How accurate is strava?

[the_mikey]

But the different sites like Strava, Endomondo, Ride with GPS, Map my ride etc, can do different things, and don't even start with altitude, they all seem to lose different amounts of altitude from the ride

That is a mixture of map data and data from the gps device, I have several points set in my edge 800 with the correct altitude, this should help calibrate the edge 800 when you pass those points. Otherwise it is reliant on map data, some sites will disregard this data anyway and just go with map data, but that won't be 100% accurate or correct either depending on the quality of map data.

 

[Stonechat]

Also when you stop - like yesterday I had a puncture, the pressure changes and you get a false altitude change, (I have Garmin Edge 500 so no maps)

 

[jefmcg]

I had an interesting experience the other day ... I'm running strava and endomondo from the same phone - yup, i use both. Strava stopped at some point, so I restarted it. There was a QOM I was attempting, but missed it by 4 seconds, I was at 52 s, QOM was 48. I didn't expect to get it because Vickster had it, she's generally faster than me and it was on a narrow street with a car coming towards me, so I didn't hit my top speed.

Anyway, when I got home I deleted the only-partial strava ride, and replaced it with the GPX from the endomondo ride. I came in 4 seconds faster on that segment, and got equal (3 of us now) QOM. That's nearly a 10% difference using the same device.

Not sure what this means. While endomondo and strava use the same device, they sample at different times. So I guess that can lead to 10% errors over a short ride.

 

[jefmcg]

OK, this is weird ... I just went to the confirm that ride as described above ... and it wasn't there! Does strava delete rides?? I uploaded the GPX again, and got the same result, so I'm not just imagining it. What happens if someone flags a ride: do you get an email or anything.

Not that there was anything suspicious about the ride, average less than 20kph, max less than 40kph

 

[Lanzecki]

OK, this is weird ... I just went to the confirm that ride as described above ... and it wasn't there! Does strava delete rides?? I uploaded the GPX again, and got the same result, so I'm not just imagining it. What happens if someone flags a ride: do you get an email or anything.

Not that there was anything suspicious about the ride, average less than 20kph, max less than 40kph

Noone beats @vickster .