Velo Hero alternatives after the shutdown
Velo Hero is gone. Their own site states it plainly: the platform “officially ceased operations on May 1, 2026”, “Data export is no longer possible”, and all user data and training records have been “permanently and irrevocably deleted”. Nothing recovers your history from Velo Hero — so the useful questions are the other two: where else do your rides still exist, and what do you move to. Both have good answers, and one of them costs nothing.
Where to go instead
Peakfy is pre-launch, so it has no ratings or user numbers — and we don't invent any. Pricing is announced at launch.
What happened to Velo Hero
The shutdown is final and unusually clearly documented — velohero.com now serves nothing but a notice, in German and English. Read on 9 August 2026, it states that the online training platform “officially ceased operations on May 1, 2026”, that “Data export is no longer possible”, and that “all user data and training records have been permanently and irrevocably deleted as previously announced”.
That last phrase matters: this was announced in advance, so riders who exported before May have their files. Everyone else does not, and no support ticket will change that. We are not going to soften this — a platform holding years of your training deleting all of it is exactly the argument for keeping your own copies, and it is the first thing we would take from this.
First: your rides probably still exist somewhere else
Velo Hero was rarely the only place your data lived. Before you accept the loss, check these, in this order:
The services you synced from. If your rides reached Velo Hero from Garmin Connect, Strava, Wahoo or Polar, the originals are still sitting in those accounts, untouched by this shutdown. That is usually the whole history, not a fragment.
Your head unit and phone. A Garmin, Wahoo or Hammerhead keeps .fit files on internal storage until it runs out of room — often a year or more of recent riding. Plug it in and copy the Activities folder before it overwrites anything.
Your own downloads folder. If you exported anything during the wind-down, it is probably still there. Search your disk for .fit, .tcx and .gpx from before May 2026.
Whatever you recover, put a copy somewhere that is not a subscription. That is the actual lesson here.
The seven platforms worth moving to
Every claim below was read from that company's own website on 9 August 2026. We build Peakfy, so we have put it first and said so here rather than hiding it — judge the rest on whether the free options are described fairly, because for a lot of Velo Hero riders a free option is the right answer.
Our pick
Peakfy
Move here if losing Velo Hero made you realise you wanted more than a logbook. A training diary tells you what you did. Peakfy computes training load, readiness, zones and an FTP estimate from your rides — and then a coach you can actually talk to explains what each number means for tomorrow, remembers your season and lets you push back, with no counters and no credits. Every session arrives with the interval profile, exact power and heart-rate targets and what to eat per hour, a combination we could not find on any rival's marketing pages. Cycling only. Six languages, iOS and Android, built and hosted in Europe under GDPR — and if a service disappearing overnight has made you think about where your data sits, that last part is worth reading twice.
Where it does not win: Peakfy is pre-launch, so it has no ratings and no user numbers, and we do not invent any. Data comes in today via Intervals.icu and .fit import; direct Garmin, Strava, Wahoo, Zwift and Apple Health connections are planned, not live.
intervals.icu
The closest free replacement, and for many Velo Hero riders simply the right answer. Their homepage says “Intervals.icu is free for everyone” — $0 forever, no credit card required, with an optional $4/month Supporter tier. Fitness, fatigue and form tracking, activity analysis with interval detection, a workout builder, a plan builder, wide device integrations, 21 languages. If what you lost was the log and the charts, you can rebuild that today for nothing, and you can import .fit files you recover from your head unit.
Where it does not win: it analyses and plans, it does not coach — there is nobody to ask why. And there is no native iOS or Android app; it is an installable web app, by deliberate choice of its maker.
Golden Cheetah
Move here if this shutdown taught you never to trust a service with your only copy. Free, open source, and the most powerful desktop analysis in the sport — your files live on your own disk, and no company can delete them by announcement. It imports directly from Garmin, SRM and PowerTap hardware.
Where it does not win: their own site concedes “a steep learning curve for new users”. It analyses rather than prescribes, and it is a desktop application — no coach, no phone app, nobody to ask at 10pm the night before a session.
TrainingPeaks
Move here if you work with a human coach. It is the reference platform for athlete–coach collaboration, built around the Performance Management Chart (Fitness, Fatigue, Form), and it is where most coaches already work. Premium is $19.95/month or $134.99/year with a 14-day trial. Note that Garmin acquired it on 22 July 2026 — nothing about how it works has been announced as changing.
Where it does not win: if you are self-coached, you are paying for a professional-grade dashboard and doing the interpretation yourself — which, if you are honest, may be what you were already doing on Velo Hero.
IntervalCoach
Move here if you want an adaptive coach for very little money. “Train for the day you're actually having” — daily re-planning from 60+ signals, the most transparent readiness display in the category, fifteen languages, from €3/month with a free tier.
Where it does not win: it requires an Intervals.icu account, so it is a layer on someone else's platform rather than one product — and it meters its coach chat by tier.
TrainerRoad
Move here if what you actually want now is a plan, not a diary. “Cycling's #1 Training App”, built around structured workouts and a plan that adapts when life interferes, with AI FTP Detection so you do not need test days. iOS, Android, Windows and macOS; outdoor sessions go to a Garmin, Wahoo or Hammerhead head unit. $21.99/month or $209.99/year.
Where it does not win: their site advertises no coach you can talk to and makes no claim to explain why a session was chosen. No free trial, only a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Garmin Connect
Consider this if your rides were already syncing there — because then nothing was lost at all. It is free, it already holds your history, and Garmin Cycling Coach on top of it is genuinely adaptive: base/build/peak blocks against %FTP bands, using sleep and recovery.
Where it does not win: the coach is a hardware gate — compatible Garmin device plus a paired power meter and heart-rate strap — and a Garmin-only data island. Explanations sit behind the paid Connect+ tier, and there is no per-hour fuelling.
Did you ever act on what Velo Hero showed you?
Be honest. If you logged rides and looked at charts but the charts never changed what you did on Saturday, a free log is all you need — take intervals.icu and stop paying for anything. If you looked at the numbers and wished someone would tell you what to do with them, that gap is the reason to pay, and it is not a diary you are looking for.
How much does not depending on one company matter to you now?
This is a fair question to ask after what just happened. Golden Cheetah is the maximal answer: files on your own disk, no service to disappear. Short of that, keep local copies of your .fit files wherever you land — every platform on this page can be left, and you should assume one day you will leave it.
Are you rebuilding a history, or starting a season?
If a target event is coming, do not spend weeks reconstructing the past — pick something that plans forward and start. Long-term load metrics rebuild themselves on roughly a six-week rolling window, so they become meaningful again after about that long regardless of what you import.
Starting again without your history — what you actually lose
Less than it feels like, and it is worth being precise about which is which. Long-term load metrics genuinely reset. Anything built on a rolling six-week window needs about that long before it means anything again, and there is no shortcut.
Almost everything else you can re-establish in a fortnight. Your FTP is a current fact, not a historical one — a recent hard ride or a short test re-anchors it, and your training zones follow from it automatically. Your best efforts across durations rebuild from the next few weeks of riding. Your body has not forgotten anything just because a database did.
If you recovered .fit files from your head unit or from Garmin, Strava or Wahoo, import them wherever you land — that shortens the gap considerably. Peakfy reads .fit files today and also takes your data through Intervals.icu. And this time, keep a copy of the raw files somewhere nobody can switch off.
Who wrote this: we build Peakfy, so we have put it first and said so on the page rather than hiding it in a footer. We have not tested these products — we read each company's own website on the date shown and linked every source, so you can check any line yourself.
Sources, all read on 9 August 2026: velohero.com · intervals.icu · www.goldencheetah.org · www.trainingpeaks.com/pricing/for-athletes · www.intervalcoach.app/en/pricing · www.trainerroad.com/pricing. Velo Hero is a trademark of its respective owner; Peakfy is not affiliated with or endorsed by Velo Hero.
Frequently asked
.fit files still on your head unit, or in an export you made before May 2026.Train like the pros — whatever your level.
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