Export Original, GPX or TCX: which Strava file should you download?

Three exports, one activity. They are not three formats of the same data — they are three different files, and they carry different things.

The three options on the activity page

On strava.com, open the activity and click the more menu (three dots). Two exports are there:

• Export Original — the file your device uploaded, unchanged. For a Garmin, Wahoo, Coros, Suunto or Polar that is almost always a .fit file.
• Export GPX — Strava's own rendering of the activity as a .gpx file: coordinates, timestamps, and the accessory data (heart rate, cadence, temperature) where the device recorded it.

The third is hidden. Take the activity's web address and add /export_tcx to the end of it, then press enter. A .tcx file downloads, with heart rate, cadence and power alongside the track. Strava notes that TCX needs GPS data — an indoor activity will not produce one.

All three live on the website only. The app does not export files; the phone workaround is to open the desktop site in a browser.

The three files side by side

What each file is good for

Original is the most complete. It is exactly what the watch wrote, so nothing has been rounded, resampled or dropped on the way through Strava. If you are keeping a copy for yourself, keep this one. FIT files are binary — you cannot read them in a text editor — but every serious tool opens them, and so do we. If you are curious what is inside, what is a FIT file takes it apart.

GPX is the universal one. It is plain XML, every mapping tool on earth reads it, and it is what most planners, other apps and forum threads mean when they say "the file". If something asks you for a GPX, this is the export. The trade-off is that a GPX from Strava is a re-export, not the source: it is the activity as Strava stored it.

TCX exists mostly for older Garmin workflows and for tools that want the training data in an XML they already parse. If nobody asked you for a TCX, you do not need it.

The differences between the formats themselves — what each can and cannot hold — are in GPX vs FIT vs TCX.

Which one for a print

It does not matter, and that is the honest answer. We read all three and draw the same line. The route comes from the coordinates, the numbers on the sheet come from the file's own summary, and both are present in every export.

If you want a rule: Export Original when it is your own device's activity, because it keeps the most. Export GPX when you are not sure what recorded it, because it always works. Then bring the file to the configurator — or skip the file and connect the account.

The one that is not on the list

There is no CSV export for a single activity. The stats table you see on the page is not downloadable as a spreadsheet from the more menu. Strava's bulk export — the archive of your whole account — does include an `activities.csv` with one row per activity, and that is the way to get your history into a spreadsheet. The bulk export guide explains what is in the zip, and Strava to Excel what to do with the CSV.