Each Strava Segment has a leaderboard that ranks all Strava athletes who match the GPS trace between the defined start and finish. Leaderboards are specific to a single activity type, meaning that a run segment shows only runs on the leaderboard, and a cycling segment shows only rides.
If activities are uploaded to Strava under an incorrect activity type or with motor-assisted data, whether from an electric bike or from driving a car, the fairness and accuracy of our leaderboards suffer. Each Strava athlete is responsible for the content they upload, and we expect all athletes to contribute positively to the Strava community by following our guidelines.
As stated in our Terms of Use, repeated actions that don't follow these guidelines can result in some action taken by Strava on the offending account.
Follow These Guidelines:
To Maintain Fairness in Our Segment Leaderboards
Keep motorized and non-traditional bicycle data off the leaderboards
Use the E-bike Ride and Virtual Ride activity types
Hide motor-paced rides (cycling behind a vehicle) from leaderboards
Manipulated GPS data is not allowed on any leaderboards
Inaccurate or otherwise incorrect Virtual Activity data is not allowed on any leaderboards.
Keep rides with a mixed gender tandem bike off leaderboards
Adjust privacy controls on duplicate versions of the activity to "Only You"
Responsibly participate in segment leaderboards
Report activities that should not be on leaderboards
Guidelines for Motorized and Non-Traditional Bicycles:
The Ride activity type is for conventional human-powered bicycles (including recumbents) riding outdoors. Do not use this activity type if your activity includes data recorded while driving a car or motorcycle, pacing a vehicle, using an electric bike or another electric-assisted vehicle, using a non-traditional bicycle with full fairs or aerodynamic modifications, including velomobiles, or using a GPS simulator program for virtual riding.
Please note that motorcycle activities are not allowed on Strava, and you cannot use the Ride or E-Bike activity types. For a full list of accepted activity types, please see our article, "Supported Activity Types on Strava."
Guidelines for Uploading Virtual Activities:
If, upon uploading, your virtual data appears inaccurate (for example, due to a trainer malfunction, weight settings, or software bugs on the virtual platform), set the privacy controls for your activity to "Only You". If you choose to leave this activity set to "Everyone", it may be flagged by your fellow athletes or our system.
Use the Correct Activity Type:
Leaderboards are specific to a single activity type, meaning that a run segment only shows runs on the leaderboard, a cycling segment only shows rides, etc. If activities are uploaded to Strava under an incorrect activity type, the fairness and accuracy of our leaderboards suffer.
However, to keep a level playing field for adaptive athletes, we do, in some cases, allow adaptive athletes to compete in a similar sport type when that sport does not confer a technical advantage over other bicycles in this category.
We ask that you categorize your activity as the appropriate sports type. This includes using the available E-bike Ride and Virtual Ride activity types for activities recorded using an e-bike or a virtual trainer, respectively.
Guidelines for Motor Paced Rides:
Motor pacing, or drafting behind a motorized vehicle, is considered motor assistance and conflicts with the fairness and integrity of segment leaderboards. When uploading data from a motor paced ride, please use the "Only You" or "Followers" privacy control on the activity edit screen.
Guidelines for Mixed Gender Tandem Bike Activities:
Our leaderboards are gender-specific, so we ask our athletes to help keep men's efforts on men's leaderboards and women's efforts on women's leaderboards. If your tandem activity contains both men's and women's efforts, please choose from the following options:
Use your activity's privacy controls to adjust the setting to "Only You" or "Followers" to remove the activity's segment times from public leaderboards.
From the edit options, change the activity type to "Workout" (not to be confused with the workout tag for rides and runs).
Guidelines for Uploading Duplicate Activities:
If you upload duplicate activities, set the privacy controls of one of them to "Only You". We do not allow two public versions of the same activity on Strava. If you repeatedly upload duplicates and do not set their visibility to "Only You", your account will be at risk of deletion.
Manipulated GPS Data:
If you use a third-party website to manipulate your GPS data, especially to enhance your segment times, you may not upload that data to Strava. This includes uploading route files to your Strava account. Failure to comply with this guideline may result in account deletion.
Each Activity Is Automatically Analyzed to Ensure It Is Eligible for Segments:
We run all activities through a machine learning ("ML") algorithm to detect common mistakes that disrupt leaderboards. For example, uploading activities under the wrong sport type (such as selecting "run" when you actually went for a ride or "ride" when you were riding an e-bike) can cause inaccuracies on segment leaderboards.
Another example includes leaving a GPS running while driving home after an activity, which can also disrupt leaderboards. To check for these and other issues, we pass all activities through an ML algorithm designed to catch these mistakes. If the model detects what appears to be a mistake during a portion of your activity, you'll see a red banner at the top of your activity page. Take the following steps to fix these common errors:
If you were in a car for part of the activity, you can use the crop tool to remove that portion.
If you uploaded your activity under the wrong sport type, simply edit the activity and change it.
After you make these types of edits to an activity, it will be re-evaluated by the ML algorithm for leaderboard eligibility. Note that your activity may still be flagged by Strava or other users if it appears to contain mistakes.
Report Activities That Should Not Be on Leaderboards:
By providing the flag feature, Strava allows the community to moderate the accuracy of a Segment Leaderboard. The flag tool is available to users to identify bad GPS data or data from non-human-powered and non-conventional bicycles. If you notice another athlete's activities should not be on leaderboards, please use the Activity Flag tool to remove the activity.
For example, if a user accidentally leaves a GPS device on while driving home and forgets to crop their data after uploading, that data can be removed from the Leaderboard rankings when the Flag is created. The Flag feature is not designed to be overused or abused.
Go here for instructions on how to use this feature.
If you are unable to see the activity on a leaderboard, you can still contact the Strava Support Team to review it if you have a reasonable suspicion the activity is inauthentic. In such cases, you may have been blocked by the activity owner.
However, we will still evaluate these activities if they are reported directly to us, to ensure our leaderboards accurately reflect achievements and efforts.