TrainingPeaks has been the default training log for endurance coaches for years. It is where many coaches build plans, where their athletes’ rides and runs land, and where terms like Training Stress Score come from. It holds 4.7 from about 12,700 ratings on the US App Store and 4.2 from about 33,400 reviews on Google Play, as of 22 September 2026. Two things changed in 2026 that most reviews have not caught up with: Garmin now owns it, and its indoor riding app, TrainingPeaks Virtual, has become part of the Premium subscription.
How we put this together. We have not used TrainingPeaks ourselves; this is a research-based review. Prices come from TrainingPeaks’ athlete pricing page, its coach pricing page and the US App Store, all served in US dollars, and feature details from its help centre and Garmin’s announcement, all read on 22 September 2026. Where TrainingPeaks’ own pages disagree, we say so. Nothing below is a test result.
TrainingPeaks at a glance
| Item | What TrainingPeaks says |
|---|---|
| Basic (athlete) | Free: log and upload training, view summaries, follow a plan or coach |
| Premium (athlete, US web) | $19.95 a month, $49.00 a quarter or $134.99 a year (about $11.25 a month) |
| Premium trial | 14 days, cancel within them and you are not charged |
| Refunds | 100% of your last payment within 7 days of purchase or renewal; none after |
| Coach Edition | From $21.99 a month, 7-day free trial |
| AI coaching | None found on its pricing, feature or help pages |
| Indoor riding | TrainingPeaks Virtual, included with Premium |
| Sports | Cycling, running, triathlon, swimming, rowing, winter sports and strength |
| Owner | Garmin, since 22 July 2026 |
| App ratings (22 Sep 2026) | 4.7 on the US App Store (about 12,700 ratings); 4.2 on Google Play (about 33,400 reviews) |
What TrainingPeaks is
TrainingPeaks is less an app that tells you what to do and more the place where training is planned, recorded and analysed. An athlete’s watch, bike computer or indoor app uploads each session; TrainingPeaks scores it, adds it to a calendar and tracks how fitness and fatigue build over weeks and months. Plans come from a coach, from a plan bought on its marketplace, or from the athlete. The software does not write them itself.
That is the key difference from TrainerRoad, JOIN or Xert, which generate and adjust your workouts automatically. TrainingPeaks gives you, or your coach, the tools to do that by hand. Its About page lists trademarks that have become the vocabulary of endurance training: “TrainingPeaks, TSS, Training Stress Score, IF, Intensity Factor, NP, Normalized Power and VirtualCoach”. Those metrics are the reason many coaches will not move.
TrainingPeaks pricing in 2026
Athletes choose between a free Basic account and Premium. On 22 September 2026 the athlete pricing page showed Premium at $19.95 a month, $49.00 a quarter, or $134.99 a year, which it presents as “$11.25 /Month” and “Save 44%”. There is a 14-day free trial: “You can cancel the free trial anytime within those 14 days and you won’t get charged.” The pricing FAQ adds that “The only features we offer that are not included with Premium are personal coaches and training plans”, which are sold separately.
The annual price has risen. A help centre notice dated February 2025 says that from 2 April 2025 the annual subscription went “from $124.99/year to $134.99 USD”, and that “All TrainingPeaks charges are in U.S. dollars, plus applicable sales tax and VAT.” At least one competitor’s comparison page still quotes an older $119.99 annual figure.
Why you may see different prices
TrainingPeaks’ own pages do not all agree. The US App Store lists a monthly Premium subscription at $19.99 rather than $19.95, a quarterly plan at $48.99, the $134.99 annual plan and a legacy “One Year Premium Subscription” at $119.99. The coach pricing page’s FAQ still says athletes “pay between $9.92 and $20/month for premium”, a range that no longer matches the athlete page. If you buy in the iPhone app, expect the App Store price; on the web, the pricing page applies. On either, the yearly plan is the clear saving: TrainingPeaks says it saves $104.41 compared with twelve months at the monthly rate.
What Premium adds over Basic
The Basic vs Premium article (updated September 2025) says both tiers can log training on the web, iPhone and Android, upload from “90+ devices and mobile apps”, view workout summaries and follow a plan or coach. Premium adds the tools most people pay for:
- planning future workouts yourself, the Annual Training Plan and unlimited workout libraries;
- the Performance Management Chart, advanced metrics and more than 30 fitness trend charts;
- Peak Performances, data editing and elevation correction;
- calendar sync with Outlook, Google and iCal, weather, and Fueling Insights;
- TrainingPeaks Virtual for indoor riding.
For a coached athlete, Basic can be enough, since the coach builds the calendar and TrainingPeaks’ coach pricing table shows the Performance Management Chart as “Coach Only” on Basic accounts. For a self-coached athlete, Basic is a log, and Premium is the product.
Refunds and cancelling
The refund window is short. TrainingPeaks’ account and billing article (updated August 2026) says: “Within the first 7 days of your initial subscription purchase or the renewal of an existing subscription … we will refund you 100% of your LAST payment.” After 7 days, “there will be no refunds given”. Refunds need a support ticket, and purchases made through iOS must be refunded “through the Apple Store”. If Premium lapses, the account reverts to Basic and “None of your data will be lost”.
One limit matters here: the mobile app cannot switch off auto-renewal. TrainingPeaks’ mobile features article lists account management, including the ability to “turn off subscription auto-renew”, among the things you must do on the web. It also lists adding a coach, copy and paste, new thresholds, the Structured Workout Builder and adding equipment. If you want to cancel an annual plan before renewal, set a reminder and use a browser. The mobile subscription article covers subscriptions bought through the app stores.
Coach Edition pricing
Coaches pay separately. The coach pricing page shows Coach Edition “Price Starting At: $21.99 /Month” plus a $99 start-up fee that is waived with a coupon code printed on the same page. That starting plan includes four Basic athlete accounts and one Premium. Five or more Basic athletes move the base price to $54.99. Premium athletes can be added for $9 a month each, falling in steps to $4.50 each above 1,000 athletes. There is a 7-day free trial, and TrainingPeaks bills coach accounts retroactively, so a final invoice arrives the month after you close.
The same page promotes the marketplace as income: “100,000+ Marketplace visits per month”, “70,000+ Training plans sold in 2023” and “$10,000+ Monthly income for top sellers”. Those are TrainingPeaks’ own figures. Coaches can also use Dynamic Training Plans to push the same dated workouts to many athletes’ calendars at once, which is how squads and clubs tend to run it.
The metrics: TSS, CTL, ATL and form
Everything in TrainingPeaks rests on Training Stress Score, a single number for how hard a session was relative to your threshold. Summed over time, it produces three lines on the Performance Management Chart: Fitness (CTL, chronic training load), Fatigue (ATL, acute training load) and Form (TSB, training stress balance, roughly fitness minus fatigue).
In September 2026 TrainingPeaks published Performance Insights for Premium athletes, which put words on those numbers. Its Form bands run from “Recharging” at 30 or more, through Fresh (5 to 29), Maintaining (−10 to 4) and Optimal (−29 to −11), to “Overloading” at −30 or less. A Fitness ramp of 9 or more a week is labelled “Going Hard”. Recovery Insights add HRV, resting heart rate and sleep, and Training Insights compare your RPE and “Feeling” scores with intensity. These are the most direct guidance TrainingPeaks offers without a coach, and they are descriptive: they tell you where you are, not what to ride tomorrow.
The help centre is open about the model’s weak spots. It has troubleshooting articles titled “What is wrong with my Performance Management Chart?” and “Why do my running TSS values seem wrong?”, and a guide to Suggested Weekly TSS and Target CTL for setting targets. TSS depends on an accurate threshold; if your FTP or threshold pace is out of date, every number downstream is wrong too.
Is there any AI in TrainingPeaks?
Not in the sense TrainerRoad, JOIN or Humango use the word. We found no AI coaching feature on TrainingPeaks’ pricing page, athlete features page, Virtual page or the help articles we read. The only “AI” we found was in TrainingPeaks Virtual, which lets you “ride with a group of unique AI race bots”. “VirtualCoach” appears in the list of trademarks on its About page, but not as a product on any page we read.
That is an absence of evidence, not proof, and it may change under Garmin. But as of 22 September 2026, a TrainingPeaks athlete without a coach gets data, charts and insights, and decides the training themselves or buys a plan. If you want software that plans and adjusts for you, look at our TrainerRoad alternatives guide, several of which send their workouts to TrainingPeaks.
TrainingPeaks Virtual: indoor riding included
TrainingPeaks Virtual is the indoor cycling app that started life as indieVelo. Its release notes record the change: indieVelo logins were removed and indieVelo-branded kit retired. The Virtual page says it “is included with any TrainingPeaks Premium subscription”, so Premium now covers a Zwift-style app at no extra cost. Features include GPX route import, structured workouts with ERG, heart-rate-based ERG, group rides, drafting and cornering physics, race formats with AI bots, and an Apple TV app.
It is still young. The release notes start at “v0.2.0 … Closed Beta … 5 June 2023” and, on 22 September 2026, the latest entry was v0.4.39, “Garmin Workouts”, dated 21 September 2026, which added syncing of scheduled workouts from Garmin Connect, syncing of Garmin Training Readiness, and the “ability to select workout of the day based on Training Readiness”. The minimum specifications list Windows 10 64-bit or macOS 11, and Bluetooth FTMS, Wahoo, Tacx, ANT+ and Direct Connect trainers; “Zwift controllers are not compatible devices”, and without a smart trainer, terrain and workout resistance changes are not available. Coaches can log in to build rides and events, but to ride you need a Premium athlete account.
Garmin owns TrainingPeaks now
On 22 July 2026 Garmin announced it “has acquired the TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic training platforms for athletes and coaches”. Andy Stephens, chief executive of parent company Peaksware Holdings, is quoted in the release. The businesses are headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, and “120 combined associates” join Garmin. Financial terms were not disclosed.
What the release does not say is as important. We found no statement in it about continuing to support devices from Garmin’s competitors. Today TrainingPeaks’ device page says it “connects with more devices and apps than any other endurance training app on the market”, and lists Apple Watch, Wahoo, Polar, COROS, Suunto, Amazfit, WHOOP, OURA, Zwift, TrainerRoad and many more alongside Garmin. The first product change after the deal, the Garmin workout and Training Readiness sync in TrainingPeaks Virtual, points in Garmin’s direction. If you train on a COROS, Polar or Suunto watch, TrainingPeaks works with it today; whether that stays equally good is a question the release leaves open.
Plans marketplace and integrations
The training plans marketplace sells plans for triathlon, cycling, running, swimming, rowing, winter sports and strength, written by coaches and applied to your calendar by date. Plans are bought separately from Premium, and refunds are limited: you must ask “within 24 hours of the purchase”, and requests are assessed “case-by-case”, according to the billing article. Strength training has “1,000+ video-guided movements” that feed into fitness and fatigue scores.
TrainingPeaks is also a hub other training apps plug into. Its device page lists coaching apps including 2PEAK, AI Endurance, JOIN, TrainerDay and Wild.AI, and TrainerRoad can pull a coach’s TrainingPeaks bike workouts in, though TrainerRoad’s own planned workouts cannot be exported back. Our TrainerRoad review covers that link from the other side.
Who TrainingPeaks is for
A good fit if you
- work with a coach, or plan to, since most endurance coaches use it;
- are a coach who needs a calendar, libraries and a marketplace for plans;
- like to plan your own season and want the Performance Management Chart to guide it;
- train across several sports and want one log for all of them;
- want a free indoor riding app bundled with your analysis tool.
Probably not for you if you
- want the app to decide your workouts and adjust them for you;
- need a long refund window, since it is 7 days from each payment;
- manage your subscriptions only on your phone;
- want a mature virtual world; TrainingPeaks Virtual is still on 0.x releases.
For AI-planned training, our AI cycling coach apps and AI triathlon training apps guides compare the tools that build plans for you.
Our verdict
TrainingPeaks is the most established training log for endurance athletes and coaches, and the Premium price now buys more than it used to, with an indoor riding app included and clearer insights on form and fatigue. Its metrics are the shared language of coached training, and its device support is as wide as any app’s today.
It loses marks on three points. There is no AI coaching, so a self-coached athlete still does the planning. Its terms are tight: a 7-day refund window, auto-renewal that cannot be switched off in the app, and prices that differ between its own pages. And Garmin’s ownership leaves open how well rival devices will be treated. We score it 4.2 out of 5 on the research: the default choice if you have a coach or want to be your own, and the wrong one if you want software to coach you.
Sources
- trainingpeaks.com: athlete pricing, coach pricing, athlete features, TrainingPeaks Virtual, devices, training plans and About pages, read 22 September 2026.
- TrainingPeaks help centre articles on Basic vs Premium, the 2025 price change, billing and refunds, mobile subscriptions, mobile app limits, Performance Insights, the Performance Management Chart, weekly TSS targets, Dynamic Training Plans, Virtual release notes and Virtual specifications, read 22 September 2026.
- Garmin newsroom, 22 July 2026.
- US App Store and Google Play listings for TrainingPeaks, read 22 September 2026.
Written by
FazFaz is the founder of AIToolsBakery. Some tools here are tested hands on. Others are assessed from vendor documentation and pricing verified on the live page, and every review says which one it is. Sponsors can buy a position in a guide. They cannot buy the score, the criticism, or silence about a better option.
How we test and how we make money →
