Strava has been a big part of my fitness workflow for one big reason. I don’t really care about leaderboards or social features, but it acts as a great hub between devices, apps, and services. I use an Apple Watch and I also use a Garmin, and Strava lets me bridge all of these together.
That setup has become a lot harder to maintain after Strava removed access to its free API tier for most consumer use cases. Since I also dabble in a range of other wearables that don’t really sync directly, this has understandably made it harder than I expected to get my fitness data synced to a common place. That pushed me to look for alternatives.
As somebody deep into the self-hosting world, I wanted something that would let me keep control of my workout history without depending on a platform that could change its rules on a whim. More importantly, I wanted a system that would basically become my long-term fitness database. After testing a few options, I settled on Endurain and FitPub. These two very different projects together help me create my own fitness-tracking universe, free from the big commercial platforms.
Endurain gives me complete control of my fitness data
A self-hosted fitness dashboard built around training, not social features
The biggest and most obvious thing that attracted me to Endurain was its approach to data ownership. Instead of uploading anything to a server, the entire app runs on your own NAS. Everything from your workout history to activity files, routes, and even health data stays completely under your control. With more and more fitness apps moving towards commercial subscriptions, this is something that’s becoming more important to me.
More than that, though, fitness data accumulates over years, be it runs or walks, even the occasional cycle ride as well as the use of equipment. It’s all a personal long-term record, and as tools evolve, I want to be able to work with this data to extract meaningful trends. I don’t want that data tied to a service that could change its pricing or even restrict how I work with it entirely.
Activities can be imported from standard file formats such as GPX or TCX files, which means I’m not really locked into a particular watch manufacturer or fitness ecosystem. Moreover, Endurain can even pull in your fitness data directly from Garmin Connect and Strava if you still have API access.
What I really like about Endurain more than Strava is that it focuses on the actual activity rather than trying to turn my workout into social content, which I never really cared about anyway. I can open the dashboard and immediately see training, routes, distances, pace information, and all the performance metrics I care about, not a social feed I do not care about.
Like Garmin, Endurain can also handle gear tracking, which I’ve been more mindful of lately. I tend to run my running shoes into the ground, but I’ve been keeping track of how much mileage I’ve put on them. So far, I’ve been using Garmin Connect for that, but the fact that Endurain can manage it just the same is fantastic.
In addition to your activity data, Endurain handles essential health tracking, including weight and sleep. Your overall fitness is more than just a product of your activities; it also depends on your sedentary and resting heart rate. Endurain gives you broader insight into it and, of course, the biggest advantages here are platform independence and data ownership.
Fitpub brings a decentralized alternative to Strava
While Endurain solves the data ownership problem, fitness tracking isn’t always a solo endeavor for some users. Part of what made Strava popular was the ability to share activities and follow friends and discover what other people were doing. That’s where FitPub becomes interesting. FitPub is designed around ActivityPub, the same open-source protocol that powers services like Mastodon. The idea here is simple: fitness activities become part of a decentralized social network rather than being locked inside a single company’s platform. Yes, I’m talking about Strava.
While I’m not a big social sharer of my fitness activities, it is appealing to see an alternative to Strava. If you’ve ever moved between fitness services, you’ve probably experienced that, while your workout data might be portable, your community usually isn’t. Friends, followers, and comments stay behind. FitPub approaches that differently. Since the app is built around an open social protocol, there is a degree of mobility available that Strava simply cannot offer.
A more open approach to fitness tracking
While I don’t think I’m ready to quit Strava overnight. Setting up these tools has shown me that the way forward is to take complete ownership of my data. Moreover, the recent API changes showed me just how much of my fitness workflow depended on decisions made by a single company. I started storing my data in Endurain, and it’s given me a place to analyze my activity history on my own terms. Meanwhile, FitPub is shaping up to be a decent decentralized fitness community platform. They are not one-to-one replacements for Strava just yet, but that’s fine. Even the existing feature set is enough for most users, including power users, and I see myself gradually and steadily, but definitely, switching to these two platforms instead of Strava.
