If you only read one paragraph
Self-coached and nosy about your data: intervals.icu. It does the fitness and fatigue charts TrainingPeaks charges for, free, and it reads straight from Strava. Working with a coach, following a plan you bought, or wanting the indoor worlds of TrainingPeaks Virtual: TrainingPeaks. A lot of people run both, and if your rides come from a device that’s no extra work.
Price
intervals.icu’s pricing page says $0 forever, and it means the whole thing: fitness, fatigue and form (CTL, ATL, TSB), the power curve, automatic interval detection, the calendar, the workout builder, custom charts and the device integrations. Supporter is $4 a month, with quarterly and annual billing added in June 2026 but no annual price published. It adds weather, the annual plan builder, full Strava history import, completely custom zones, route matching, commute auto-flagging, CSV upload and the teams feature for coaching organisations. You can train for months without touching any of it.
TrainingPeaks has a free Basic account that takes uploads from more than 90 devices. The features people come for are Premium: $19.95 a month or $134.99 a year, the annual price having gone up from $124.99 on April 2, 2025. Premium is where the Performance Management Chart, the deeper charts, annual planning, planning workouts into the future, the workout libraries, pushing planned workouts to your device, and TrainingPeaks Virtual live. Both price in US dollars only.
Side by side
| What you get | intervals.icu | TrainingPeaks |
|---|---|---|
| Price for the charts | Free; Supporter $4/mo | Premium $19.95/mo or $134.99/yr |
| Fitness, fatigue, form | Free | Premium |
| Power curve, interval detection, custom charts | Free, with a formula box and JavaScript for your own charts | Premium |
| Structured workout builder | Free | Premium |
| Annual planning | Supporter | Premium |
| Push workouts to Garmin and Wahoo | Free | Premium |
| Coaching | Coach view, athlete management, chat; teams on Supporter. No plan marketplace | Coach accounts, plan marketplace, coach matching from $149/mo |
| Indoor | None of its own | TrainingPeaks Virtual, in Premium |
| Mobile | No native app. Web app pins to your home screen, push notifications since August 2026; third-party apps fill in | Native iOS and Android apps |
| Strava sync | Reads from Strava, free | None. Devices only, except Virtual uploads to Strava |
| Who owns it | Intervals.icu Ltd, UK, a small team around its creator | Garmin, since July 22, 2026 |
How each one handles Strava
intervals.icu reads straight from Strava. Authorise it once and new rides show up on their own. Two things to know. Free accounts need you to open the site every few weeks or the polling pauses; Supporters don’t, and they get the full history import too. And since Strava’s November 2024 terms, rides that came in from Strava are visible to you and your coach on intervals.icu, not to followers, and intervals.icu says it won’t pass Strava activities on through its own API. That last point is why it still qualifies under Strava’s June 2026 API rules, which ban aggregators that re-expose Strava data. For you as a user, a moderator on its forum put it plainly: nothing changes.
TrainingPeaks doesn’t sync with Strava at all. Its help page says so, in either direction. You connect your Garmin, Wahoo or other device to TrainingPeaks and, if you want the ride on Strava too, to Strava. The one exception is TrainingPeaks Virtual, which has its own Strava connection and uploads indoor rides.
Where intervals.icu is the better tool
Price, first. Past that, the charts. You can build your own with a formula or a bit of JavaScript, and nothing on TrainingPeaks lets you do that. It started as David Tinker’s side project, he went full time on it in September 2024, and the about page now lists a small team under Intervals.icu Ltd in the UK. It is still a web app: there is no native phone app, you pin the site to your home screen, and push notifications arrived in August 2026. Third-party apps such as Subintervals cover the phone side.
Where TrainingPeaks is the better tool
Coaching. If you have a coach, odds are they work in TrainingPeaks, and the back and forth between athlete and coach is what the platform was built around; its own coaching tiers start at $149 a month. The training-plan marketplace sells structured plans for a goal race. The mobile apps are native. And Premium now includes TrainingPeaks Virtual, the indoor platform that hosts USA Cycling’s esports nationals. Garmin bought the company on July 22, 2026; I covered what that means in Garmin buys TrainingPeaks. Prices haven’t moved since.
So which one
Self-coached and curious about your numbers: intervals.icu, and the $4 tier if you want your whole Strava history in it. Coach, bought plan, or Virtual: TrainingPeaks, and the $134.99 is the cost of the ecosystem your coach lives in. Both: point your device at each and let intervals.icu do the charts for free.
Common questions
Does the intervals.icu Strava connection stop if I don’t log in?
On a free account it can. intervals.icu’s forum FAQ says that if you are not a Supporter and have not used the site for a while, the Strava connection may go dormant, and the 2023 announcement of that rule put the window at three to four weeks. Opening the site wakes it up. Supporters at $4 a month are exempt.
Does TrainingPeaks sync with Strava?
No. TrainingPeaks’ help page says the two platforms do not offer direct syncing in either direction, so you connect your Garmin, Wahoo or other device to both. The one exception is TrainingPeaks Virtual, the indoor product bundled with Premium, which has its own Strava connection and uploads virtual rides.
Is TrainingPeaks still independent?
No. Garmin announced on July 22, 2026 that it had acquired TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic. TrainingPeaks says it keeps operating as its own product, and its prices have not changed since.
Can I use both?
Yes, and it takes no extra work if your rides come from a device: point the Garmin or Wahoo at both. The usual split is TrainingPeaks for the coach or a bought plan and intervals.icu for the free charts.
Sources
- intervals.icu pricing and about
- intervals.icu forum: FAQ on dormant Strava connections, the 2023 announcement of that rule, Strava activities and the intervals.icu API, the June 2026 Strava API thread, quarterly and annual billing and push notifications
- TrainingPeaks pricing, its June 2026 pricing post, and help articles on Strava, Basic vs Premium and TrainingPeaks Virtual and Strava
- Strava API Policy (effective June 1, 2026)
Related reading
Garmin buys TrainingPeaks has the acquisition in detail. intervals.icu is also in the best free Strava apps, and every training analytics tool in the directory is one click away. TrainingPeaks Virtual has its own listing.
