How to delete your Strava account permanently

By Otabek Mamadaliev · Sources last reviewed 24 August 2026 · What this means

Export your activities first. Years of runs and rides are unrecoverable once deleted. Request the bulk export from Settings → My Account → Download or Delete Your Account, and wait for the email before you delete anything.

Delete your Strava account

1. Log in on strava.com, hover your profile photo (top right) and choose Settings.
2. Open the My Account tab on the left.
3. Under Download your account, select Get Started, then Request download. The email link can take a few hours.
4. Once you have your archive, select Request Account Deletion.
5. Open the confirmation email and click Delete Your Account.
6. Tick the box confirming you have downloaded your data (or do not want it).

There is no grace period. Unlike most platforms, Strava does not hold the account for 30 days and there is no logging back in to cancel. Strava states the account and data are permanently deleted and its team cannot recover them. The confirmation email is your only checkpoint.

Privacy without deleting

Most people asking this actually want privacy rather than deletion. Strava has strong controls that solve it:

• Map privacy zones hide the start and end of activities near your home — the single most important setting on Strava, and the reason many people want out.
• Set your profile to followers-only or private.
• Hide activities from leaderboards individually.

If safety is the concern, privacy zones address it far better than deletion does.

What you lose

• Every activity and personal record.
• Segment efforts and KOM/QOM placings.
• Kudos, comments and followers.
• Private segments and routes you created — these go with the account.
• Strava subscription — cancel separately if billed through an app store. Note that cancelling a subscription on its own does not delete the account; they are two different actions.

What stays on Strava after you go

Any public segment or route you created remains on Strava permanently — including its title. Strava states it holds a perpetual licence on them, so unlike your activities they are not yours to withdraw. Only the private ones are deleted with the account.

This matters more than it first sounds, because segment names are written by whoever created them and often carry a real name, a street, a club or a house. Strava's own advice is to keep personally identifiable information out of those titles. If one of yours does contain something you would rather not leave behind, rename it before you delete the account — afterwards the title is frozen as it stands and you have no way to reach it.

Your activity data probably exists somewhere else too

Strava is usually the display layer rather than the source. The GPS traces were recorded by something, and deleting Strava does not touch the platform that recorded them.

• Garmin, Wahoo, Polar, Coros and Apple Health keep their own copies of the same activities. Deleting Strava leaves those entirely intact — which is reassuring if you want the history, and irrelevant if privacy is the goal.
• Disconnect the integrations first so nothing is still pushing new activities into an account you are closing.
• Zwift, TrainerRoad and similar also hold their own records and their own uploads.
• If privacy is the point, the deletion has to be repeated at each of those services. Strava is one of several, not the only one.

Check what the export actually gave you. The archive contains your activities as data files plus your account information. Open a couple in something that reads GPX or FIT before you delete — an archive you cannot open is not a backup, and there is no grace period here in which to discover that.

Clubs and the people who depend on you

If you administer a club, deleting your account without handing it over leaves the members with a club nobody can manage. Promote another admin first; it takes a minute and it is the difference between leaving and abandoning.

The same applies to any group challenge or event you created. They do not disappear with you, but they do lose the person who could edit them.