Updated November 9, 2026

Privacy Policy

Rivals lets you race friends live from different places. This policy explains what Rivals collects, why, who can see it and how to delete it. Rivals is run by Nikhil Kapadia.

What we collect

• Your sign-in. You sign in with Apple or with Strava, and you can add the other later.
• Sign in with Apple. We store the identifier Apple gives Rivals for your Apple Account, and your first and last name if you choose to share them the first time you sign in. We don't store your email address. Where it's set up, we also keep an Apple token that we use only to revoke Rivals' access when you delete your account. It's encrypted and never sent to your phone.
• Strava, if you connect it. Strava is optional. We store your Strava athlete ID and access tokens that let Rivals read your runs and, if you turn it on, sync races to Strava. Tokens are encrypted and never sent to your phone. We also keep your Strava profile photo and city for up to 7 days. If you sign up with Strava, we start your display name from the first and last name Strava provides.
• Your display name. The name friends see. Until you confirm it, other people see you as "Runner".
• Race and run data. While you're in a race, a time trial or a run you record, your phone sends GPS location, speed, heart rate (from a Bluetooth monitor, watch or Apple Health, if you connect one) and cadence. While a run is paused, its location isn't sent. We store this to score the race, show your results and route, keep head-to-head records and work out your personal bests.
• Runs from Strava. If Strava is connected, your recent runs so you can see them in History. We keep a copy for at most 7 days and refresh it when you open History. Older runs are fetched from Strava when you scroll back to them and aren't kept longer than 7 days either. Your Strava totals are kept for up to a day. Rivals only keeps runs, not other Strava activities. You can race one of these runs as a ghost in a time trial. Only you see that ghost. The trial keeps just the Strava activity ID, and its ghost goes away once the run is no longer in that 7-day copy.
• Garmin, if you connect it. Garmin is optional. When you connect it, Garmin sends Rivals the outdoor runs your watch records: start time, route, distance, pace, heart rate, cadence, elevation and the name of the device. Rivals saves each one as a Rivals run. We also store your Garmin user ID, which sharing permissions you gave, when you agreed to connect, and access tokens that are only used to check and end the connection. Tokens are encrypted and never sent to your phone. We don't get your other Garmin data, such as sleep, steps or health stats, and runs from before you connected are never imported.
• Friends and races. Who you're friends with, friend requests, your invite code, the races you create or join, and the results.
• Comments and cheers. Comments you write and cheers you give on your friends' races, time trials and runs, and the ones you get on yours.
• Reports and blocks. If you report a comment or a person, we store the report, the reason and any note you add. We also keep a copy of any reported comment, the person's display name and a reference to their profile photo so we can review it. We also store who you've blocked. If another runner blocked you, deleting your account keeps the limited fingerprint described below so their block still applies.
• Notifications. A push token, if you allow notifications, to send race invites, friend updates, results, cheers, comments and your friends' new personal bests.

Rivals only uses location during a race, time trial or run that you start. It does not track you at other times.

Camera and photos

Rivals uses the camera to scan a friend's Rivals QR code and, if you choose, to take a profile photo. You can also choose a profile photo from your photo library.

A profile photo you upload is resized on your phone, stored by Rivals and shown with your name to friends, people in your races and races you watch, in search results and on invite links. Anyone who has the photo's link can also see it.

You can remove your profile photo at any time from Profile → Edit profile. Deleting your account deletes it too. Copies that people have already downloaded or cached may remain.

Your Strava profile photo is only shown to you. We never show it to anyone else.

Who can see it

• People in your race, runners and spectators, see your display name, distance, pace, heart rate, cadence and rank while you race, and your results afterwards.
• Location. If you share location for a race (on by default, and you can turn it off per race), people in that race see where you are while you run and your route afterwards. If it's off when the race ends, your route is still saved for you but others don't see it, including in friends' feeds. If you turn it on partway through a race, others only see the route from that point. You keep the full route.
• Anyone with a watch link you share. If you share a watch link for a race, time trial or run, anyone who has the link can follow it live in a web browser without an account. They see every runner's distance, pace, place and time. Runners are listed as "Runner" until they choose to show themselves, by sharing the link or turning on Show me on the watch page. Then viewers see their first name and last initial, and their position and recent path on a map if they've also turned on location sharing for that race. A position disappears after ten minutes without a fresh location. Viewers never see heart rate, cadence, photos or anything from Strava, and a ghost shows only as "Ghost" with its distance. The link stops working 24 hours after the race ends. The host or the runner who created it can turn it off for everyone sooner, and you can hide yourself at any time. Blocks can't apply to someone without an account, so only share the link with people you want watching.
• Friends see your display name, when you're in a live race (they can join it as a spectator), your head-to-head record against them from races you've both run, and your personal best times at standard distances, which they can race as a ghost. A ghost is your pace over time, never your route.
• Your friends' feed. When you finish a race, time trial or run, your friends see it in their feed: its name, distance, time, pace, splits (without heart rate), place, any personal bests it set, a ghost you raced and beat or not, and your route map. Turn off Share runs in Profile → Privacy to keep your runs to yourself (friends still see best times from them, but not when you ran them), or Show route maps to keep your maps to yourself. Results flagged as implausible never show. Nobody can join or watch your runs and time trials while you're doing them, unless you share a watch link.
• Runs from Garmin are Rivals runs. Friends see them in their feed like any other run, marked as recorded with Garmin, following your Share runs, Share training and Show route maps settings. They count toward your personal bests, awards and the friends leaderboard.
• Comments and cheers on something in the feed are seen by the person who posted it and by everyone who can see it, which is that person's friends. You can delete your own comments, and any comment on your own races, trials and runs.
• Blocking. If you block someone, or they block you, neither of you sees the other's feed, comments or cheers, and you drop out of each other's friends list and search. Neither of you can join a race the other is in. If you're in one together when you block, a spectator or someone who hasn't started yet is taken out of it; if you're both already running, you both finish, but neither sees the other's location or heart rate or hears their voice.
• Anyone with your invite link or code sees your display name before they send you a request. Name search only shows people who've confirmed their name.
• Data from Strava, including your runs, totals, photo and city, is only ever shown to you. It never appears in your friends' feed: a time trial against one of your Strava runs shows to them as a solo trial, with nothing about that run. We don't show your Strava profile photo to other people.
• Reports are seen only by us, to review them. The person you report isn't told who reported them.
• Voice chat is live push-to-talk audio between people in the same race. It is relayed in real time and not recorded or stored.

Syncing races to Strava

"Sync races to Strava" is off unless you turn it on, and it needs Strava connected. When it's on, each race, time trial and run you finish is posted to your Strava account as a run with your own distance, time, route, heart rate, cadence and, for races, finishing place. Nobody else's name or data goes with it. For anything synced to Strava, we keep the Strava activity ID so it can link to it. Deleting a run in Rivals doesn't remove a copy already on Strava. What happens to runs on Strava is covered by Strava's own privacy policy.

Apple Health

If you connect Apple Health, Rivals reads heart rate during races and runs and saves your finished races and runs to Health as running workouts, with your distance and route. You can turn saving off in Profile → Heart rate & sensors. Health data is never used for advertising, never sold and never shared with anyone outside your race.

Usage counts and crash reports

To see which features get used, the app sends anonymous counts to PostHog, such as "a run was started" or "a friend was added" and which screens are opened. They're tied to a random ID for this install, not to your Rivals account, and that ID resets when you sign out. They never include your name, email, location, routes, times, paces, heart rate, or any Apple Health or Strava data, and we don't use PostHog to look up where you are.

If the app or our server crashes or hits an error, a report goes to Sentry so we can fix it. It has the app version, your device model and system version, and the error itself. It doesn't include your name, account, location, IP address or any of your race, health or Strava data.

What we don't do

No ads, no tracking across other apps or websites, and we never sell your data.

Where it's stored

Rivals runs on Cloudflare, which stores and processes data on our behalf. Voice audio passes through Cloudflare Realtime.

Garmin

You agree to the connection in the app before any data moves, then approve it on Garmin's site. If you start connecting and don't finish, Rivals ends that Garmin approval. Rivals uses Garmin data only to give you the features described here. We don't sell it, don't use it for advertising and don't use it to train AI models.

You can disconnect in Profile → Settings, or remove Rivals in Garmin Connect. Rivals then stops getting new runs and deletes your Garmin tokens. Runs already imported stay in Rivals as part of your history until you delete them, one at a time or with your account. Rivals doesn't send Garmin runs on to Strava or Apple Health.

A run you also record on your phone isn't added twice. If your phone's copy reaches Rivals after the Garmin one, both show, and you can delete either.

Disconnecting Strava

You can disconnect Strava in Profile → Settings, or revoke Rivals' access on Strava's website. Disconnecting in the app needs another way to sign in, so add Sign in with Apple first. Either way, we delete your Strava tokens, the runs and totals we saved from Strava, and your Strava photo and city, and we turn off syncing races to Strava. Time trials against one of your Strava runs lose that ghost. Your Rivals races, friends, records and display name stay.

After you disconnect, we keep one thing: a one-way fingerprint of your Strava athlete ID, made with a secret key. It can't be turned back into your athlete ID. We use it only so that signing in with that Strava account again brings you back to the same Rivals account instead of creating a new one. It's deleted with your account unless another runner blocked you, as described below.

Blocks after account changes

If another runner blocked you, we keep a one-way fingerprint of your Apple or Strava sign-in, made with a secret key, next to their block for up to two years. We do this when you delete your account, unlink Sign in with Apple, or switch to a different Strava account. It can't be turned back into your Apple or Strava ID. This lets their block still apply if you sign up again with that sign-in. Nothing else about you is kept with it. It goes if they delete their account.

Deleting your data

• Delete account (Profile → Settings → Delete account) permanently deletes your profile, friends, race history, recorded tracks and the other data listed above, apart from the limited block fingerprint described above, and revokes Rivals' access to Strava, to Garmin and, where it's set up, to your Apple Account. Races you hosted stay available to the other people in them, without your data.
• Deleting a comment removes it for everyone. Deleting a run, or your account, also deletes the comments and cheers on it, and deleting your account deletes the comments and cheers you gave.
• Runs already synced to Strava stay in your Strava account until you delete them there.
• Your activities in Garmin Connect aren't touched by anything you delete in Rivals.

Children

Rivals is not intended for children under 13.

Contact

Questions about your data, or want something deleted? Email support@talix.app.

Changes

If this policy changes, we'll update the date above and tell you in the app for significant changes.