Is the Most Popular Running and Cycling App About to Fix Its Biggest Flaw?

Strava fans: good news appears to be on the horizon.

This week, the company announced that it was acquiring the popular running app Runna. If early speculation turns out to be true, Strava could finally add a long-awaited feature to its app.

Strava

Fitness apps unite

Strava has been one of the most — if not the most — popular workout apps for over a decade, while Runna has quickly become one of the most popular runner-specific workout apps since it launched in 2021. (In fact, Runna was a finalist for Apple’s App of the Year in 2024.)

About the acquisition, Strava’s press release says it “unites the world’s largest fitness community with a leading app in the fiercely competitive running training space, creating compelling value for users and shareholders of both companies.”

While Strava supports a wide range of workouts, including cycling, swimming and hiking, it sees running as a key growth area. According to the brand, nearly 1 billion runs were recorded on Strava in 2024, which has “created a sharp increase in race participation, with 43% of Strava users wanting to conquer a big race or event in 2025.”

Naturally, people want an app to help them prepare for such races. But, up to this point, Strava hasn’t really been able to do that.

A glaring weakness

Strava has been one of the most popular workout apps for years because of its intuitive interface and strong communities, but, somewhat surprisingly, it has lacked a key feature: in-app training plans.

That’s where Runna comes in. The workout app specializes in creating specialized training plans, with AI coaching, for runners training for 5K, 10K, and marathons.

“Our passion is to give every runner a training plan and access to amazing coaching, said Ben Parker, Runna’s co-founder. “And this investment allows us to make even more improvements to everything we do at Runna, benefiting runners worldwide.”

With the demand for personalized training plans quickly growing, Strava wants to better cater to athletes looking for more personalized training guidance.

Ben Emminger

When’s it coming?

While it’s pretty clear that the plan is to bring Runna’s expertise in running plans to the Strava app, it’s unclear how or when exactly that’s going to happen.

Pricing is another big unknown, too. While Strava has both free and paid tiers, the latter costs $80/year and unlocks premium features (such as more in-depth workout data and training goals), Runna is paid only … subscription costs $120/year.

For the time being, nothing is going to change — the two apps will remain separate and you’ll still need to pay for both subscriptions to unlock their exclusive features.

As far as the deal, the press release states that it’s still subject to customary closing conditions. The terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

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