Strava is walling off its API

Bad news for anyone building a fitness app: Strava is now restricting the data that third-party apps can access and show.

For those unaware, Strava is one of the largest fitness apps in the world, sporting a cool 120 million users. People love it for a few reasons. First, it acts as a kind of fitness social network, with users able to post their workouts and comment on their friends. Second, it’s a hub for all of their fitness data.

The skinny is that because there are now so many different fitness wearables that aren’t inherently compatible, people use Strava as their fitness home base. For example, Peloton bikes aren’t compatible with Garmin watches. So, you would need to buy a separate device to get your heart rate data. The problem is that your workout data is now on two separate devices. 

The easiest way to solve this problem is to upload everything to Strava, as this consolidation makes it easy to:

1. Track your progress.

2. Build and use third-party apps like coaching programs, as they get to skip the headache of integrating with the thousands of fitness apps and devices. 

Restricting the API obviously kills benefit #2.

Strava claims that the change will affect less than 0.1% of applications, but don’t tell that to the users. The Strava subreddit is filled with angry comment after angry comment.

The consensus opinion is that it’s a very peculiar move by Strava. As I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY pointed out, Strava’s position as the fitness middleman was super valuable. Ditching that responsibility seems like a high-risk, low-reward play, especially with fitness API competitors beginning to sprout up. 

Ultimately, this is another lesson on the dangers of building on rented land.