Guides · How-to · 18 July 2026

How to export your entire Strava history (and what to do with it)

Getting your complete activity archive out of Strava as GPX, what's actually in the export, and how to put years of walking data to work.

Your Strava account probably holds years of walking, running and general hill mileage. It's your data, and getting all of it out at once is straightforward, if slightly buried in the settings. Here's the full process, plus what the export actually contains and what you can do with it.

The bulk export (everything, one zip)

  1. Log in to Strava on the website, not the app.
  2. Click your avatar (top right) and choose Settings, then My Account.
  3. Scroll to Download or Delete Your Account and click Get Started. Don't worry: downloading is step one on that page; nothing gets deleted unless you continue to the clearly separate step two.
  4. Under Download Request, click Request Your Archive.
  5. Strava emails you a zip within a few hours (large archives can take longer). The link expires after about a week, so download it when it arrives.

The archive contains an activities/ folder with every recorded activity as an individual file, plus CSVs of metadata, your profile, and everything else the account holds.

What's actually in the zip

One catch worth knowing: not every activity comes out as a clean .gpx. Depending on what device recorded it, files may be:

  • .gpx - plain XML with timestamped coordinates. Opens in anything, effectively immortal.
  • .fit or .fit.gz - Garmin's binary format, common if you synced from a Garmin device. Most tools read these directly; if not, free converters (GPSBabel, or fit2gpx scripts) turn them into GPX.
  • .tcx - an older Garmin XML format, similarly convertible.

The GPS track itself is identical in value whichever wrapper it arrived in.

Single activities

For one walk rather than the whole archive: open the activity on the website, click the three-dot menu, and choose Export GPX. Fine for a handful; nobody should do this two hundred times.

What to do with it

Keep a copy regardless. Companies change terms, get acquired, or retire products. A zip of plain-text GPX in your own storage is the only version of your walking history whose future you control. Do this once a year; it costs nothing.

Feed it to something that reads summits. This is our corner. Atlas accepts GPX uploads directly (or connects to Strava itself, which is easier if your account is active), and matches every track against UK peaks, trails, trig points and landmarks to rebuild your bagging record: every Wainwright, Munro and trig your tracks ever touched, with dates. The bulk-export route is particularly useful for data that predates your Strava account or came from a retired device.

Make your own maps. For the DIY-inclined: a folder of GPX opens in QGIS, or renders into a lifetime heatmap with a few lines of Python (gpxpy plus matplotlib gets you most of the way). A decade of tracks drawn on one map is a genuinely pleasing object.

The point

The export button matters beyond any single tool: it's the difference between renting your history and owning it. Whatever you use for tracking, keep the archive.

Related

Your GPS history already knows your number.

Atlas matches your Strava or GPX archive against every UK peak, trail and trig point. Find out free.