Alternatives

A Strava alternative, built in Europe

If you have already decided to look elsewhere, the useful question is not which app is bigger. It is what actually moves with you, what you would be giving up, and whether the thing you get instead is worth the move. This page answers those three in order, including the parts that do not flatter us.

Get Waypath, free The head-to-head comparison

Looking for the line-by-line table instead? That lives on Waypath vs Strava. This page is for people who are already halfway out of the door.

First, plainly

Waypath is the smaller app

Strava is the largest social network in endurance sport, and no page on this site pretends otherwise. It has the segment network, the leaderboards, the clubs you already belong to, and, above all, the people you train with. Waypath is younger, thinner, runs on iPhone and Apple Watch only, and is built by one developer in Europe.

So if what you want from a tracker is a busy feed and a segment leaderboard with your training group on it, leaving is a downgrade and you should not do it on our account. The reasons to move are narrower and more specific, and they are below.

The practical part

What moves with you, and what does not

Apple Health comes across

Waypath imports past workouts from Apple Health. Whatever your previous app wrote there can be pulled in, which for many people is most of a training history. Whether yours is in Health depends on how it was recorded, so check before you assume.

A file archive does not

Waypath cannot yet read a GPX, TCX or FIT file you hand it, so a bulk archive download cannot be loaded in. This is the honest blocker in any switch, we are not going to hide it behind a wizard, and it is on the roadmap.

Nothing gets trapped here

Every activity recorded in Waypath exports as a GPX 1.1 file, one tap, no subscription. If you leave again in six months you take the lot with you, which is the only version of a switch worth offering.

The reasons to move

What you get that you did not have

A spectator link, free

The organiser draws a course, runners opt in one by one from their own phones, and anyone holding the link watches the field move in a browser. No app, no account, nothing to install for the person watching. It is a spectator view, not a timing system, and it costs nothing.

A route that never starts at your door

Publishing an activity removes any declared privacy zone and trims a random 200 to 600 metres from each end. Start times are stored bucketed to the hour, so a public history cannot be read back as a daily routine.

426,029 waymarked trails

Across 37 countries and 75 curated regions, rebuilt every month from OpenStreetMap, with dated condition reports from the people who last walked them: dry, muddy, icy, overgrown, flooded or closed.

Messages nobody else can read

Direct and group messages are encrypted on your device and the server stores ciphertext only. It holds no key. Attachments are refused unless they arrive encrypted.

One server, inside the EEA

The database and your uploaded images sit on a single machine in Lauterbourg, France. No advertising, no analytics SDK, no data brokers. The project contains no Firebase, Amplitude, Mixpanel, Sentry, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Facebook or Google Analytics SDK.

A heat map with a floor under it

Your own heat map is drawn on your phone from your own activities. The community layer is opt-in, and a path only appears once at least three different people crossed it in the same week, so one person's route is never what you are looking at.

The other side of the ledger

What you would be giving up

A page that only listed reasons to switch would be an advertisement. These are the things people miss, and the ones we hear about.

The people. Your training group is almost certainly not on Waypath yet. Nothing on this page fixes that, and a social app with none of your friends in it is a worse social app.
A segment catalogue built over a decade. Waypath matches segments on the device, which is a different design for a different purpose. It is not competing with that catalogue and will not pretend to.
Android and the web. Waypath is iPhone and Apple Watch. An Android app is planned for January 2027; that is a plan, not a guarantee, and if you are on Android today the honest answer is to wait. There is no web app for recording, only the spectator page.
Direct device integrations. Apple Watch is supported directly. Everything else arrives indirectly, through Apple Health, and how well that works depends on what the other device writes there.
File import. Say it twice because it is the one that bites: GPX in is not supported yet. GPX out is, on every activity.
Maturity. Waypath has had far less time to find its bugs, and a smaller app finds them more slowly. Two active clubs, two events and two challenges per person at a time is also a real ceiling if you organise a lot.

In practice

You do not have to decide today

Most people who try Waypath keep the app they were using, at least for a while, and that is a sensible outcome rather than a failed switch. Record with both for a few weeks, on the sessions you care about, and see which summary you actually open afterwards.

The narrow, specific case for making the move is this: you want people to be able to watch a course without downloading anything, you want a trail catalogue with dated condition reports on it, or you want an app whose default is that nothing leaves your phone until you say so. If none of those is your problem, you are better off where you are, and we would rather say that here than after you had installed it.

Written on 12 August 2026 and correct to the best of our knowledge on that day. Competitor apps change often, and the fairest thing this page can do is tell you to check theirs. Waypath is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any company named here, and all trademarks belong to their owners.

Questions

What people ask before switching

Can I move my Strava history into Waypath?

Partly. Waypath imports past workouts from Apple Health, so whatever is in Health can come across. Waypath cannot yet read a GPX or FIT file you hand it, so a bulk archive export cannot be loaded in. That is a real gap and it is on the roadmap.

Is there a free version of Waypath?

Recording is free and unlimited, and so are live sharing, clubs, events, challenges, the trail catalogue and the 3D fly-through. A premium subscription adds the analysis layer: every chart, race predictions, the full heat map and unlimited saved routes.

Does Waypath run on Android?

Not today. Waypath is iPhone and Apple Watch only. An Android app is planned for January 2027, which is a plan rather than a promise. Spectators following a live link need no app at all, so they can already be on anything with a browser.

Does Waypath have segments and leaderboards?

Waypath matches segments on the device and runs club challenges with leaderboards, but it has nothing like the size of Strava's segment network, and challenge leaderboards are built from what each member's own phone reports and cannot be audited by the server.

What does Waypath do with my data?

It keeps it in Lauterbourg, France, inside the EEA, sells none of it, and shows it to nobody until you publish something. There is no advertising business here to feed. The reasoning, including what is not covered, is on the European data protection page.

Keep reading

Try it alongside, then decide.

Waypath records unlimited activities for free, shares a live link at no cost, and exports every activity as GPX so nothing is stuck here.

Download on the App Store

Requires iPhone. There is no Android app today; one is planned for January 2027.