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API Policy 6.2: retaining an athlete's own long-term history

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Hi all,

I'm building a read-only app that shows each athlete long-term trends in their own activity history. Each athlete only sees their own data, and nothing is shown to anyone else. We use webhooks for activity changes and deauthorisation, and delete an athlete's data when they disconnect.

The feature only makes sense across years of activities, so the 7-day cache rule in API Policy 6.2 is a real problem for us. I've read the similar thread from September and I'm hoping to get a bit further on three points:

1. Is there any approved way to retain an athlete's own activity data for as long as they're an active user, when the only purpose is showing their own history back to them?

2. If not, does aggregated data derived from their activities still count as Strava Data under 6.2? I mean summary counts, with no individual activities, names or IDs kept.

3. If an athlete downloads their own data with Strava's bulk export tool and uploads it to an app, is that covered by the API Agreement and the 7-day limit?

I'd especially value hearing from anyone who has had an app with long-term history approved, or an answer from the Strava team. Thanks!

    2 replies

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    • straviewer
    • Hub Starter
    • October 12, 2026

    Same situation here: a read-only app that shows each athlete their own statistics, with webhooks for activity changes and deauthorization. We are designing for the strict reading: every piece of Strava Data, including derived values, is deleted or re-fetched within 7 days, and statistics are computed on the fly.

    One narrow addition to this thread: does a full re-fetch of the athlete's activity summaries restart the 7-day period in Section 6.2, so the cache can stay fresh while the athlete keeps using the app (and is deleted after 7 days without use)?

    An answer from the Strava team on this and on the derived-data question above would help several of us move forward. Thanks!

    Forum|alt.badge.img

    Same situation here — adding one more use case in case it helps the Strava team answer once for all of us.

     

    We build a training-plan app for runners (Standard tier, 10 athletes). Each athlete connects their own Strava account and only ever sees their own data; nothing is shown to other users, sold, aggregated across users or used for advertising. The app keeps the athlete's own activities so it can show their history and personal records, compute their training load over 4–6 weeks, and mark the workout they had planned as done.

     

    Questions for the Strava team:

    1. §6.2 — Is there any approved way (any tier, program or written agreement) to keep an athlete's own activities beyond 7 days while they remain an active user, shown only to that athlete?

    2. §5.4 / §5.5 — Do training load, zones and personal records computed only for that same athlete count as "analytics" or a "Persistent Index"? And does linking an activity to the workout the athlete planned in our app count as "combining Strava Data with other customer data"?

    3. §6.6 — If an athlete uploads files from their own Bulk Data Export, is that user-provided data outside the scope of the API Agreement and the 7-day limit?

    4. §6.1 — With athlete capacity below 9,999, may an athlete explicitly grant their own coach inside the app access to their activities?

     

    We want to build to the correct interpretation before growing. Thanks!

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