Can free Strava accounts download routes as GPX?

Yes, within limits. Exporting your own activities as GPX and downloading public routes work on the free plan. Strava's route builder and its navigation features are what sit behind the subscription.

Does an exported Strava GPX include heart rate or power?

No. GPX carries the track, timestamps and elevation — training data does not survive the format. If you need metrics, the original FIT file from the recording device is the one to export.

How do I download someone else's Strava route?

If the route or activity is public, open its page and use the share or ellipsis menu to export the GPX. Private activities cannot be exported — that is the owner's choice, not a workaround gap.

How do I get a Strava route onto my Garmin or Wahoo?

Export the GPX, convert it to a FIT course, and drop it in the device's Courses folder or import it through Garmin Connect. Wahoo head units take the same file.

How to Download a Strava Route as a GPX File

Strava is where the routes live — yours, your club's, that gravel loop everyone rode last autumn. But a route trapped inside Strava only helps when you have the app open and a subscription in hand. Getting it out as a GPX file makes it yours: viewable anywhere, loadable on any device, still opening in ten years.

The export exists, it works on the free plan more often than people expect, and it hides in slightly different places depending on whether you start from an activity or a route.

Exporting your own activity

Open the activity page on the Strava website (the export lives on the web, not reliably in the mobile app), click the ellipsis (⋯) menu near the activity title, and choose Export GPX. The file downloads immediately.

Good to know: this works on the free plan for your own activities. The GPX contains the track with timestamps and elevation — heart rate and power do not ride along, because that is a property of the GPX format itself, not a Strava limitation.

Downloading a route

For routes — from Strava's route builder, or starred public routes — open the route page and use the same ellipsis or share menu to find the GPX download. Public routes download freely.

What sits behind the Strava subscription is the creation side: the route builder with heatmap routing, and navigation features. Downloading a route that already exists is a different action, and free accounts can do it.

From someone else's activity

The track under a friend's public activity can become your route: open the activity, use the menu, and Strava offers to create a route from it (then export the route as GPX as above). If the activity is private, there is nothing to export — respect that as a feature.

What to do with the file next

A GPX in hand has three common next steps, all doable in your browser here:

Inspect it first. Open it in the GPX viewer and check the line before you commit an afternoon to it. Wrong turns and accidental out-and-backs are obvious in ten seconds of looking.
Navigate it on a device. Convert GPX to a FIT course and copy it to your Garmin's or Wahoo's Courses folder — the full workflow is in our route-to-Garmin guide.
Keep it as the durable copy. GPX is the one format every mapping tool on earth reads. The file you downloaded today will open long after this year's subscription lapses.

A note on the boundary

Strava's free tier has tightened over the years, and the exact line between free and subscription moves occasionally — segment leaderboards here, route tools there. The reliable constants: your own activities export as GPX for free, public routes download for free, and route creation is a subscription feature. If a button described above appears locked, Strava has moved the line again — and the settings page will say for which side of it your account sits.

The bigger principle is format independence: whatever you export, keep the GPX. Routes you can open anywhere — viewed here without an upload, converted to FIT when a device asks — are routes no platform change can take from you.