Garmin users slam Strava as backlash hits fever pitch

What started as a legal dispute between Strava and Garmin over Segments and heatmaps has turned into a full-on revolt from the user community. A Reddit post criticising Strava’s handling of its lawsuit has gone viral, drawing nearly 4,000 upvotes and hundreds of frustrated comments.

In late September, Strava filed a lawsuit accusing Garmin of copying its technology and violating a 2015 partnership agreement. The complaint targets two core areas: Segments and heatmaps, both of which are now deeply embedded in Garmin’s ecosystem. Strava asked the court for financial damages and a ban on Garmin selling devices that use these features.

Days later, the company posted a statement on Reddit through its Chief Product Officer, claiming that the lawsuit was sparked not just by feature overlap, but by Garmin’s demands around logo placement. The explanation didn’t calm things down. If anything, it made them worse.

According to the post, Garmin told Strava it would lose all device syncing unless it showed the Garmin logo on every activity post, image and graph. The deadline for compliance is November 1. Strava, it seems, decided to go to court over a logo. All this because Strava didn’t want to share screen space with a tiny Garmin logo. 

“You are not Garmin’s competition”

That line came from one of the top-rated comments in the now infamous thread. The user, a five-year Premium subscriber, admitted they had only kept the Strava subscription going as a show of support. They said that if Strava cut off Garmin, they’d cancel and delete the app without hesitation. That single comment became a rallying cry and quickly drew thousands of upvotes.

What followed was a cascade of posts from users who said they had either cancelled their subscriptions or were about to. Many admitted they were already questioning the value of Premium. For them, this public fight pushed them over the edge.

Several called Strava a “social media app” that was forgetting what made it useful in the first place. Others described it as a middle layer for syncing data from various platforms, not a competitor to Garmin. And quite a few said they’d only kept paying for Strava out of habit, or to support the idea of the platform, not because it offered anything they couldn’t get elsewhere.

“Garmin is essential. Strava is optional”

One common theme is that Garmin handles the actual data: tracking, metrics, VO2 Max, performance charts. Strava just presents it nicely. Users aren’t willing to throw out expensive hardware just to keep their uploads going. The tone is blunt. One wrote, “You’ll have to pry my Garmin off my cold, dead wrist.”

Some users pointed out that Garmin has already built out community features and could easily add more. Several suggested that if Garmin wanted to take on Strava directly, it probably could. A few even hoped it would.

Others went after Strava’s motivations. Many suspected the lawsuit was just posturing ahead of a planned IPO. The idea being that Strava is trying to appear less dependent on Garmin in order to look more appealing to investors. But users aren’t buying it. “They’re proving the opposite,” one said. “This just shows how dependent they really are.”

A Reddit thread becomes a reckoning

Beyond the legal details and brand politics, the Reddit thread hit a nerve because it exposed a growing gap between how Strava sees itself and how many of its users do. It’s not just about this dispute. The comments reflect long-standing frustrations around paywalls, limited feature growth, API restrictions and unclear priorities.

Plenty of users still like Strava. Some praise the app’s interface and the way it pulls everything together in one place. But that loyalty is now being tested. The overall message from the community is loud and clear. If Strava makes itself incompatible with Garmin, many of the users won’t be the ones making sacrifices.

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter! Check out our YouTube channel.