Strava guides 4 MIN READ
Strava bulk export: every activity at once
The archive request that gives you years of files in one download. Slow, enormous, and the way to make a heatmap without connecting an account.
One activity is a file. A year is an archive request.
Where it lives
On strava.com, go to Settings → My Account, and find the section about downloading or deleting your account. Choose to request an archive — not to delete anything, obviously, though the two options sit uncomfortably close together.
Strava builds the archive in the background and emails a download link when it is ready.
What arrives
A zip. Inside it:
- `activities.csv` — one row per activity, with the date, the name, the sport, the distance, the elevation and the filename of the corresponding track. - `activities/` — the track files themselves, mostly `.fit.gz`. Older ones may be GPX or TCX, because the format Strava stored changed over the years. - A great deal else: photos, comments, kudos, route plans, your profile.
The CSV is more useful than it looks. It is the fastest way to find the longest ride of a particular year without opening anything.
What it is good for
A heatmap. Not one route but every route, layered, until the roads you actually use go dark and the one-off trip to the coast stays faint.
That needs everything, and pulling several hundred activities one at a time is not a reasonable afternoon.
Two warnings
Indoor activities are in there and contribute nothing. A winter of turbo sessions is a lot of files with no coordinates. They are skipped, which is correct, but it means the map of a year is a map of the outdoor part of it.
Every file starts at your door. A single route reveals one home. Three hundred routes reveal it three hundred times, converging on one point. That is why the trim is not optional here — on a heatmap it is the whole difference between a portrait of your training and a map to your house.
What to do with the files
Most of the tracks are `.fit.gz` — the original device files, gzip-compressed. Unzip them (any archive tool does it, and so does the configurator) and each is an ordinary FIT file. `activities.csv` is the index: open it in Excel or Sheets to find the ride you want by distance or date, then take its filename from the last column.
The archive is also the only way to get the whole year out at once for a heatmap print or a stats print — Strava's own personal heatmap and Year in Sport have no export of their own. For one activity, the single export is faster; for someone waiting for an email that has not come, export not working has the checks.
Questions people actually ask
- How long does the archive take?
- Strava emails a link when it is ready. It usually takes minutes to a few hours depending on how much history you have.
- How big is it?
- Larger than you expect. Several years of activities with photos can run to gigabytes; the activity files themselves are a small part of that.
- What format are the files in?
- Mostly .fit.gz — compressed FIT files, one per activity — with a CSV index listing every activity and its filename. Older activities may be GPX or TCX.
- Do I need this to make a heatmap?
- No, if the account is connected: the connection reads your activities directly. The archive is for people who would rather not connect anything, or who want a permanent copy.
YOURS, FROM A FILE, IN 90 SECONDS
One effort. One sheet of paper.
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