Imagine you’ve just finished a ride and your bike computer has recorded a satisfying round number, such as 100 miles. But when you upload the ride to Strava, the app says you rode a mere 99.9 miles.
This is something many cyclists have experienced, leading to people heading around the block for an extra few metres.
But however frustrating this is, Strava says it rounds down distances on purpose, calling this feature the ‘Strava Tax’.
What is the Strava Tax and why does it happen?
The Strava Tax sees distances rounded down when you upload them, and Strava says this happens for good reason, calling itself the “ledger of record for human activities”.
“We’re the place where the effort gets documented, the work gets acknowledged, and the numbers carry weight, whether it’s for your own personal progress, a weekly challenge, or a world-record attempt,” Strava explains in a blog post.
“Because of that, we have to record each activity as accurately and authentically as possible. We just show what was recorded, down to the second decimal point.”
Strava explains that your bike computer or smartwatch might read 10 miles, but what it recorded and pushed to Strava might be less. “That means when we round it down for display, you’ll see 9.99,” Strava says.
Devices and supporting apps sometimes improve the raw data to make it cleaner or smoother. For instance, a device might jump to 1km when you’ve only covered an extra metre. Others may record miles differently, converting them from 1,609m or 1,609.344m.
Because of this, Strava says it tries to record data fairly and neutrally. “We don’t try to reverse-engineer your tracker’s optimism or correct them on a device-by-device basis. We display the exact number that came in, rounded down, to reflect the most authentic, reliable version of the truth,” it says.
The Strava Tax goes back a while
Strava decided to round down activities way back in 2012, when GPS wasn’t as good as it is today.
The app says it adopted the same principle you would apply to racing. If you ran a 5k and your watch read 5km before the finish line, you’d keep running.
GPS is now more accurate and the way distance is calculated is more complicated. Strava says devices now combine inputs – from GPS, pedometers and accelerometers, for instance – which is why you sometimes have distances recorded on activities missing GPS. Considering this complexity, Strava continues to round down.
It’s here to stay
So GPS is more accurate, but Strava is keeping its tax. This might seem like an odd decision, but Strava says removing the tax could lead to bigger problems, for you and the platform.
If your activities were rounded up, the distance you record over a year – or many years – would become skewed.
Strava says changing the tax would have a big impact on the app: “We’d need to change the display rules for display, storage, Challenges, Best Efforts, and so on. It would be an enormous lift that requires deprioritising other parts of the product.”
What do other apps do?
When BikeRadar spoke to the makers of other ride-recording apps, it was hard to get a clear answer on how they deal with distance data. One app developer passed on commenting, while Ride with GPS explained how its app displays distance when you’re riding and after you save an activity.
“What riders see while recording an activity using our mobile app is exactly what they will see after saving, as our calculations happen in real-time during the activity. Because we have limited space to display metrics for a user's ride, we've chosen to display distance as accurately as possible by truncating the last digit from view,” a Ride with GPS spokesperson said, adding that this method is a more accurate reflection of distance.
“Post-processing a recorded distance down from what the rider was seeing the whole time while recording in the mobile app would potentially lead to an unhappy user,” they added.
So it seems Strava is the clearest on how it deals with this data, and at least its method is one tax we can understand.
