Popular exercise app founded in 2009, originally focused on cycling. As of late 2025 it had over 180m users, up from 135m a year earlier and 48m in 2019. The pandemic drove much of that growth, as stir-crazy populations turned to running. Strava was valued at $2.2bn in 2025 and its former boss said in 2020 that it was profitable.
Strava has succeeded in a crowded field—which includes apps from Apple and Nike—by turning solo exercise into a social activity. Users can follow and give "kudos" to running pals and fitness celebrities. The app's "heatmaps" of popular routes caused a stir in 2018 when they were shown to provide information on the layout of American military bases around the world.
Strava works with most smartphones and smartwatches, allowing enthusiasts to track not just overall times but granular performance data. Few of its users pay for a subscription—probably in the low single digits as a share of the total. To improve that ratio, Strava has been integrating automated coaching features and in 2025 bought two smaller exercise apps that had developed such tools.
In January 2026 reports emerged that Strava had filed confidentially for a public listing, with Michael Martin, its boss, saying an IPO would provide "easy access to capital in case we wanted to do more and bigger acquisitions".
Simplicity does not precede complexity, but follows it.