After Garmin Bought TrainingPeaks: Which Endurance Coaching Platforms Are Still Independent?

On 22 July 2026, Garmin acquired TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic. For more than two decades, TrainingPeaks was the leading manufacturer-independent platform for structured endurance training. Whether the neutrality will remain is the open question.

TrainingPeaks told customers it would continue operating as a cross-platform ecosystem. Garmin has said the acquisition strengthens its coaching ecosystem and both those statements may still hold true.

State of play

The acquisition also lands in the middle of a longer pattern. Independent training and coaching platforms have steadily been absorbed by hardware, software and media parents. This is a field guide to which endurance coaching platforms are still independent, which are not, and whether that should change how you choose.

At a glance

Platforms already inside a parent

A partial list of endurance training platforms that are no longer independent:

• TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic: acquired by Garmin, 22 July 2026.
• WKO: sits under TrainingPeaks. Garmin has made no public statement about WKO’s future.
• Today’s Plan: owned by Specialized (bike manufacturer) from 2019, and shut down on 12 March 2024. Users lost data access.
• Stages training log: relied on Today’s Plan infrastructure and disappeared alongside it.
• RGT Cycling: owned by Wahoo, closed October 2023.
• The Sufferfest: owned by Wahoo and folded into the Wahoo ecosystem.
• Runna: acquired by Strava in April 2025, with similar assurances about continuing to operate independently.
• TrueCoach: owned by Xplor Technologies (fitness and wellness software and payments). The focus is on personal training and gym rather than endurance rosters.
• JOIN Cycling: acquired by activity-sharing platform Relive.
• Coros Training Hub, Polar Flow for Coach, Suunto coaching tools: these are vendor platforms rather than independents. Each is tied by definition to one brand’s hardware.

The reassuring language in these deals is familiar. TrainingPeaks said it would operate independently for the foreseeable future in its customer communication about the Garmin deal, and Strava gave similar assurances when it acquired Runna. Nevertheless, eventual outcomes have been varied. Today’s Plan and RGT show that a platform a coach depends on can simply be switched off.

Still independent: coach-facing platforms with athlete rosters

These are the competitors to TrainingPeaks’ Coach Edition: platforms built for a coach managing a roster rather than an individual logging their own training. Listed alphabetically, not ranked:

• Athletica: independent (Athletica Inc., Canada). AI-assisted, founded by exercise physiologist Paul Laursen and Stephen Brown.
• Athlin: independent. AI plan drafting.
• Athloft: new and small. Coach-to-athlete plan delivery.
• Coachbox: privately owned (T3 Technologies BVBA, Belgium). Triathlon-oriented, with lactate and metabolic testing built in.
• Final Surge: independent (Final Surge LLC, USA). A coach-friendly log and plan-delivery platform with free and paid tiers. Popular with running and triathlon coaches.
• Good Coach App: independent (Biokod Lab Sp. z o.o., Poland). Bootstrapped, device-agnostic, multilingual across eight languages, with a free tier for small rosters.
• Humango: independent (Humango, Inc., USA). AI coaching.
• Nolio: privately held (Nolio SAS, France). Modern interface, multisport.
• Training Tilt: independent (Tilt Software Limited, New Zealand). Coach-only, with business tools including payments, memberships and websites, and no athlete-side sales.
• TriDot: triathlon-focused, independent (Predictive Fitness, Inc.), but has taken outside investment. Data and AI-driven.

The takeaway is that “independent” is no longer a synonym for “TrainingPeaks.”

Still independent: athlete-facing analytics, logs and planning

Device-agnostic tools for analysis and planning, but without full coaching-business features like rosters, client management or payments. These could be paired with a coach’s ‘roster’ platform:

• Golden Cheetah: open source and desktop-based. Independent by nature.
• Intervals.icu: free, built and run by a single developer. Powerful analytics and a favourite of data-focused cyclists. Also offers a coach view for managing multiple athletes, which puts it partly in the roster-platform category too.
• Quantified Self: independent (Dimitrios Kanellopoulos, Greece). Brings Garmin, Suunto, Coros and Wahoo data into one dashboard, with readiness and load charts and a read-only MCP server. Built on the open-source sports-lib and fit-parser libraries.
• Runalyze: independent. Detailed analytics and strong in the running community.
• TrainerRoad: independent. A structured training platform with adaptive coaching, focused on cycling.
• Velo Hero: independent. A straightforward training logbook.
• Xert: independent. Adaptive training built around fitness signatures.

Golden Cheetah is worth calling out separately. Because it is an open-source project rather than a venture-backed company, it cannot be acquired in the same way as a commercial SaaS platform. That is a genuinely different kind of independence, and one that will remain even if the current commercial contenders are picked off over time.

Does independence actually matter?

It depends on how you coach.

It matters most if you coach athletes across a mix of device brands (Garmin, Coros, Polar, Suunto, Wahoo, Apple), if you value confidence that all major device brands continue to receive equal attention, and if you run coaching as a business that cannot afford to migrate on someone else’s timetable.

It matters least if you coach an all-Garmin roster and would welcome tighter Garmin integration, or if you are content to follow TrainingPeaks wherever it goes under new ownership. For those coaches, the acquisition may be a net positive.

How to weigh a switch

If the acquisition has you reconsidering, think about these:

1. Audit the devices used. The more non-Garmin hardware your athletes use, the more neutrality is worth to you.
2. Separate signal from noise. Garmin has committed to neutrality. Watch whether that commitment holds in the next year or so.
3. Check the exit. Can you export athlete history? or run a second platform in parallel?
4. Trial before switching. Any platform worth moving to should let you test it with a real athlete at no cost.
5. Check export formats. Verify that workouts, historical activities and coach notes can all be exported, not just FIT files.

The last few years have made one thing clear. The platform you build your coaching business on is becoming a decision about ownership and features.

Related reading on the5krunner

• IntervalCoach: AI Training That Adapts to Your Recovery Each Day: an indie AI training app operating in the same still-independent territory as the platforms in this piece.
• RiversideArt: Eighteen Garmin Apps Built Against the Subscription Tide: another view on the anti-consolidation, anti-subscription counter-trend in endurance tech.
• CycleLytic: Terrain-Honest Cycling Analytics: an independent analytics tool sitting on top of Strava, in the same category as the athlete-facing tools listed above.

Contributed piece, edited by the5krunner.

Last Updated on 4 October 2026 by tfk the5krunner

tfk the5krunner

tfk is the founder and author of the5krunner, an independent endurance sports technology publication. With 20 years of hands-on testing of GPS watches and wearables, and competing in triathlons at an international age-group level, tfk provides in-depth expert analysis of fitness technology for serious athletes and endurance sport competitors. See the gear tfk uses. ID