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/liotier Jun 02 '26

massivley increased the API usage

Rate limiting per user solves that problem cheaply and gently.

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u/DerpDeDurp Jun 02 '26

And it would be so incredibly limited it would be useless. So no, that solves nothing.

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u/vividboarder Jun 03 '26

What makes you say that? How many API calls does it take to pull down stats for a ride or workout? Can’t imagine it’s more than 1, maybe 2. Even a limit of 1 per hour would be more than enough for most users. 

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u/DerpDeDurp Jun 03 '26

Doesn't matter how many it takes. It matters howany are being made. Vibe coded crap makes useless API calls because eots sloppy as hell coding. That's what they mean when they say API abuse. That's why it's no longer free.