Strava’s V3 API

The Strava V3 API is a publicly available interface allowing developers access to the rich Strava dataset. The interface is stable and currently used by the Strava mobile applications. However, changes are occasionally made to improve performance and enhance features. See the changelog for more details.

Access

All calls to the Strava API require an access_token defining the athlete and application making the call. Any registered Strava user can obtain an access_token by first creating an application at labs.strava.com/developers.

The API application settings page provides a public access token to get started. See the Authentication page for more information about generating access tokens and the OAuth authorization flow.

Generally speaking, a Strava API application only has access to a user’s data after the user has authorized the application to use it. Segment and segment leaderboard data is available to all applications.

API Endpoint

https://www.strava.com/api

Authentication

An access_token must be sent along with each request, for authentication. This token is the end result of the OAuth flow and represents both an application and the authenticated athlete.

Summary of Resources

/v3/oauth
/v3/athlete
/v3/athletes/:id
/v3/activities/:id
/v3/activities/:id/streams
/v3/clubs/:id
/v3/segments/:id
/v3/segments/:id/leaderboard
/v3/segments/:id/all_efforts
/v3/uploads

Updates and Changes

See the changelog for details.

Rate Limiting

Strava API usage is limited on a per-application basis using a short term, 15 minute, limit and a long term, daily, limit. The default rate limit allows 600 requests every 15 minutes, with up to 30,000 requests per day. This limit allows applications to make 40 requests per minute for about half the day.

An application’s short term, 15 minute, limit is reset at natural 15 minute intervals corresponding to 0, 15, 30 and 45 minutes after the hour. The long term, daily limit, it resets at midnight UTC. Requests exceeding the limit will return 403 Forbidden along with a JSON error message. Note that requests violating the short term limit will still count toward the long term limit.

An application’s limits and usage are reported on the API application settings page as well as returned with every API request as part of the HTTP Headers.

X-RateLimit-Limit	integer, integer two comma separate values, short term followed by long term limit
X-RateLimit-Usage	integer, integer two comma separate values, short term followed by long term usage

As an application grows its rate limit may need to be reassessed. To request an adjustment contact api-rate-limits -at- strava.com.

Example request

$ curl -G https://www.strava.com/api/v3/athlete \
    -d access_token=83ebeabdec09f6670863766f792ead24d61fe3f9 \

Example response headers

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2013 20:11:01 GMT
X-Ratelimit-Limit: 600,30000
X-Ratelimit-Usage: 254,12536

Example rate-limited response

HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2013 20:11:05 GMT
X-Ratelimit-Limit: 600,30000
X-Ratelimit-Usage: 642,27300

{
  "message": "Rate Limit Exceeded",
  "errors": [
    {
      "resource": "Application",
      "field": "rate limit",
      "code": "exceeded"
    }
  ]
}

Language Libraries

Libary support is limited at this time. If you are developing a library please contact developers -at- strava.com and let us know!

Android - https://github.com/SweetzpotAS/StravaZpot-Android
C# = https://github.com/gabornemeth/stravasharp
Clojure - https://github.com/ekimber/clj-strava
ColdFusion - https://github.com/fancybread/strava
Elixir - https://github.com/slashdotdash/strava
Erlang - https://bitbucket.org/a12n/erl-strava/
Go Lang - https://github.com/strava/go.strava
Haskell - https://github.com/tfausak/strive
iOS - https://github.com/sebastienwindal/FRDStravaClient
Java - https://github.com/dustedrob/JStrava
Java - https://github.com/danshannon/javastravav3api
Java - https://github.com/tiberiu-biking/scribejava-strava (ScribeJava)
.Net - https://github.com/inexcitus/stravadotnet
Node - https://github.com/ajsnapshots/node-strava-v3
Perl - https://metacpan.org/pod/WebService::Strava
PHP - https://github.com/basvandorst/StravaPHP/
PHP - https://github.com/iamstuartwilson/strava
Python - https://github.com/hozn/stravalib
Ruby - https://github.com/jaredholdcroft/strava-api-v3
Rust - https://github.com/jwilm/strava-rs
Scala - https://github.com/kiambogo/Scrava

Request methods

Where possible, API v3 strives to use appropriate HTTP verbs for each action.

HEAD	can be issued against any resource to get just the HTTP header info
GET	used for retrieving resources
POST	used for creating resources, or performing custom actions
PUT	used for updating or replacing resources
DELETE	used for removing resources

Object representations

Depending on the type of request, objects will be returned in meta, summary or detailed representations. The representation of the returned object is indicated by the resource_state attribute.

Resource states

1	meta
2	summary
3	detailed

Listed in increasing levels of detail.

Pagination

Requests that return multiple items will be paginated to 30 items by default. The page parameter can be used to specify further pages or offsets. The per_page may also be used for custom page sizes up to 200. Note that in certain cases, the number of items returned in the response may be lower than the requested page size, even when that page is not the last. If you need to fully go through the full set of results, prefer iterating until an empty page is returned.

Example request

$ curl -X GET https://www.strava.com/api/v3/athlete/activities \  
    -d access_token=83ebeabdec09f6670863766f792ead24d61fe3f9 \  
    -d page=2 \
    -d per_page=50

JSON-P callbacks

Specify the ?callback=function_name parameter to request a JSONP compatible response. This is compatible with JavaScript libraries such as jQuery.

When developing JavaScript applications, please take care to hide the access_token, ie. do not include it in any deep linked URLs.

Example request

$ curl -G https://www.strava.com/api/v3/upload/16486788 \  
    -d access_token=83ebeabdec09f6670863766f792ead24d61fe3f9 \  
    -d callback=callback_function

Example response

callback_function({
  "id": 16486788,
  "external_id": "testing.fit",
  "error": null,
  "status": "The created activity has been deleted.",
  "activity_id": null
})

Polylines

Activity and segment API requests may include summary polylines of their respective routes. The values are string encodings of the latitude and longitude points using the Google encoded polyline algorithm format.

Dates

Dates and times follow the ISO 8601 standard, unless noted. A few examples:

2008-04-12T00:00:00Z
2012-12-30T17:08:56Z
2013-08-23T15:46:20Z

For some resources the start_date_local attribute is provided as a convenience. It represents the UTC version of the local start time of the event. Displaying this value as UTC will show the correct local start time. The local time zone is also provided for some resources and can be used along with the start_date to achieve this as well.

Example

Using start_date and start_date_local as part of a JavaScript web application.

start_date = "2013-08-23T15:46:20Z";
d = new Date(start_date);
d.getHours()+":"+d.getMinutes();

Returns the hours and minutes in the time zone of the viewer’s browser. However, the viewer may be in a different time zone than in which the event took place.

start_date_local = "2013-08-23T08:46:20Z";
d = new Date(start_date_local);
d.getUTCHours()+":"+d.getUTCMinutes();

This will return the correct local start time, “8:46”, independent of the time zone of the viewer.

Support

For general API questions please use the Strava API Google Group

To contact a Strava API engineer, please send an email to the address below. All questions, comments and bug reports are appreciated.

developers -at- strava.com

Please limit your questions to those specific to the API.