A running app without a subscription

Recording is free and unlimited. You can record a run, a hike, a ride or any of the other 53 sports Waypath knows, with GPS, on iPhone or directly on Apple Watch, and keep every activity for as long as you like. The free tier also includes live sharing, so a link you send from the app lets someone watch your position in a browser with no app and no account, clubs, events and challenges, the full catalogue of 426,029 waymarked trails in 37 countries, the 3D fly-through of a finished route, one saved route, import of past workouts from Apple Health, and a GPX 1.1 export on every activity.

That last point is the one to check in any app you are considering. A free tier is only free if you can leave with your data. Waypath exports every activity, on the free plan, as a standard GPX file with elevation and a timestamp on every point, so the cost of leaving is zero.

There is no advertising in the free tier either. Waypath contains no advertising SDK and no analytics SDK, so the free version is not paid for by showing you things or by measuring you. The premium subscription is the whole business model, and the free tier is what it sits on.

Waypath Premium adds the analysis layer: every chart, splits and grade-adjusted pace, training load, race predictions, the Ghost Runner pacer that reads the climbs ahead of you, the full heat map, and unlimited saved routes. Free covers tracking, one saved route and the basics.

The App Store listing gives three prices. One month free, then $2.50 a month billed annually at $29.99, or $4.99 month to month. The third option is the one this page is really about: Waypath Premium Lifetime, a single in-app purchase of $59.99 with no renewal. Two years of the annual plan costs about the same, so if you expect to keep running, the lifetime option is the cheaper path and it is the only one that never asks again.

Prices are in US dollars as shown on the App Store; your local store shows local pricing. Subscriptions renew automatically unless cancelled at least 24 hours before the period ends, and are managed in your Apple Account settings, not in Waypath, which means cancelling is the same two taps it is for any App Store subscription.

For context, here is what the main alternatives ask for their paid tiers, as published on their own sites or reported in the press on the date at the bottom of this page. Strava charges $11.99 a month or $79.99 a year, and moved group challenges, offline maps and performance predictions behind that plan. Runkeeper Go is $9.99 a month or $39.99 a year, and live tracking is on the paid side. Komoot Premium is €6.99 a month or €59.99 a year, on top of one-off map region purchases. AllTrails Plus is $35.99 a year and AllTrails Peak $79.99 a year. Runna is $19.99 a month or $119.99 a year, or $149.99 a year bundled with Strava. Garmin Connect+ is $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year, on top of the watch.

Nike Run Club is the exception: it is entirely free, with no paid tier at all. It also has no official way to export your runs as GPX, which is the trade the free price carries. If you want free and you never intend to take your data anywhere, it is a reasonable answer, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise.

None of these apps sells a lifetime purchase that we could find. That is the concrete difference here: Waypath offers one, and it is $59.99.