Strava's Personal Heatmap - the one that shows every route you've ever recorded - is locked behind a $79.99/year Premium subscription. MoveMap renders the same view from your Apple Health data, on-device, with no account and no subscription required for the last 12 months. Here's how the two compare.
Pick Strava's Personal Heatmap if you're already paying for Strava Premium for other reasons - the heatmap is a nice extra, and the Global Heatmap context is genuinely useful for route discovery.
Pick MoveMap if you just want a personal heatmap of your own runs, walks, rides, and hikes - and you don't want to pay $79.99/year forever. MoveMap renders the same picture from Apple Health, on-device, with a free tier covering the last 12 months and a one-time $19.99 Lifetime unlock for the full history.
The catch: Strava's heatmap also includes Global Heatmap data - the crowdsourced view of where everyone runs. MoveMap is your data only. If you want to discover popular running routes in a new city, Strava has something MoveMap doesn't.
| Feature | MoveMap | Strava Heatmap (Premium) |
|---|---|---|
| Personal heatmap of your routes | ✓ Yes, free for last 12 months | ✓ Premium only ($79.99/yr) |
| Global Heatmap (everyone's routes) | – Not offered | ✓ Defining Strava feature |
| Reads from non-Strava activity sources | ✓ Apple Health = any tracker | – Only what's recorded or uploaded to Strava |
| Activity type filtering | ✓ Run, walk, ride, hike, etc. | ✓ Multiple sport types |
| Native iPhone app | ✓ Built for iOS | ✓ Strava iOS app (heatmap is in-app) |
| Time scrub (replay your history by year) | ✓ Drag the rail to scrub backward in time | – Static heatmap |
| Year in Review postcard export | ✓ 1080x1920 PNG for Stories | ✓ Annual auto-generated feature |
| Country and coverage stats | ✓ Coverage dashboard | – Not built-in |
| Works without internet | ✓ Cached map tiles + on-device data | – Needs Strava sync |
| Data stays on device | ✓ Never leaves your iPhone | – Stored on Strava servers |
| Requires an account | – No account needed | ✓ Strava account + Premium |
| One-time lifetime purchase | ✓ $19.99 once | – Subscription only |
A personal heatmap is a single map view of every GPS workout you've ever recorded, layered together. Routes you've covered more often appear brighter; routes you've only run once appear faint. The result is a visual record of where you actually spend your training time - it makes patterns visible that you can't see from looking at runs one at a time.
Strava's Personal Heatmap and MoveMap's lifetime map view solve the same problem with the same kind of visualization. The difference is where the data comes from and what it costs:
Strava's Personal Heatmap uses the activities you've recorded with Strava or uploaded to your Strava account. It's beautiful, well-engineered, and locked behind Strava Premium - currently $79.99/year. If you ever cancel Premium, the heatmap goes away (your activities remain, but the heatmap view is Premium-gated).
MoveMap's lifetime map uses the GPS workouts in Apple Health - which includes everything your Apple Watch records natively, everything Strava syncs over, everything Garmin Connect writes, and so on. It renders on your iPhone in real time, doesn't depend on a subscription staying active, and the last 12 months are free.
| Plan | MoveMap | Strava Heatmap |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Last 12 months of heatmap, one Year in Review per month | No - Personal Heatmap is Premium-only |
| Monthly | $1.99/mo (7-day free trial) | $11.99/mo (full Strava Premium) |
| Annual | $9.99/yr | $79.99/yr (full Strava Premium) |
| Lifetime | $19.99 one-time, no renewal | Not available |
| 5-year cost | $19.99 (Lifetime) or $49.95 (annual) | $399.95 |
For people who just want the heatmap, Strava's pricing is the hard part - you can't subscribe to just the heatmap, you have to take all of Strava Premium. If you're already a Premium subscriber for segments, training plans, or Routes, the heatmap is essentially free. If the heatmap is the only thing pulling you toward Premium, MoveMap is dramatically cheaper.
This is the under-discussed part of the comparison. Strava's Personal Heatmap is generated on Strava's servers using activity data it stores indefinitely. That's a fine model - it's what enables cross-device access and the Global Heatmap - but it means your GPS history is part of Strava's aggregated dataset.
The Global Heatmap controversy in 2018, where the publicly-visible aggregated heatmap exposed routes around US military bases, was a useful reminder that crowdsourced GPS data has externalities. Strava has since added more privacy controls, and you can opt activities out of the Global Heatmap individually. But the underlying model is server-side.
MoveMap takes the opposite approach by default: every route stays on your iPhone. There's no server, no account, no analytics SDK, and no aggregated dataset to be exposed. The trade-off is no cross-device sync - you can only see the map on the iPhone that has the data on it - but if privacy is the reason you want a heatmap solution outside Strava, MoveMap was built for that use case.
No. The Personal Heatmap - the view of all your own activities laid over a map - is part of Strava Premium, currently $79.99/year. The Global Heatmap (the crowdsourced view of everyone's activities) is free to view as a logged-in user, but is a different feature.
MoveMap reads your GPS workouts from Apple Health directly. Any activity that Apple Watch records, Strava syncs, Garmin Connect writes, or AllTrails saves to Apple Health appears in MoveMap automatically. It overlays them on a map and renders a personal heatmap on-device - no upload, no account, no third-party sync required.
Yes, for any activity that Strava has synced to Apple Health. If you enabled Strava's Apple Health integration (Settings → Apps, Services and Devices → Health → enable Workouts), every new Strava activity is also written to Apple Health and shows up in MoveMap. For old Strava activities recorded before you enabled Health sync, you'd need to import the GPX files into Apple Health using a tool like HealthFit. See the full export guide.
For your own data: visually identical. MoveMap renders every GPS point in your workout history as a glowing polyline overlay - the same kind of view Strava generates. Strava's Personal Heatmap has more global context (you can see your routes alongside the crowdsourced Global Heatmap) but if all you want is a view of your own activity, MoveMap shows the same picture.
Not with MoveMap. Strava charges $79.99/year ongoing. MoveMap offers $1.99/month, $9.99/year, or a one-time $19.99 Lifetime - and the last 12 months are free with no subscription. The Lifetime tier means you pay once and never see another charge, even if you keep using the app for 10+ years.
There's a third-party app on the App Store called "Strava Heatmap 3D" that is not made by Strava. It still requires you to log into a Strava account to fetch your activities, so the same limitations apply (Strava-only data, account required). MoveMap reads Apple Health directly and works without any Strava account.
Yes - MoveMap's Year in Review postcard generates a 1080x1920 PNG of every route from a given year, optimized for Instagram or Twitter/X Stories. Strava's heatmap can be screenshotted in-app or from the web; there's no purpose-built export.
No. MoveMap is your personal data only - by design. If you specifically want the Global Heatmap to discover popular running routes in new cities, that's a Strava-exclusive feature and one of the genuine reasons people pay for Premium.
MoveMap reads from Apple Health. Last 12 months of your heatmap are free. $19.99 one-time unlocks the full lifetime view.
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