Strat — the running app with something at stake

7 days

Every official challenge. A new one opens every Monday and every Wednesday.

$20–$1,000

What an entry can be staked at. The ladder starts at $20 and tops out at $75.

100%

Of the stake pool goes to the runners who finish. Strat takes nothing out of it.

3 ways

To prove a day: a run tracked live, Apple Health, or a review by a human.

How it works

Put your money where you said you'd be.

No odds, no draw, nobody else's luck to beat. Whether you finish is decided by whether you go running.

01

Put an entry down

Pick a challenge: a fixed distance, seven days, one price. Your stake goes into the pool with everyone else's. Every challenge is created and funded by Strat — runners can't host their own, so nobody is setting the terms of a contest they are also entering.

02

Run it. Every day.

Your distance comes from Apple Health's own sensor data, or from a run tracked live in the app. Typed-in numbers never count, from any app. Each day is judged in your own timezone, not ours.

03

Finish, and take your stake back

Everyone who finishes splits the pool equally. If everybody finishes, everybody gets their own stake back. Anything more than that came from the people who stopped — which is exactly why it is worth not stopping.

Inside the app

It's built. It just isn't published.

There is no crowd to show you yet and no results to quote, so here is the thing itself. These are screens from the finished iPhone app.

Home screen: today's run at 3.4 km against a 5.0 km goal, with a bar for each of the last seven days.

Discover screen: seven open competitions, with a line reading new challenges open every Monday and Wednesday, seven days each.

A run being tracked live: the route drawn on the map and a distance of 2.01 km.

The ladder

Six rungs, and it comes round every three weeks.

Two open every week, in order, hardest following easiest. Nothing here has run yet — these are the challenges as they are written into the app, not results.

Easy Start

Neon Coast 3K

The starting point. 3.0 km a day for seven days along sunny coastal avenues.

3.0 km / day7 days$20

Beginner

Sunrise Sprint 5K

5.0 km every morning for seven days. The habit that makes the rest possible.

5.0 km / day7 days$25

Intermediate

Midnight Burner 6K

One step up. 6.0 km a day through the neon night, for seven nights.

6.0 km / day7 days$30

Advanced

Mars Odyssey 8K

8.0 km a day for seven days. Real endurance, and a pot to match.

8.0 km / day7 days$40

Elite

Cyber Canyon 10K

10.0 km a day, seven days running. The one people train for.

10.0 km / day7 days$50

Ultra

Solar God 15K

15.0 km a day for seven days. The top of the ladder, and the biggest pot of the cycle.

15.0 km / day7 days$75

Ranks

Earned on distance alone.

Your rank comes from verified kilometres and nothing else. No rank depends on how much you staked, or on how much you took home.

Rookie Runner

10 km

Silver Runner

150 km

Gold Runner

350 km

Legend

1,500 km

Nobody gets rich running 5K. The money is there so that not going costs you something.

The whole idea, in one sentence.

Why it works

Accountability beats willpower.

Strat is a commitment device, not a contest against other people. The only person who can lose you the stake is you.

Skill, not chance

There is no draw, no odds and no random element. Strat is a skill-based athletic running competition: the outcome depends on your running, and on nothing else.

Measured, not claimed

Distance counts only from Apple's own sensors or from a run tracked live in the app, and the server re-does the arithmetic itself rather than trusting what the phone reports. Hand-typed entries never count.

The pool is not a rake

Every cent of the stake pool goes to the runners who finish. Strat's revenue is the service fee on entry, which is charged separately and shown before you pay.

Small on purpose

Entries are capped, withdrawals are capped, and paid challenges are 18+. This is meant to be the amount that gets you out of the door, not an amount worth chasing.

Verification

Here are the actual rules. Check them.

Most apps ask you to trust that cheating is handled. These are the real thresholds a day is measured against, and they are published because a rule you can read is worth more than a promise you can't.

SOURCES

A day counts from Apple Health's own sources — the iPhone's motion sensors and a paired Apple Watch — or from a run tracked live in the app. Manually entered health data never counts, from any app, and Strat never reads back its own writes, so a run can't be counted twice.

THE ROUTE

A live run is checked against its own GPS trace. The route is re-measured on the server and has to agree with the distance claimed within 25%; fixes have to arrive at least twice a minute with mean accuracy better than 35 m; and iOS's own flag for simulated locations is read and refused.

THE PACE

Faster than 2:40 per kilometre is treated as a vehicle. For scale, the marathon world record sits around 2:50. Above 60 km in a day, or 25 km in a single hour, nothing is credited automatically.

THE STRIDE

Steps have to match the distance they imply — between 800 and 2,600 per kilometre — and a run reporting no steps at all, or a cadence above 250 per minute, is refused. Steps are the cross-check here; the unit Strat measures is kilometres.

HARDWARE

Health data only moves a challenge day if the request carried proof it came from the genuine app on real Apple hardware. On entries above $100, Health can't complete a day at all — those are live-run only.

NO PERMISSIONS

You can compete without granting Health, Location, Motion, Photos, Camera, Push or Tracking access, by asking for manual review instead. A submission is a request, not a result: it credits nothing until a person approves it, and a challenge can't settle while one is still open.

YOUR DATA

Route data does not stay on the phone — the evidence has to reach the server for any of the above to be checked. Accepted routes are deleted after 30 days, rejected ones after 90. The Privacy Policy is the full version.

The money

What you pay, and where it goes.

All amounts are in US dollars, including for runners in Europe — your bank may apply its own conversion. Entry payments and payouts are both handled by Whop on their own hosted pages; card details never reach Strat.

What an entry costs

$21.50

A $20 challenge costs $21.50 to enter: the $20 stake, which goes into the pool, plus a service fee of $1.00 + 2.5%, which is what Strat is paid for running the thing.

The fee is charged on top, shown before you pay, and is not returned if you stop — the challenge still ran.

If you finish

pool ÷ finishers

That is the entire formula for every challenge on the ladder, rounded down to the cent. Nothing is skimmed off the pool first.

So if everyone finishes, everyone takes their own stake back and is down the service fee. There is no guaranteed profit, and no projected one either — what you get depends on how many people didn't finish, which is not something anybody can promise you in advance.

If you miss a day

$0 back

Your entry closes and your stake stays in the pool for the runners still in it. Nothing further is charged, and you can't re-enter that same challenge — only the next one.

This is the part to take seriously before you pay.

If it doesn't fill, or nobody finishes

refunded

A challenge needs at least two runners. If it hasn't filled by the deadline and someone has already paid, it is cancelled and everything charged — stake and fees — is returned.

If a challenge runs and nobody finishes it, every stake goes back to the balance it came from.

Getting money out

$25 min

Withdrawals go to a Whop payout account: $25 minimum, up to $500 per day and $2,000 per week, and identity verification once lifetime payouts reach $600.

Whop controls which methods are available, how long they take, and any conversion fees. Strat does not promise a direct bank transfer.

What can't change

locked in

A challenge's price, fees, dates and rules are frozen onto it the moment it is created. They can never be altered under someone who has already paid to enter, including by us.

The current rulebook is public at the Terms and Official Rules.

Questions

The ones worth asking.

Is this steps, or kilometres?

Kilometres. Strat is a running app, and every challenge sets a distance per day rather than a step target. Steps are read only as a cross-check: they have to be consistent with the distance you claimed, or the day doesn't count.

Is Strat gambling?

Strat is built and operated as a skill-based athletic running competition, not a gambling service. There is no draw, no odds and no random element: whether you finish depends on your own running, and you are not matched against anyone else's performance.

Being straight about the limits of that statement: it is how the service is designed and described, not a ruling anyone has issued. Paid challenges are 18+ and are only opened in countries where the operator has enabled them.

When can I actually use it?

Not yet. The app is finished and the service runs, but it is not on the App Store, and there is no announced date — you would only be told a date if there were a real one.

The waitlist exists so you get one email on the day, instead of having to keep checking.

Who can enter a paid challenge?

Adults, 18 or over, in the countries the operator has switched on. The plan is to open in Austria and Germany first. That list is set on the server and the app refuses a paid entry from anywhere else.

Can I win money?

You can end a challenge with more than you put in, if other people drop out. But that is not what Strat is for, and it is not something to plan around: if everyone finishes, everyone simply gets their own stake back and is down the entry fee.

The reason to put money down is that it makes going for a run the cheaper option. Anyone selling you running as an income is selling you something else.

What if I get injured, or something comes up?

Missing a day closes your entry and the stake stays in the pool. There is no medical exception built into the rules, and it would be dishonest to imply otherwise — which is the reason the challenges are seven days rather than thirty, and the reason the stakes are small.

If something has gone wrong, write to playspeedrun.app@gmail.com.

Do I have to give the app my health data or my location?

No. You can compete without granting Health, Location, Motion, Photos, Camera, Push or Tracking permission by submitting the day for manual review instead. It is slower, because a person reads it, and it credits nothing until they approve it.

Granting Health or live tracking is the faster path, not the only one.

I use a Garmin, a Fitbit, a WHOOP or an Oura ring.

Only Apple's own sources count automatically — the iPhone itself and a paired Apple Watch. Data another device writes into Apple Health is not accepted, because Strat cannot tell how it was measured.

You can still compete: track the run live in the Strat app, or submit the day for manual review.

Can I set up a challenge for me and my friends?

Not today. Every challenge is created and funded by Strat, and there is no way for a runner to host one. That is deliberate: whoever writes a contest's rules should not also be entering it.

What happens to the address I give you here?

It is stored to send you one email when Strat launches, and used for nothing else — no newsletter, no advertising, and it is never passed to an advertising platform. You can have it deleted at any time by using the unsubscribe link or by writing to playspeedrun.app@gmail.com.

The full detail is in the Privacy Policy.

Before the first one runs

Nobody has run a Strat challenge yet.

The first cohort is whoever is on this list when it opens. One email, on the day, and then it is up to you whether you put anything down.

Make quitting the expensive part.