GpxFix Blog

Duplicate Activities on Strava: Why They Happen and Which to Keep

By Roy Lachica on October 23, 2026. Last updated October 23, 2026.

The same ride is in your Strava feed twice, with slightly different distances and two different sets of kudos. Or you try to upload a file and Strava refuses it as a duplicate. These are two separate problems that share a name, and the interesting one is the first, because you are not just deleting a copy, you are choosing which recording of your workout becomes the permanent one. Often the two copies are not equally good, and the one you delete can still be useful.

Why you end up with two copies

• Two devices recorded the same session. Watch and bike computer, watch and phone app, or a head unit plus a tracker in a jersey pocket. Both gets synced to Strava.
• Two sync paths into Strava. The classic is a Garmin connection plus a health platform connection, or a third-party sync service running alongside the native one. Each path faithfully delivers the same workout.
• You uploaded manually while auto-sync was still catching up. The activity had not appeared yet, you uploaded the file yourself, and the sync landed ten minutes later.
• You re-uploaded a corrected file without deleting the original, which is the normal end of every repair workflow and the easiest duplicate to create by accident.
• A group member uploaded on your behalf, or a shared connected app pushed the same file into two accounts.

Why it is worth cleaning up

A duplicate double counts. Weekly and monthly distance, elevation totals, challenge progress and training load all read high, and the activity appears twice on segment leaderboards, with two efforts for one ride. Months later it is also genuinely confusing to find two versions of the same session with different numbers and no note explaining which one you trusted.

Which copy should you keep

Do not assume the device you prefer produced the better file. Two recordings of the same workout can differ in ways that matter, and the only way to know is to look at both. Export both files, see how to download a GPX from Strava, Garmin and others, then load them into GpxFix and use Compare activities.

The comparison view shows both summaries at the top, then each activity with its own map, chart and slider, either side by side or overlaid on a single map so you can see where the two tracks disagree. The sliders can be locked together by time, by track point index, or by relative range, which is what lets you put both recordings at the same moment of the workout and see what each device thought was happening. Note that the comparison upload takes GPX, XML and TCX files, so convert a FIT file first, see FIT to GPX. There is a fuller walkthrough of the tool in comparing activities.

What to actually look for

• Track quality. Overlay the two and see which one drifts off the road, cuts corners, or wanders into buildings. Gpx lets you do this. A chest-mounted phone and a wrist watch can disagree by tens of metres.
• Point density. A device on smart recording writes far fewer points than one on one second recording. More points means better geometry, better segment matching and a more honest distance.
• Sensor data. Often only one of the two has heart rate, cadence or power. That usually settles the argument on its own.
• Distance and elevation. Compare both against the route you know you did, rather than against each other.
• Start and end. One device may have been started late or stopped early, or kept recording afterwards.
• Activity type. Check both are the sport you actually did, see why setting the correct activity type is essential.

Use the copy you are deleting

This is the part most people miss. A second recording of the same workout is an ideal reference file, because it covers exactly the same route at exactly the same time. So if the copy with heart rate has the worse GPS track, you do not have to choose blind:

• Smooth toward reference pulls the track you are keeping back toward the cleaner one wherever it drifts more than about 10 metres off, and snaps out speed spikes along the way.
• Repair from a reference file fills in sections the device you are keeping lost entirely, see repairing a workout using a reference GPX file.

Reference files can be GPX, XML, FIT or TCX, so the raw export from the second device works without conversion. Keep both original files somewhere, even after you delete one activity from Strava, deleting there is permanent and the file is the only copy of that recording.

When neither copy is complete

If the two files cover different parts of the session rather than the same part, for example one device died halfway and the other was started late, you are not choosing, you are joining. That is a different tool, see how to combine multiple runs into one activity. And if one copy turns out to be beyond saving, no GPS at all or a track that cannot be reconstructed, say so and move on, see why some workouts cannot be fixed.

The other duplicate: an upload Strava refuses

The second problem is the opposite situation, you want one copy and Strava will not take it, because an activity with the same start timestamp already exists. Saving directly to Strava from GpxFix reports this too, with a link to the existing activity so you can deal with it.

There are two ways through, and they are not interchangeable. If you are replacing an activity with a corrected version, delete the original first, that is the honest outcome and it leaves one copy. If you genuinely need both files to coexist, the start time of one has to differ, which the Strava upload errors guide covers in detail. Be careful with that second route, two copies of one workout in your history is exactly the double counting this article is about, so it is a workaround for an unusual need rather than the normal fix.

Stopping it happening again

• One sync path per device. Check your connected apps and turn off the redundant connection, this single change removes most recurring duplicates.
• Decide in advance which device is the record when you deliberately run two, and let only that one sync.
• Wait for auto-sync before uploading manually, and check the feed first.
• Delete the original as part of the repair, not as a separate task you will forget.
• Watch for a health platform in the middle. A phone that mirrors workouts into a health app, which then syncs onward, is a duplicate path that is easy to overlook.

Frequently asked questions

Does deleting a duplicate fix my totals?

Yes, the distance, elevation and time come off your totals, and the duplicate segment efforts disappear with the activity.

Why did Strava accept a duplicate without warning me?

Because detection keys on activities starting at the same moment. Two devices started a few seconds apart, or a file whose timestamps were shifted, look like two different activities, so both are accepted.

Can I merge the two copies into one activity?

Not as a single merge of two recordings of the same stretch, and that would not help anyway, since you would be adding the same distance twice. Pick one and improve it using the other as a reference. Joining is for files that cover different parts of a session.

One copy is a FIT and the other a GPX, which is better?

The FIT is usually the richer record, with laps and sensor channels a GPX export may have dropped, see FIT to GPX. Judge the track itself on its own merits though, format and quality are separate questions.

My two devices recorded different sports for the same session

Then one of the profiles was wrong, which affects far more than the label, see why setting the correct activity type is essential.

Got the same workout twice and no idea which to bin? Load both files into GpxFix and compare them before you delete anything. Related reading: comparing activities and when you press start before the GPS locks.