In October 2025, Strava hosted its inaugural Developer Summit at its San Francisco headquarters, bringing together indie developers, teams from major tech companies, and leaders from top cycling, running, and fitness brands for a day of panels, networking, and the 2025 Strava App Awards.
With over 175,000 developers now building on Strava's API, 25,000 of whom joined in the past year alone, the summit marked a renewed investment in the ecosystem that has extended Strava far beyond its core functionality.
Panels & Discussions
The summit featured three panel discussions exploring different aspects of building on Strava's platform.
Gamified Exploration
Ben Lowe of VeloViewer and Jim Chevalier of CityStrides discussed how gamification inspires exploration and adventure. Both apps have built passionate communities around the simple idea of turning every road into a challenge—whether through VeloViewer's Explorer Tiles or CityStrides' street-completion tracking.
Inside the Wahoo Integration
Wahoo CEO Gareth Joyce and pro cyclist Alison Tetrick explored how hardware integrations elevate training. The discussion covered the evolution of connected fitness devices and how deep integrations have become table stakes for any serious training hardware.
The Making of Runna
Dom Maskell (CEO) and Walter Holohan (CTO) of Runna shared their journey from building custom training plans to their acquisition by Strava earlier in 2025. Their story offered a roadmap for developers thinking about how their Strava integrations might evolve into something bigger.
The 2025 Strava App Awards
The summit culminated in the Strava App Awards, recognizing standout integrations across the developer community. Three apps were named App of the Year in different categories, with a fourth honored as the Up & Coming App:
2025 Strava App Award Winners
AI-powered app that humorously roasts your Strava profile and training data
The gold standard for cycling data visualization, with Explorer Tiles and 3D climb profiles
Gamified exploration that tracks every road you've traveled and inspires new adventures
Analyzes your music listening patterns during workouts to find your best performance songs
Community Motivation: Roast My Strava
In a category that could have gone to any number of serious training tools, Strava honored Roast My Strava, an AI-powered app that playfully mocks your training data. Created by Jason Kuperberg as a weekend side project, the app has been used by tens of thousands of athletes and went viral on social media as users shared screenshots of their personalized roasts.
The recognition speaks to something important about what makes Strava's ecosystem special: it's not just about performance optimization. Sometimes the best apps are the ones that make you laugh at yourself. What started as a simple idea ("what if AI could roast your Strava profile?") turned into a phenomenon that demonstrated how data can create connection, not just competition.
Data Analysis: VeloViewer
VeloViewer, described at the summit as "the gold standard for cycling data visualization," was recognized for its pioneering work in making training data beautiful and actionable. Founded by Ben Lowe in 2012, just as Strava was becoming a household name among cyclists, VeloViewer has grown from a personal project into an essential tool used by everyone from weekend warriors to WorldTour professional teams.
The app's Explorer Tiles feature, which divides the world into a grid of squares to gamify exploration, has inspired countless athletes to venture down roads they'd never otherwise discover. VeloViewer's 3D climb profiles have become ubiquitous in professional cycling broadcasts, appearing on Eurosport coverage since 2015. In 2016, VeloViewer became an Official Supplier to Team Sky.
Games & Optimizations: Wandrer
Wandrer, created by Craig Durkin, was honored for turning every ride and run into an adventure. The app tracks which roads you've traveled and turns exploration into a game, encouraging athletes to seek out new routes and discover hidden corners of their cities.
What began in 2018 as an art project called "All of ITP" (tracking roads inside Atlanta's Interstate 285) has evolved into a global platform that reframes fitness as exploration. For athletes who've grown tired of the same training loops, Wandrer provides the motivation to turn left instead of right.
Up & Coming App: TrackTunes
The Up & Coming App Award went to TrackTunes, which launched just six months before the summit in May 2025. The app analyzes music listening patterns during workouts, helping athletes discover what songs power their best performances.
Going from "hey, wouldn't it be cool to see what music people run to" to receiving an award at Strava's headquarters in half a year is the kind of trajectory that shows what's possible when you build something that resonates with the community.
A Renewed Investment in Developers
The summit marks a turning point for Strava's developer relations. The last formal recognition was the 2016 Developer Challenge, when Pace Match and Toolbox for Strava took top honors. Nearly a decade later, the ecosystem has grown to over 175,000 developers.
Under CEO Michael Martin, who joined in January 2024, developer relations have become a priority. Over half of Strava's 180+ million users are connected to apps powered by the API, making the third-party ecosystem central to the platform's value. The message from the summit was clear: the inaugural Developer Summit won't be the last.
For developers building on Strava's API, the 2025 summit offered both inspiration and validation. The winning apps span a remarkable range—from enterprise-grade visualization tools to weekend side projects, from serious training analytics to apps that exist purely to make you smile. What unites them is a commitment to extending what Strava can do and a deep understanding of what athletes actually want.