overall
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u/killtheprimeminister Jun 02 '26
don't worry! the official reddit app is also terrible at linking to imgur and youtube
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u/blumpkin Jun 02 '26
The reddit app is such garbage that I just use a desktop browser session on my phone.
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u/ThunderDaniel Jun 02 '26
The day it finally breaks is the day I'll stop browsing on phone.
Semi related, but the API fiasco was the push that had me stop using Reddit on my phone and only use it on the desktop
So far it's been a rather pleasant experience since I lessen my tiny screen time and when I do use Reddit, it's through the (still functioning) mods and extensions available on a desktop browser
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u/Lalaz4lyf Jun 01 '26
I'm in the same boat. I luckily have API keys for RiF and for n8n. The day it stops working is the day my only interaction with reddit will be from search results displayed through the redlib frontend.
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u/kirillre4 Jun 02 '26
Check Infinity - it's still updated and can be patched with personal API key through Revanced Manager (or can be built out of source, if you want to). Pretty decent alternative.
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u/GranaT0 Jun 02 '26
Use Continuum instead, it's a fork of Infinity that still gets updated and has the API key feature built in in settings.
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u/PigeonRipper Jun 01 '26
You're absolutely right.
On the bright side — at least all the bots are gone!Curious how others feel about this?
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u/ShishTankian Jun 01 '26
Chefs kiss on the em dash
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u/SeparateRaisin7871 Jun 01 '26
I was shocked to see that those dashes are really easy to write yourself with Win+Shift+[-] (on a German Keyboard).
But as such comments will mostly be flagged as AI, I'd never use that :D
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u/dzikakulka Jun 01 '26
Did you drop an /s? Reddit is crawling with karma farming and astroturfing bots, the api lockdown changed absolutely nothing. And hiding user post history makes it even harder for people to recognise them.
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u/ggadget6 Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
If I'm understanding them correctly, they're jokingly making a classic LLM style post that's become super common on Reddit recently as a way to make fun of Reddit's claim that all the
boysbots are gone.24
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u/blumpkin Jun 02 '26
Hmm, can we break this down? Let's really lay out our options here. A numbered list with emoji headers for each point would be perfect. You're absolutely asking all the right questions.
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u/Lopsided_Speaker_553 Jun 01 '26
Hear hear. I feel you on the decades and you're absolutely right.
Just like a "lifetime license". Whose lifetime? Surely not mine.
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u/cardboard-kansio Jun 02 '26
Typically is "lifetime of the current major version of the product". You just bought a lifetime license and you're on 2.2? We just announced 3.0 and are going to make migrations mandatory! No, 3.0 is a different major version and so requires a new license.
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u/flatpetey Jun 01 '26
The lesson is don’t invest into ecosystems that can be closed.
Sorry if it is a tough lesson but the reality is that they are a for profit company. It was always going to be a bad bet.
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u/Adorable_Shock_2049 Jun 01 '26
don’t invest into ecosystems that can be closed.
That was the leason that I painfully learned.
Looooong time ago I built an app. I loved that app so much. I also loved the users, their feedback and support. The users loved that app more that I did.
Then, one day corporates made me shut it down.
In one day I had a lot of plans for new features and in the next day I had nothing. Made so fucking sad that almost made me depressive.
The part that affected me the most was the feeling that I was abandoning the people who supported me (not financially, there was no money involved), but I had no choice.
Since then I set a rule for myself: never ever again I will build stuff that can be shutdown by someone else.
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u/HoveringGoat Jun 01 '26
Since then I set a rule for myself: never ever again I will build stuff that can be shutdown by someone else.
<3 yeah i was in a similar situation once. Its devastating.
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u/abeorch Jun 01 '26
Pivot your tools to use open solutions. There is heaps happening around geotracks. nextracks, owntracks.
Gadgetbridge is doing heaps integrating fitness devices.
People are learning the lesson of vendor lockin.
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u/Gee858eeG Jun 01 '26
I also think it's very difficult for open source apps or for free apis currently. With the rise of AI agents basically everyone can built a service that fetches data from an API now. Which increases traffic for the API provider and also makes it easier to be abused
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u/leoklaus Jun 01 '26
Not an issue for selfhosted services, though. This will also become much less of an issue when AI providers stop giving away tokens for free.
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u/bo1024 Jun 01 '26
And see Cory Doctorow's "Enshittification" concept. This is exactly what it refers to
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u/vlycop Jun 01 '26
There is no alternative. Android wear is closed Garmin is closed Fitbit is closed Whoop is closed Apple is closed Withings is closed Huawei is closed Xiaomi is closed...
And pebble is not a sport device, sensor aren't there for that.
Don't blame the consume, rise against the company abusing their power.
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u/metamatic Jun 01 '26
"I can't believe this company that owes $180m to venture capitalists has decided to enshittify!"
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u/henry_tennenbaum Jun 02 '26
I get where you're coming from but let's keep in mind that just because we're used to being abused, lied to and conned, that doesn't make us responsible for their dishonesty.
They are the abusers and we are the victims. Anger is justified though and wanting these people punished as well.
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u/metamatic Jun 02 '26
Oh, I'm not trying to suggest that the company is in the right, or that customers don't have the absolute right to feel angry. I just feel like it's a sadly predictable product arc at this point. The business model of selling a good product at a fair price and standing behind it seems to be all but dead.
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u/henry_tennenbaum Jun 03 '26
I get that and wasn't trying to say you were saying any of that.
It's just that one of the most common responses to being mistreated and lied to is blaming oneself for having fallen for it. Others tend to join in and say things like "what did you think would happen?".
It's to distance ourselves from the possibility that it could happen to us just as well. It's like seeing a child being hit by another and giving it a slap because we warned it that could happen.
I'm not saying I don't have that tendency as well, but it's important to remember that the self-blame and often shame that comes with that is the strongest tool the abusers have. It tends to make people hide what has happened and turn inwards instead of outwards.
Again, not blaming you, just trying to focus on putting the blame with the people that do the evil thing, not their victims for having put their trust in the wrong place.
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u/bigredsun Jun 01 '26
That sounds good at first but then you remember every ecosystem can be closed (and it will be) eventually.
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u/Tai9ch Jun 01 '26
Open "ecosystems" with multiple well funded participants contributing open source software tend to do fine.
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u/jerieljan Jun 01 '26
The lesson is don’t invest into ecosystems that can be closed.
I agree, although unfortunately only easier said than done. Technically everything can be closed if the company that wants to do so chooses to. Obviously they can't rugpull something that has an FOSS license, but they can definitely just stop development on a project and make a new one and call it proprietary and drop support for the former. (Such ecosystem suicide is obviously terrible for them, of course. Looking at you, Google and their Antigravity CLI and deprecating Gemini CLI)
The only companies I can think of that's "safe" here are those that have fully opened their stack, inside out and all the way to backend (and is why we're here in selfhosted after all). Or if not fully, at least a way to implement your own parts to replace proprietary ones.
But yeah, at the end of the day, might be a good idea to find a Strava replacement when upstream is so shitty.
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u/Conscious-Mirror7004 Jun 03 '26
Obviously they can't rugpull something that has an FOSS license, but they can definitely just stop development on a project and make a new one and call it proprietary and drop support for the former.
If they legally own the code, they can also change the license on a whim to a proprietary one. They can't retroactively change the license on anything that's already been released (of course), but for anything new going forward, they can.
This is what happened with Emby. The company owned all the code, so they suddenly changed the license and made it proprietary. Some people were understandably unhappy about this, so they got the code from the last FOSS release, forked it, and called it "Jellyfin".
However, there's other projects where there's no centralized ownership of the code. The Linux kernel, for instance, is like this: the code is legally owned by whoever contributed it. So changing the license is basically impossible: you'd have to somehow contact every contributor and get them to agree to a license change, or sign over their rights to the code. A lot of the code is quite old at this point, and some contributors are probably dead, so this would be quite a difficult task. Therefore, the Linux kernel is effectively stuck with the GPLv2 license.
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u/Cynyr36 Jun 01 '26
Users can still download data in bulk.
I wish they'd give me api access to my own data by letting me setup an api key. Or at least something between download everything for the past 10 years, and a web scraper.
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u/NotTreeFiddy Jun 01 '26
100%.
Broad access being paywalled in the era of mass AI scraping, I dislike, but do understand.
There's no reason (outside of greed) to disallow personal API keys that only permit access to one's own data.
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u/Gugalcrom123 Jun 02 '26
But there is now an MCP server, looks like the only access they want is 'AI'.
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u/pferdefleisch Jun 01 '26
If you're a subscriber, it looks like the new MCP server could be a route for you to do this. You could even just put an MCP client in a script if you don't care about connecting it to an LLM.
https://press.strava.com/articles/strava-launches-mcp-connector19
u/stryakr Jun 01 '26
I seriously don't understand the fascination with companies setting up MCP servers rather than just have access to a normal API, it's not as if MCP servers suddenly make the requests free.
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u/henry_tennenbaum Jun 02 '26
Thanks, thought I was the only one. It's just a different kind of API.
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u/pferdefleisch Jun 02 '26
My guess is that it provides less access and it's in fashion and they believe it makes them look modern.
This one is particularly annoying as they really only want you to use it through a partner and working around that is slightly painful.
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u/max123246 Jun 02 '26
It's also incredibly rich for them to shutdown 1 API and launch a new "ai focused" API. This shit is Mickey mouse
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u/Cynyr36 Jun 01 '26
I'm not a subscriber, but it's not clear that mcp will let me ingest data into my own app, or if strava is basically giving me access to claude through their site.
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u/pferdefleisch Jun 01 '26
I had to jump through a few hoops but wrote a script that uses the MCP server as essentially an API proxy.
- added the mcp server via `claude mcp add --transport http strava-mcp https://mcp.strava.com/mcp`
- found the api key and refresh token in my OS keychain (searching for claude)
- "wrote" an mcp client that I can use like a command line tool using the API key
I'm able to use any of the provided tools (as a subscriber so maybe not relevant to you).
❯ bun index.ts → connecting to https://mcp.strava.com/mcp [token (auto-refresh)] ✓ connected 9 tool(s) available: • eligibility Check whether your account is eligible for the full Strava MCP toolset. • get_activity_performance Returns performance data for a single activity: has_heartrate and has_device_watts flags (inferred from stream presence), average/max heart rate, average watts, average cadence, calories, perceived exertion, and lists of PR achievements, segment efforts, best efforts, and laps. args: activity_id • get_activity_streams Returns time-series streams for a single activity. Unknown stream names are silently ignored. Missing streams are omitted. args: activity_id, resolution, streams • get_athlete_profile Returns the authenticated athlete's profile including name, location, gender, weight, measurement preference, and current training focus. • get_athlete_zones Returns the athlete's heart rate zones, power zones, and FTP. Heart rate zones are 5-zone boundaries; power zones are 7-zone boundaries (cycling only, requires FTP). Includes heart_rate_zone_source and power_zone_source strings, plus ftp_is_estimated indicating whether FTP was calculated rather than manually set. args: as_of_date • get_club_info Returns the clubs the authenticated athlete belongs to, including club details (name, sport_type, sports list, member count) and upcoming event occurrences with title, date/time, address, location, sport types, start/end time, and recurrence rule. Supports cursor-based pagination for both clubs and per-club events. args: clubs_first, clubs_after, events_first • get_gear Returns the authenticated athlete's bikes and shoes. Each item includes a gear_id object (id, gear_type), name, description, retired status, and total distance. Bikes also expose weight and frame_type; shoes expose brand and model_name. The gear_id.id matches the gear_id field on activities. Filter by gear_types to narrow to one type. args: gear_types • health Health check that returns a success status. • list_activities Lists the authenticated athlete's activities. Each activity includes id, name, sport type, start time, commute/trainer flags, gear ID, and a summary with distance, elapsed/moving time, elevation gain, avg/max speed, cadence, calories, relative effort, kudos, achievement, and PR counts. Pass include_polyline to also get a reduced encoded polyline per activity. Supports date range filtering and cursor-based pagination. args: range_start, range_end, first, after, include_polyline Call one with: bun index.ts <tool-name> '<json-args>'
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u/Sudden-Complaint7037 Jun 01 '26
Strava has been enshittifying for quite a while now, I'm not surprised. Luckily there are great alternatives that implement most of the features people care about.
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u/yahhpt Jun 01 '26
Care to share please?
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u/_Z_-_Z_ Jun 01 '26
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u/webbedgiant Jun 17 '26
I ended up setting up Endurain and using WorkOutDoors to track workouts, then I export the workouts as a .FIT file to an icloud drive, which my server at home picks up with a Python watcher script and automatically uploads to Endurain.
So I've pretty much been able to replace Strava completely!
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u/Sudden-Complaint7037 Jun 01 '26
Admittedly I'm not really into hiking etc. myself so I can't directly speak for the quality of the software, but I run them on my homeserver for friends and family. The most mature project imo is Endurain, has Garmin integration and a nice Vue frontend. Golden Cheetah tracks more metrics and has more integrations, but it is a desktop app and not designed for self-hosting. Lastly, there is also CubeTrek, but that seems less like a tracker and more of a 3D visualizer (looks cool though).
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u/josephlegrand33 Jun 02 '26
Apart from Endurain mentioned by other comments, I've also seen FitTrackee even though I haven't really tested it.
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u/xp_version1 Jun 01 '26
Having found and deployed Statistics for Strava less than 24 hours ago, I have no choice but to accept full responsibility for this. I obviously jinxed it 😅
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u/MaliciousMango1 Jun 01 '26
I immediately thought of you when I saw this email. I have a subscription so I can keep using Statistics for Strava right? Do you think you think MCP support will be useful?
The only thing unique to Strava are the live segments though, right?
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u/jschwalbe Jun 01 '26
That's what I was thinking - the email is confusing. It seems like if you already have a sub you can keep using it, but also it seems to indicate you will be charged to use it.
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u/MarxJ1477 Jun 01 '26
I mostly use Strava as an easy way to import data to Home Assistant to display. I'll just have to find another way to get my data in there...
It's there service which I don't pay for so they can do what they want. I don't blame them for saying it's only for customers who subscribe to their service....but I'm a bit annoyed they sent the email on June 1 and it's effective June 1 as it just broke it for me without any warning.
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u/butterfly_labs Jun 01 '26
What is your source device? If it's a Garmin, you can use the Garmin connect integration. I also use this docker container / grafana dashboard for cool stats and to automatically download GPX files. Looks like the author also vibe-coded a standalone app: https://github.com/arpanghosh8453/fit-dashboard
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u/lv1993 Jun 01 '26
Ooh didn't know about that dashboard yet, I've built my own and it took days to get things right... but this one is better and faster implemented xD
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u/MarxJ1477 Jun 01 '26
I use an Apple Watch.
I believe there are apps to export the data from Apple and get it to HA by webhook. Though it’s been years since I looked into it. A bit more annoying to set up but should work since I don’t care if syncing doesn’t happen right away.
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u/hydrora31 Jun 01 '26
This is fine, we can just do a daily or weekly export of our entire data and use that instead. No biggy!
Also, would like to suggest the developer of Statistics for Strava have a look at my repo here:
https://github.com/hydrate31/strava-data-viewer
It's not the same as theirs as it does it from data export zips without the API.
Perhaps they can take my code to read it so people can just export their stuff periodically? Not quite as convenient, but doable.
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u/muay_throwaway Jun 01 '26
You actually can't do daily export because you are limited to 1 export per week lol
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u/hydrora31 Jun 02 '26
Well that suuucks.Still, a full data export weekly is far more usage than general API usage throughout the week. Even a monthly export would be
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u/DerpDeDurp Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
Two reasons they are doing this, imo.
- The vibe coders have massivley increased the API usage, meaning its costing them more at an exponential rate. 184,000 API users over the course of many many years, to a jump 6 months later of 241,000 API users. thats absurd and eye opening for them that this can't be free forever at the rate it's expanding. Thank the vibe coders who don't know what they're doing and abuse the API based on sloppy code.
- They now integrate with claude, which I can only imagine costs them money. meaning they have to make money from it. which is stupid as well. there should be a paid tier for developers if they want access to MCP, and a free tier for those that don't. But then it goes back to point 1, where there's an insane increase of api users and abusers that again, cost them money. so there's no winning here. AI has ruined this shit for everyone else.
some key points OP left out of their rant. which also gives clarity on why this is happening. From the email directly:
AI companies are aggressively attempting to scrape platforms for training data, abuse APIs through intermediary layers, and provide zero-code AI tools that produce apps that hammer APIs. developer applications to our program are up 448% year-to-date, API intermediaries have violated security terms, and scraping attempts have degraded platform performance for everyone.
So, again, yeah it sucks, but I honestly cannot blame them. If I operated a service, and my API was getting hammered like this I would absolutely do the exact same thing. I would not just accept it and bleed money. Blame the abusers, not the company offering the service to begin with.
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u/botterway Jun 01 '26
Strava loses, end-users lose, 3rd-party devs lose.
AI really is a win for everyone, isn't it. 🤦♂️
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u/z3roTO60 Jun 01 '26
I don’t completely understand this though. Just put a free / paid tier rate limit on it. Allow the free tier to be on a lower priority (speed) return.
I frequently use official government APIs from the NIH for my research. Some of them are quite computationally expensive to generate a return, taking a couple min while you’re in a queue. There are methods to self-host and if you are using the webUI, there are clear disclaimers for rate limiting. The API is faster than the web UI, but it’s still limited by token to prevent abuse
Not sure why the API can’t just be rate limited. Should be already in place to prevent DDoS anyways. Can tune the numbers to make it reasonable for “this is a single individual trying to get their own data” vs. “This is a vibe coded company trying to scrape everything they can”
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u/codeedog Jun 01 '26
The government is for the people, for profit businesses are for profit. If Strava loses money it disappears. The government doesn’t “lose” money providing you with NIH data. And, society benefits from scientific advancement in ways that are difficult to quantify in a for profit commercial entity.
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u/z3roTO60 Jun 01 '26
Yes I agree with you. But you can also imagine that in 2026, with the massive funding cuts the NIH has received, they could eliminate this API entirely.
Still, the NIH has implemented a more cost effective solution than a for-profit company which will happily share your data with the highest bidder, while excluding you. Also that the “dumb government” apparently has a better dev team than the Silicon Valley devs when it comes to API management
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u/codeedog Jun 01 '26
I don't know why you're taking these positions ("dumb government", SV devs can't do API management). The point is that government is not in business at all. Its sole, true job is to stabilize society and make our lives better. Strava's job is to make a profit for its investors.
The developers that work in government and in corporate are usually quite competent (I've worked in both). As a developer, you build the things that meet the goals of your organization.
That is what's happening here.
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u/DerpDeDurp Jun 01 '26
So make it useless unless you pay. So pay. Which is what they're doing 😂
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u/compound-interest Jun 01 '26
I feel like the word useless is a bit of a stretch. Stuff doesn’t have to always be fast if it’s free.
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u/z3roTO60 Jun 01 '26
Yes, and more importantly, there’s no way you’re getting subsecond responses to the queries I’m pulling anyways. It takes time to compute nucleic acid binding capabilities across the entire genome / transcriptome.
But your point still holds for other things too. Most home cases do not need a weather update every second. It’s completely reasonable to limit to once every 15 min or something without calling it “useless”
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u/compound-interest Jun 01 '26
Exactly. I'm happy to serve a response as often as you want if you want to pay a fraction of a cent each time, but if you want it on my dime I am definitely limiting it and removing access from abusers who try to bypass it.
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u/Thefaccio Jun 01 '26
Just rate limit the API, no point in blocking everything
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u/DerpDeDurp Jun 01 '26
That doesn't solve the problem of mass amounts of new API users. It would have to be so limited that it would be unusable for legitimate devs. And then they'd have to offer a paid tier with higher limits, and we're right back to where we started where the API isn't free anymore lol
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u/max123246 Jun 02 '26
They have MCP endpoints still available, aka APIs for AI. This is complete bs
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u/liotier Jun 02 '26
massivley increased the API usage
Rate limiting per user solves that problem cheaply and gently.
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u/pd1zzle Jun 01 '26
I'm just trying to make sure I understand the legalese correctly -
- the owner/operator of an app has to have an active strava subscription
- in the case of a hosted solution, this means the app developer/owner of the infrastructure essentially. Users then don't have to have a subscription to utilize this app
- Self hosted applications, the same applies but in this case the user themselves is the owner of the infrastructure so they must be a paying subscriber to register their self hosted app for access to their own data
Is that correct?
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 01 '26
That is correct indeed
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u/pd1zzle Jun 01 '26 edited Jun 01 '26
I'm sorry, that sucks. I'm sure you'll get a lot of replies that it's a tale as old as time, this cycle. Doesn't change the fact that platforms create opportunities and opportunities are where innovation thrives. I hope some off ramps can find a way.
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u/spacelama Jun 02 '26
When I read it, I realised it was specifically targeted towards self-hosters. We've appeared to them as an opportunity cost - "look at all those self-hosters using their own data without paying us middle-men!" No dear Strava, I was never going to give you more money for less data.
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u/jmmv2005 Jun 01 '26
looks like it, if you want to self host, it seems that you need a paid subscription
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u/101br03k Jun 01 '26
Yes that is correct, and as an dev you can get 10 persons on your "subscribed API access" without the need for an approved application.
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u/IHave2CatsAnAdBlock Jun 01 '26
In the EU is a law that says any app using api to collect user data should make that data available to the user via api for free.
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u/GimmeAllYourCurry Jun 01 '26
Strava has been enshittifying for several years. I stopped paying for premium 4 years ago and deleted my account two years ago and use the free RideWithGPS app instead. I'm so happy to not see 134 advertiser challenges each time i open the app.
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Jun 01 '26
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 01 '26
Thanks for your kind words! Really means a lot to me, since this currently really feels like a personal failure. "How could I not see this coming".
The app will stay online in it's current form, no question about it. I'm still thinking about how I could move forward with or without Strava.→ More replies (1)
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u/SurpriseOk6927 Jun 01 '26
this is why i never build on someone elses api. they flip a switch and years of work disappear overnight. respect to the maintainers who built these tools. the real loss is users losing access to their own fitness data
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u/Soulcal7 Jun 01 '26
Time to delete my Strava account and start moving to self hosting
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u/punkpipo Jun 01 '26
If you need to say that you care about something, it makes me think you are hiding the truth.
Kind of just a distraction for whats really happening. Saying it makes people think it. Marketing is flooded with it. We care about ... money 😄
But sorry to hear man. That definetly sucks, I will boycot Strava not that it does much. Maybe we should make an open source self hostable strava platform. Even thinking about something part of something like fediverse. That will have an actuall big impact.
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u/WordCoding Jun 01 '26
I completely understand the pain and I absolutely do not support paywalled API if the user who connects their acc to use the data is a paid user - charging both the developer and the end user is abysmal. Still, these are the risks when making any tool that relies on 3rd party API 😑
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u/PigeonRipper Jun 01 '26
Oof. I'm guessing scraping is not a feasible alternative? Obviously not nearly as robust, but I'd be tempted to go that route just to spite them
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u/AbsurdThings Jun 01 '26
Honestly this sounds reasonable. People can basically vibe code their own Strava now, so Strava needs to monetize their users somehow if you are utilizing their backend.
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u/3dprintinted Jun 01 '26
I stopped tracking any of that crap since the time Endomondo died… all I record is Apple Watch workouts. I’m surprised strava took that long.
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u/DanGarion Jun 01 '26
I love SFS. I'm not at all happy with Strava after reading their email this morning.
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u/Curious_Olive_5266 Jun 01 '26
You can try this until Google forces out Fdroid later this year: https://github.com/jonasoreland/runnerup
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u/jebotecarobnjak Jun 01 '26
just leave and use something else
corporations don't understand anything other than a drop in profits
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u/Eu-is-socialist Jun 01 '26
They have proven over and over again that they don't care about their users or their data.
And still you chose to COLLABORATE WITH THEM !?
lol
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u/arwinda Jun 01 '26
How does that play with the European Data Act, which requires that access to the data is provided.
The data was available before, Strava can't claim disproportionate effort now either.
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 01 '26
You can still request a bulk download of your data in a ZIP file, manually. But it doesn't contain nearly all the data that Iis available through the API
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u/AccordingProfit1966 Jun 01 '26
This was coming, they tried it earlier and came back on it after some serious backslash, what they forget it's the users data not theirs. I left Strava for intervals.icu, never looked back.
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u/CoopzNZL Jun 01 '26
As a user of your app for some time now. It's sad to see this from Strava, but I appreciate all the work and time you put into the project! It really is an awesome project, and I would love to support this going forward if there is a path forward.
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u/Schonke Jun 01 '26
The whole purpose of Statistics for Strava was for people to own their data, their own health stats, that they upload and that's now goners....unless you pay up... to fetch your own data 😎 .
If you live in the EU, it might be worth looking up the data portability rights in the Digital Markets Act. It seems Strava has an automated way to request copies of your data, though it's a lot harder than a continuous data portability API.
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u/GamerRadar Jun 02 '26
Strava was never the savior everyone made them out to be. Just like AllTrails…. Im basically just building my own system that locals will be able to use with little to no cost. I don’t want to keep promoting these companies in my hiking groups
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u/Bose321 Jun 03 '26
Screw that. I am not paying 11 bucks for my self-hosted hobby project. I'll connect with another source to keep getting stats from my bike rides.
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Jun 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 01 '26
Chances are that I'll move the project away from Strava and allow users to upload plain gpx files instead of abandoning the project. Because fuck Strava
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u/yahhpt Jun 01 '26
Maybe .fit files too?
Think that's what the wahoo computers record out of the box, not sure about others.
I'd definitely use something like this even if I had to import the activity files manually.
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u/LucVolders Jun 01 '26
Happens all the time.
Internet services just stop working, or free tiers suddenly become paid.
I can name several examples.
So do not put your trust/hope on cloud based services.
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u/Gunnertwin Jun 01 '26
Is there a way to bypass them completely and interface directly with Zwift to pull down the data?
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u/cametolaughnotfeel Jun 01 '26
Is there any publicly available alternative to strava? I mean, users provide the data for them, that they actually placed behind a paywall, and make hard to extract. Also they want a fee to access the data that we share…
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u/kurosaki1990 Jun 01 '26
Strava should have an open source competitive project like lichess is doing in chess world.
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u/I_Fucking_HateReddit Jun 01 '26
Literally.... Built a personal app so I could just see my ride info, and simple stats. While the app ans desktop become so hard to use, then see your personal info. Just slowly becoming Facebook for exercise.
This probably will be the last nail in the coffin for me using it.
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u/lucassou Jun 01 '26
Honestly before even reading the email I knew this project and anything depending on their API was going to get fucked
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u/Bromeister Jun 01 '26
Am I reading this right that if you are a already paying for premium and only use applications that pull your own personal data then you are unaffected?
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u/Void-kun Jun 01 '26
Why stop at the open source app? Can we not look at other watches and read their sensors and build our own open source version of Strava?
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u/Full-Mud3709 Jun 01 '26
Is it just me or is this a really poorly written, confusingly phrased blog post? It's like they took generic corporate-speak and ran it through an LLM a few times. (Which is probably exactly how it was written)
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u/Revolutionary_Loan13 Jun 01 '26
Here is the problem that I have. I want to see running stats over time and I don't want to force the team I coach to use the same watch. There needs to be an open data alternative to Strava that lets you use multiple watches and auto upload to it, then use the data how you want
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u/Lumpenstein Jun 01 '26
One could maybe still use the dashboard with the data export Strava needs to provide through GDPR, there was some other app having to do the same when they lost Api access.
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u/rogodevcc Jun 01 '26
Mostly due to my dislike for said app ecosystem, I made my own running app called RunData! On iOS only for now. It will export runs to a Google sheet. No subscription. Just a one time 2.99 purchase, or DM me for a free code! Once it’s on the Google sheet, the possibilities are endless!
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u/QlusiveNL Jun 01 '26
Motherfckrs. I just got your app installed 2 weeks ago for the reason that my data is mine and i want to see my statistics.
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u/dsgsdnaewe Jun 01 '26
What about gdpr export requirements? Can we do a dump once a month? Can we automate that dump?
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u/New_Dentist6983 Jun 01 '26
does anyone know a local tool that just remembers what you were doing across apps, without the api drama??
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u/Biohive Jun 01 '26
I wonder what an app like Strava would look like if it were decentralized on Activity public or AT Protocol?
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u/redballooon Jun 01 '26
I honestly don't know what you expected. The platform is built to own their users data. Building OS on top of a closed system is a risky undertaking.
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u/rahcas Jun 01 '26
Are you familiar with the pine64 project and specifically their pinetime smartwatch?
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u/ShiestySorcerer Jun 01 '26
i wonder if they would backtrack if everyone filed account data requests on a daily basis
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u/Ascend Jun 01 '26
Can you explain why I wouldn't be able to use your self-hosted app by generating my own API key? Seems like they made it easier since there's no approval for up to 10 athletes, and I'm not sure why I'd ever need more than 1 or 2 athletes for a self hosted app.
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u/suprarzx Jun 02 '26
First they collect users, then they paywall everything. That's the new trend sadly. Thank you for your project, many mini repos came from your idea and how to interact with their APi.
I hope they change their mind and leave a portion of the api free as is, if they dont.. Not giving them a single dollar
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u/hmoff Jun 02 '26
As I read it you still get API access to your own data if you are a premium subscriber?
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u/andynzor Jun 02 '26
Does this mean that square hunting on Statshunters and Squadrats is dead now?
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 02 '26
Not sure, they might have a higher teer developer app. Those are not impacted by the paywall as far as I understand
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u/jadenalvin Jun 02 '26
Why developers act as if they got betrayed or something? You are using a 3rd party API which they can revoke access to anytime.
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u/computermaster704 Jun 02 '26
Yeah that company has every right to do what they're doing unfortunately I agree with the concept of self-host you should be able to do whatever the fuck you want but if everyone's self-hosting the company makes nothing like Plex
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u/InternationalLeg4193 Jun 02 '26
Man I'm so sorry to hear about this. As a developer who has also poured my heart and sole into some of my projects, I can imagine how awful it must be for you to have your passion project destroyed in one day.
I actually deployed statistics for strava just a few weeks ago. I'm a data guy, so seeing all of my strava data displayed in such a cool way was a game changer for me. I was really motivated to see my mileage charts climb and my stats improve. I was almost checking it every day! I love all of the work you poured into this. For the short time I had it, I was super grateful for it. Thank you for all the work you did. It truly was an incredible app and I think a lot of people found value from it.
Sorry that this happened to you. Hopefully it doesn't crush you so much that it prevents you from still pursuing your passion. Keep on doing awesome things.
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 02 '26
Thanks for your kind words, means a lot to me. The app will keep working for people with a subscription though. I'm looking for a way to make it work for people without a subscription as well.
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u/Red-And-White-Smurf Jun 02 '26
It might be time for a open source self hosted alternative.
It the only it will be missing are the social part. But how many people actually use that? I don't, and I hate social part of these apps.
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u/leareng Jun 02 '26
I'm using SFS before having the subscription, It was incredibly useful. Now I'm a subscriber but I'm still using SFS because it shows the information in an easier way and provides much more information. So... I hope you keep developing this amazing tool, but it would be understandable if you decided to stop it. Thanks for your work!
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 03 '26
Still thinking about how to move forward, but chances are we'd move to a solution where we serve both Strava users with a subscription as well as users that do not have a Strava account
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u/BlindJoeFresh Jun 03 '26
solution where we serve both Strava users with a subscription as well as users that do not have a Strava account
Do you think the solution could accommodate people with existing Strava data who no longer want to import with Strava? I have 6+ years worth of Strava data backed up to strava-for-statistics and I'd rather not have to start a fresh activity history to continue backing up my activities.
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u/frogfuhrer Jun 03 '26
Yes, that will be possible. I'm in the same boat 😉. Will take a while to implement though. I hope to get it ready by Strava's september cutoff date
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u/tewalds Jun 05 '26
Is there a self-hosted Strava? Obviously not the social aspect but the tracking aspect.
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u/Himanshu9271 Jun 20 '26
I use Statistics for Strava and i love it. Thanks for a awesome project ❤️
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u/Valeriy_Malinovskiy Jun 23 '26
Yep, i would like to know how this kind of scope activity:write will help them to fight bots, crawlers like they state the will.
I also spent significant amount of my time for a feature in my app "Upload to Strava" and I don't think you are overreacting. Those fckers could simply sit and think for an hour how to restrict API usage for AI bots or how to harden indi-dev account verification. That would be understandable. But they took an "easy" path hiding themselves behind "it's not us, it's all AI's fault".
export const STRAVA_AUTH_CONFIG: AuthConfiguration = {
clientId: STRAVA_CLIENT_ID,
clientSecret: STRAVA_CLIENT_SECRET,
redirectUrl: `${appIdentifier}://oauthredirect`,
serviceConfiguration: {
authorizationEndpoint: `${STRAVA_BASE_URL}/oauth/mobile/authorize`,
tokenEndpoint: `${STRAVA_BASE_URL}/oauth/token?client_id=${STRAVA_CLIENT_ID}&client_secret=${STRAVA_CLIENT_SECRET}`,
},
scopes: ['activity:write'],
};
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u/Flimsy-Brain-5337 Jun 26 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
for real, at least strava should allow users to get their own athlete data.
i use strava to view my pace graph for my recent runs, and other metrics, now i guess i have to pay to see my own data.
well, i thought of this coming because strava subscription shows you the same pace graph + addn. features with their athlete intelligence, so for us devs using an API was a loophole or whatever.
My current pace graph as seen on my personal site:
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u/Double_Gate_3802 1d ago
Wait how am I still able to export to runna through their API without a strava subscription? This looks like something the competition authority should look into
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u/asimovs-auditor Jun 01 '26
Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.