Strava Using Too Much Mobile Data? 41 Reviews (2026)

If your phone warned you that your mobile data is almost gone and Strava is at the top of the list, you are not imagining it. Since late October, Google Play reviews of Strava have filled with runners, walkers and cyclists who say the app used hundreds of megabytes, sometimes several gigabytes, during a single activity.

We read every review about it to find out when it started, how much data people say they lost, what it cost them and what they did to stop it.

Quick Answer: Why Is Strava Using So Much Mobile Data?

From 22 to 28 October 2026, 41 negative Google Play reviews say Strava suddenly uses far more mobile data than before, 33 of them one star. 30 were written from version 486.9, which first appears in our reviews on 20 October. Ten reviewers say it used up or went past their monthly data plan, and four say they had to pay for extra data, including a £40 bill and a 226 euro bill. In the 27,000 reviews we read from before 22 October, nobody complained about Strava's data use. Strava did not reply to any of the 41. The workaround reviewers share is to switch off mobile data for Strava while recording.

How We Counted

We pulled the 9,000 most recent US English-language Google Play reviews of Strava, going back to 8 July 2025, plus the 3,000 most recent from each of the German, French, Spanish, Italian, Brazilian and Dutch stores, 27,000 different reviews in all. The UK store returned exactly the same reviews as the US one. Strava holds 4.59 stars from 1,208,469 ratings on Google Play and 4.81 from 379,304 on the App Store. Every review below is from the Android app.

We searched them for data, megabytes and gigabytes in English, German, Spanish, Dutch, French and Portuguese, and read every match from 15 September onward, 108 reviews. Most were about GPS data, privacy or lost activities. We kept the ones that say Strava uses too much mobile data.

24 of the 41 came from the US store, 7 from the Netherlands, 6 from Spain and 4 from Germany. By the language they are written in, 24 are in English, 6 in Dutch, 6 in Spanish, 4 in German and 1 in Indonesian.

When It Started

The first complaint we found is from 22 October. Then they came faster: 3 on 23 October, 6 on 24 October, 10 on 25 October and 12 on 26 October.

Since the 19Oct26 update, my wife's Strava has used all her mobile data (600Mb for a 90 min ride, today 300 Mb on 15 mins walk to test it).

Version 486.9 first appears in our reviews on 20 October, and 30 of the 41 were written from it. A Dutch reviewer also points to the version that went live that Monday, and says Strava told them it had nothing to do with it.

Dutch

Vandaag na een rit van 2,5 uur tot de vervelende verrassing gekomen dat me dat 3,5GB aan data heeft gekost. Strava ontkent dat het te maken heeft met de nieuwe versie die sinds afgelopen maandag live gegaan is.

Version 486.11 first appears on 27 October. Three reviews written from it still complain, so it does not look like that version fixed the problem.

Before 22 October there is nothing like it. We read every review in our 27,000 from before then that mentions mobile data, megabytes or gigabytes. They are about the app not loading on WiFi or crashing without a connection, not about the app eating data.

Data use went from 26 mb in September (that itself being a significant increase from August at 500 kb) to over a GB in October despite no change in use schedule.

How Much Data Reviewers Say It Used

Reviewers give their own numbers, from their phone's data counter. We cannot check them, but they point the same way.

Data Hog! Out of nowhere the app used 700mb of mobile data during a 15 minute bike ride. Absolutely unacceptable!

Spanish

no se porqué razón, antes no lo hacía... ahora durante mis entrenamientos la aplicación me consume una cantidad exorbitada de datos móviles... 4gb en una hora de entrenamiento es demasiado exagerado, literalmente mi rodada de hoy me dejó sin datos móviles...

German

Nach Update zieht die App unterwegs beim Aufzeichnen massivst mobile Daten!!! 2 GB für ne Stunde Lauf!!! Waren mal wenige MB... Abhilfe: die mobilen Daten der App entziehen.. hoffe, der Bug wird schnellstmöglich behoben!!!

One reviewer says it happened on WiFi too, 200 MB in five minutes.

Consuming more mobile data than usual. 2GB mobile data exhausted within 2 hours of Cycling today. Turned ON in WiFi and noticed 200MB of data consumption within 5 min.

Indonesian

JELEK, pake sejam buat track sepedaan nyedot kuota sampe 1GB, GA MASUK AKAL.

What It Cost

Ten reviewers say Strava used up their monthly data or pushed them past it, some in one or two activities. Four say they paid for it.

Used to be good, actually got me to subscribe which is a hard thing to get me to do but i just got landed a £40 bill for excess data after this chewed through all my monthly data and then the same again on a half hour ride.

Sudden massive data volume on Mobile plan. A 2h ride cost us 226 euro because a foreground process sent 4GB data which exceeded my bundle.

They did an upgrade without any notification and set the background data on and used a month of data in two days, so I had to buy more. A sleazy move.

What Strava Says

Nothing in the reviews. Strava did not reply to any of the 41, and in our US sample it has not replied to any Google Play review since 1 October. Two reviewers describe what happened when they contacted Strava. One says support sent a generic email saying the team was limited in its ability to investigate this sort of issue, and the Dutch reviewer above says Strava denied that the new version was the cause. A German reviewer says the in-app chatbot did not help either.

What You Can Do

Switch off mobile data for Strava while you record. Four reviewers recommend it, and a fifth turned off Strava's background data use. GPS does not need mobile data, as a German kayaker points out.

German

Für Kajakfahren zuverlässige GPS-Messung, leider aber keine Routenplanung. In neuestem Update gravierender Fehler im Datenverbrauch, App verschlingt Gigabytes an Mobildaten, Tipp: diese ausschalten. GPS funktioniert auch ohne.

Switch data back on at the end so the activity uploads. One reviewer describes doing it in the last five minutes of a ride.

It is consuming 1 GB for every one hour of tracking. Till developers find solution. Here is TEMPORARY SOLUTION - After turning on tracking for Cycling, Turn off mobile data - Turn on mobile data in last 5 minutes of tracking - It will SYNC. Also, If you scared data will lose, You can also turn on data for few seconds in middle.

Do not expect a cache clear or a fresh login to fix it. One German reviewer tried both, and also says turning off data on the road is not a real solution.

German

Seit Tagen zieht die App beim Tracking massivst Daten. Inzwischen mehrere Gigabyte. Alle Empfehlungen (Cache leeren, neu anmelden, letztes Update) haben nicht geholfen. ChatBot hilft hier in der App nicht wirklich weiter. So ist die App nicht mehr nutzbar. Und mobile Daten unterwegs ausstellen ist auch keine wirkliche Lösung. Hier braucht es dringend ein Update.

Check your phone's data counter after your next activity. It is the quickest way to know whether you are affected.

Strava had other problems this autumn: see Strava login loops and server errors and activities not recording or not saved. For another app that suddenly started using far more than it should, see PayPal draining the battery in the background.

Read the Full Breakdown

You can read the full negative review breakdown for Strava on Android and Strava on iOS, or go to the Strava trust check and apps like Strava.