Questions About App environments, setup and API Limit Increase

I have the same question.

Answers below are to the best of my knowledge/experience.

1. Multiple Applications for Development and Production

If all of your apps are under the same domain, you can (probably) use the same API key for all of them. In the API dashboard (https://www.strava.com/settings/api) you are required to enter an auth callback domain, so you can set redirect_uri to point to the appropriate app/version. I would expect most developers want different apps to live under their own domains so this is unlikely to work if you’re developing multiple applications. In that case you need a completely separate account for each, since each account is limited to a single API key.

2. API Limit Increase for Testing Phase

I don’t know of any temporary increases. As it stands, there seems to be a very large delay in getting your app approved in the first place so you’re probably best off just requesting a permanent increase to a reasonable number of athletes and calls. “Production” is a vague term since you don’t have to publicize the app, so there isn’t a strict requirement for it to actually be released.

3. Suggestions for App Approval

No clue on this. I assume you’ll need to be following their API guidelines (https://developers.strava.com/guidelines/) at the very least. I would also guess that they will check your current usage to make sure you’re successfully making API calls and are making a reasonable number of them.

The only other suggestion would be to be patient as it seems to take several weeks for an app to be approved. There are a ton of posts here of people asking why it’s taking so long. It’s especially worse because there’s no way to check on the application status, so you’re left in the dark.