Garmin Acquires TrainingPeaks: What It Means for Coaches

TL;DR: On 22 July 2026, Garmin announced it had acquired TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic from Peaksware Holdings. The 120 combined staff, headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, join Garmin, and neither the price nor the other financial terms were disclosed (Garmin press release). We found no announced change to device support, pricing or coach accounts, and TrainingPeaks emailed its coaches to promise the platform stays cross-platform (DC Rainmaker, quoting the email). Garmin itself has said little beyond the press release. In our view, the honest summary is that a platform whose main commercial asset was neutrality is now owned by a hardware company. Based on how Garmin has handled past acquisitions, we think the most likely outcome is not disaster but stagnation: TrainingPeaks keeps running, largely unchanged, for years. What did change permanently is that endurance coaching no longer has an independent default platform. That is worth understanding before your next renewal, even if you do nothing about it today.

What Garmin Actually Bought

The deal covers more than the TrainingPeaks calendar most coaches picture:

• TrainingPeaks, the coach and athlete platform, including the training plan store (TrainingPeaks training plans) and the coach search directory (TrainingPeaks coach search)
• TrainHeroic, the strength and conditioning platform. TrainHeroic’s media kit lists 2012 as its founding year and Louisville, Colorado as its location (TrainHeroic media kit). See our TrainHeroic review for what it does
• TrainingPeaks Virtual, the indoor cycling platform TrainingPeaks bought as indieVelo in October 2024 (Peaksware announcement). TrainingPeaks says it “is included with any TrainingPeaks Premium subscription” (TrainingPeaks Virtual)
• WKO, the desktop analysis package. The most recent build in the WKO5 release notes is dated February 2024 (WKO5 release notes)
• The metric trademarks. TrainingPeaks marks Normalized Power, Intensity Factor and Training Stress Score as registered trademarks (TrainingPeaks on NP, IF and TSS). Other companies use those names under license: TrainerRoad, for example, states that “TSS is a trademark of Peaksware, LLC and is used with permission” (TrainerRoad). The5krunner also names Wahoo and Hammerhead as licensees (the5krunner)

Peaksware sold only its two sports businesses. Its website still lists MakeMusic, Alfred Music and Fons as its brands (Peaksware), so this was a carve-out rather than a sale of the whole company.

Garmin’s statement came from Co-Chief Operating Officer Brad Trenkle and framed the deal as expanding access to coaching inside the Garmin ecosystem. Peaksware CEO Andy Stephens described it as a continuation of more than a decade of working together (Garmin press release, DC Rainmaker).

One clarification on the trademarks: the marks cover the names, not the maths. Andrew Coggan published the underlying calculations in Training and Racing with a Power Meter, and anyone can compute the numbers (the5krunner). What you need permission for is calling the result “Normalized Power” or “TSS”. Strava, for example, shows its own Weighted Average Power, Intensity and Training Load (Strava training glossary).

What Did Not Change on Day One

This part matters, because the first wave of reaction ran well ahead of the facts:

• Device support. TrainingPeaks committed in writing to customers that the platform “will continue to operate as a cross-platform ecosystem” (DC Rainmaker, quoting the email). Its device compatibility article still lists Garmin, Wahoo, Polar, COROS, Suunto and others (TrainingPeaks help center)
• Pricing. TrainingPeaks still lists the Coach Edition, the Premium athlete subscription and the option to add Premium athletes to a coach account (coach pricing, athlete pricing). Our TrainingPeaks pricing breakdown covers what that costs a coach
• Coach accounts. We found no announced change to rosters, the training plan store or the coach directory
• No Connect+ merge has been announced. The press release says nothing about Garmin Connect+ (Garmin press release). The talk of TrainingPeaks disappearing into a Garmin subscription tier is speculation

If you coach on TrainingPeaks, nothing is asking you to act this week.

Why Garmin Did This, According to People Who Disagree

Two widely read independent endurance tech sites published their analyses on the day of the announcement and reached different conclusions. In our view, that disagreement is more useful than either take alone.

The5krunner argues the value is the coaching archive. In its analysis, TrainingPeaks holds something Garmin cannot generate: a record of what a qualified human coach prescribed, whether the athlete completed it, and what happened next, accumulated since 1999 across every brand of hardware. In its words, a model trained on Garmin Connect alone “learns what people did”, while one trained on the TrainingPeaks archive “learns what a coach decided and whether the decision worked” (the5krunner).

DC Rainmaker calls that overrated. Ray Maker writes that Garmin already has “far more data” than TrainingPeaks, and that the vast majority of TrainingPeaks data likely comes from Garmin devices anyway. His read is that TrainingPeaks could give Garmin Connect+ more value, for example by adding it in some tier (DC Rainmaker). A reader under his post floated a simpler explanation: around 120 people, most of them engineers, in a city where Garmin already has an office. Maker replied that in the short to medium term, staff in Garmin acquisitions tend to stay in place supporting the products they built.

They land on the same practical outcome by different routes. DC Rainmaker, who says he spent over a decade working on IT integration of acquisitions, sees “virtually zero chance” of integrating TrainingPeaks into Garmin Connect at a native level, and points to MotionBased (which became Garmin Connect), DeLorme (which became inReach) and Tacx, which has run largely as-is since the purchase (DC Rainmaker). The5krunner reaches the same endpoint by arguing Garmin has no need to try, since it can bundle TrainingPeaks or TrainingPeaks Virtual into a tier “while both platforms carry on running exactly as they do now” (the5krunner).

Either way, in our view TrainingPeaks most likely stays TrainingPeaks. That settles this season and raises a harder question about the ones after it, because Garmin then has to fund a large platform indefinitely without folding it into anything. As Maker puts it, “at some point, someone might see that budget line item and question it.”

What Garmin’s Past Acquisitions Tell Us

Nobody can answer the coach questions from the press release, because the press release does not address them. What we can do is look at how Garmin has handled the companies it already bought. That record is long enough to be useful.

• DeLorme (2016) made the inReach satellite communicators, and Garmin kept the team in Yarmouth, Maine (Garmin press release). Garmin’s senior marketing manager for inReach told customers at the time that they could keep using their service “just as they always have” with no changes planned to the subscriptions (AOPA, quoting Garmin). Garmin still sells inReach devices today (Garmin satellite communicators)
• Tacx (2019) kept its headquarters in Wassenaar, the Netherlands, according to Garmin’s announcement (Garmin press release). DC Rainmaker describes Tacx as running basically as-is since then, with improvements (DC Rainmaker), and Tacx trainers still work with third-party apps such as Zwift (Garmin and Zwift)
• Firstbeat (2020) is the cautionary one. When DC Rainmaker asked at the time, Garmin’s fitness PR lead answered: “Yes, Firstbeat will continue licensing to 3rd party companies” (DC Rainmaker, 2020). Six years later, Maker writes that licensing “slowly disappeared” and that, as far as he knows, Firstbeat does not license its metrics to new customers (DC Rainmaker)
• MotionBased became Garmin Connect, according to DC Rainmaker (DC Rainmaker)
• Backtracker became Varia radar, which Maker counts as a success. Alphamantis aero sensors, in his words, “fired a blank” (DC Rainmaker)
• MYLAPS (2025), the race timing company (Garmin press release), came too recently before this deal to draw conclusions from

We draw three patterns from that, and they are the basis for our assessments below.

Acquired platforms rarely die, but they rarely accelerate either. In our view, Garmin’s habit is to keep things running separately for years. Expect stability rather than progress.

Commitments about third parties describe intent, not a guarantee. We do not suggest anyone at Garmin misled anyone about Firstbeat. The commitment was real, and then, by Maker’s account, it faded over several years.

Garmin says little about its plans. Its acquisition press releases for DeLorme, Tacx, Firstbeat and MYLAPS gave no purchase price, and DC Rainmaker notes that Garmin “does tend to provide virtually no information on acquisitions” (DC Rainmaker). Silence is characteristic, not a signal.

The Questions Coaches Are Asking

Will prices go up?

The most common reaction, usually paired with the assumption that TrainingPeaks features will end up behind Connect+. We found no announced price change, and with no disclosed purchase price there are no numbers behind the “they have to earn it back” argument.

Our read: a straight price hike on the existing product would be out of character. We found no sign that Garmin raised prices on Tacx or inReach because it bought them. The likelier shape, in our view, is a new bundle, where TrainingPeaks or TrainingPeaks Virtual appears inside a Connect+ tier (Garmin Connect+), which is the scenario both DC Rainmaker and the5krunner describe. That is an offer, not a hike. Watch what happens to Connect+, not to the TrainingPeaks price list.

What happens to my athletes on Wahoo, COROS or Polar?

The sharpest question for working coaches, and the one TrainingPeaks moved fastest to answer. A few hours after the announcement it emailed its coaches directly (DC Rainmaker, quoting the email):

As a valued customer we wanted to proactively assure you that TrainingPeaks will continue to operate as a cross-platform ecosystem, enabling athletes and coaches to use the devices, platforms and services that best suit their needs.

That is about as explicit as a commitment gets, and in our view it is the single most reassuring thing said so far. Two details are worth noticing anyway. The email came from TrainingPeaks Managing Director Lee Gerakos, not from Garmin, and DC Rainmaker reports that Garmin had not replied when he asked whether third-party uploads would stay open. It also commits to devices and platforms, saying nothing about pricing, roadmap or what happens if this ever conflicts with selling watches.

Our read: take the commitment at face value for the short term. An outright block was always unlikely, because it is visible, it would be reported within hours, and it would trigger exactly the migration that makes the purchase worthless. The written assurance makes that even less likely. The longer-term risk is not a block but a drift, where new capabilities arrive on Garmin hardware first and third-party support becomes the tier that never quite catches up. Remember that Garmin gave a public assurance about Firstbeat licensing in 2020 and, by DC Rainmaker’s account, that licensing later wound down. A promise describes intent today, which is genuinely worth something, and it is not a contract about 2030.

Is TrainingPeaks still neutral?

In our view, neutrality was not a nice quality of TrainingPeaks, it was the business model. Working with every brand is what let a coach run one calendar for thirty athletes on five brands of watch.

Our read: the technical answer today is yes. The compatibility list still covers the major brands (TrainingPeaks help center), and nothing suggests that changes soon. What changed is the nature of the guarantee. Neutrality used to be something TrainingPeaks depended on commercially. It is now a decision Garmin makes each year, weighed against selling hardware. Tacx suggests Garmin can live with that. Firstbeat suggests it does not always want to.

Will Garmin ruin the software?

A common fear, given Garmin Connect’s reputation. The realistic version is not that TrainingPeaks gets absorbed, since DC Rainmaker considers a native merge close to impossible, but that it stops receiving investment.

Our read: we think this is the most likely outcome of everything on this page. Garmin’s record suggests TrainingPeaks will still be here in five years, still recognisably itself, and not much further along. Our TrainingPeaks review covers where the platform already stood before the sale. If you were hoping the acquisition brings resources and a faster roadmap, Tacx is the closest preview: DC Rainmaker describes it as running largely as-is since 2019, with improvements. Note what that means in practice. Maker writes that most of TrainingPeaks’ offering “haven’t really changed over the years”, and the last WKO5 build is dated February 2024 (WKO5 release notes). So our forecast is that a platform many coaches already found slow to evolve now has an owner with no structural reason to change that. Nobody is going to break it. Nobody is going to fix it either.

What about API and data access?

Relevant if you build your own tooling. TrainingPeaks says its API “is currently available for approved developers only” and “access to the API is not available for personal use” (TrainingPeaks API). Garmin’s Connect Developer Program works on approval too, and Garmin says “it is only for business use” (Garmin Connect Developer Program FAQ).

Our read: we do not expect this to open up. Both companies limit their APIs to approved businesses today. If your workflow depends on getting data out programmatically, this acquisition does not improve your position and might eventually narrow it.

What have they actually said to coaches?

Coaches first heard about the deal from the press release: DC Rainmaker reported no communication to TrainingPeaks coaches at the time of publishing. TrainingPeaks followed a few hours later with the customer email quoted above, which announced the change, restated the cross-platform commitment and thanked customers for their support (DC Rainmaker). We found nothing further from Garmin beyond its original statement.

Our read: the email is short, but it addresses the one question that mattered most. What it does not do is explain how coaching businesses on the platform are affected, which is the part coaches wanted. Do not read intent into the brevity. Garmin’s acquisition announcements are short as a rule, including ones that turned out well for customers.

What Did Change, Permanently

Almost every answer above is some version of “not yet” or “unlikely”, and that is honest. But it makes it easy to conclude that nothing happened, and in our view something did.

Until 22 July 2026, the default coaching platform in endurance sport was independent of any device maker. If it ever raised prices too far, restricted the wrong thing, or simply stopped improving, coaches could weigh that against a company whose only business was serving them. That is gone, and no announcement from Garmin can bring it back.

This is not a prediction that Garmin will behave badly. It is a description of what your dependency looks like now. Every athlete file from a Wahoo, Polar, COROS or Suunto device flows into a platform owned by a company that sells competing hardware. Whether that ever works against you is a decision that gets made in someone else’s boardroom.

We think coaches who care about that are not overreacting. They are noticing that a structural protection they had last week is gone.

What To Do Now

Do not panic-migrate. Changing coaching platforms mid-season is disruptive for you and worse for your athletes, and nothing has actually changed yet.

Do export your data. Not because anything is at risk, but because you should be able to leave any platform you depend on. If you have never done a full export from TrainingPeaks, do one now and find out how much work it is. That is useful to know regardless of what Garmin does.

Do audit your roster. Count how many athletes are on non-Garmin hardware. If that number is high, you have more exposure to the neutrality question than a coach whose athletes all wear Garmin watches.

Do watch for two specific signals. First, any change to third-party device sync. Second, any move of TrainingPeaks features into Connect+. Either would be the moment to reassess, and both would be publicly visible.

Keep your renewal short if you can. If your subscription comes up while the questions above are still unanswered, a shorter commitment keeps your options open. Locking in a long term is a decision worth making deliberately rather than automatically.

If You Do Decide To Look Around

There is no single right answer, and the best choice depends on what you need. For the wider field, our TrainingPeaks alternatives guide covers more options than the three below.

Intervals.icu is free, with an optional Supporter tier at 4 USD per month (Intervals.icu pricing). David Tinker started it in 2018 and runs it with a small team (about Intervals.icu). The analysis runs deep. In its feature pages, including the athlete management page, we did not find tools for billing coaching clients (Intervals.icu athlete management). Our Intervals.icu review goes through it properly.

Final Surge gives athletes a free account and offers coach packages at $19 per month for 1 to 5 athletes and $39 per month for up to 100 athletes, or $190 and $390 per year billed yearly (Final Surge pricing). See the Final Surge review.

Coachbox is worth considering if you want lactate testing, athlete feedback and planning in one platform. Every coaching plan includes the Lactate Module, which determines LT1 and LT2 automatically in under a minute; each plan comes with 5 to 20 free tests, after which a test costs 3 to 6 EUR excl. VAT depending on the plan. Prices are in euros, from 19 EUR per month billed yearly for 5 athletes, excl. VAT (Coachbox pricing). It syncs with Garmin, Polar, Wahoo, Suunto, COROS and Fitbit. Coachbox AI answers questions about your athletes and writes changes into the training plan, and you can also connect Coachbox to ChatGPT, Claude and other AI assistants over MCP. What it does not have is TrainingPeaks’ ecosystem: a marketplace is planned but not live, and there is no virtual cycling platform.

Who Should Use TrainingPeaks

Staying on TrainingPeaks is a legitimate choice, and for some coaches the better one:

• You sell training plans. TrainingPeaks runs a training plan store today (TrainingPeaks training plans), and Coachbox’s marketplace is not live yet
• You get clients through the coach directory (TrainingPeaks coach search) and that pipeline matters to your business
• Your athletes ride indoors on TrainingPeaks Virtual, which comes with Premium (TrainingPeaks Virtual)
• You work in WKO or around TSS, or with federations and partners already built on TrainingPeaks
• Your roster runs on Garmin anyway, so the neutrality question matters less to you

The platform today is the one you used last week. Just make it a choice rather than a default, and know what you are accepting: in our view, a tool that was already slow to evolve, now owned by a company with no particular reason to speed it up.

One distinction is worth being precise about, because it gets blurred in these conversations. The question raised by this acquisition is about who owns the coaching platform, not about whether Garmin makes good hardware. Coachbox syncs with Garmin devices, and plenty of coaches will run Garmin watches on a platform Garmin does not own. That is a coherent position rather than a contradiction.

FAQ

Did Garmin buy TrainingPeaks?

Yes. Garmin announced on 22 July 2026 that it acquired TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic, and 120 combined staff, headquartered in Louisville, Colorado, join Garmin (Garmin press release).

How much did Garmin pay?

Garmin says the financial terms “will not be disclosed” (Garmin press release), and we found no confirmed figure. Garmin also withheld the price for Firstbeat in 2020 (Garmin) and MYLAPS in 2025 (Garmin).

Does TrainingPeaks still work with Wahoo, Polar, COROS and Suunto?

Yes. TrainingPeaks’ device compatibility article still lists them (TrainingPeaks help center), and TrainingPeaks emailed its coaches a few hours after the announcement to assure them the platform “will continue to operate as a cross-platform ecosystem, enabling athletes and coaches to use the devices, platforms and services that best suit their needs” (DC Rainmaker, quoting the email). That commitment came from TrainingPeaks rather than Garmin, and covers devices rather than pricing or roadmap.

Will my TrainingPeaks price change?

We found no pricing change announced with the acquisition. TrainingPeaks still lists the Coach Edition, Premium and the option to add Premium athletes (coach pricing). Garmin has made no public commitment about future pricing.

What happens to my coaching business on TrainingPeaks?

We found nothing in the announcement that affects coach accounts, rosters, the training plan store or the coach directory. TrainingPeaks emailed its coaches a few hours after the announcement, but that note confirmed the cross-platform commitment without explaining anything specific about coaching businesses.

Is TrainingPeaks becoming part of Garmin Connect+?

The acquisition announcement does not mention it. DC Rainmaker and the5krunner both expect some form of bundling, but Garmin said nothing about it. DC Rainmaker considers a full technical merge into Garmin Connect very unlikely (DC Rainmaker).

Does Garmin now own TSS and Normalized Power?

The trademarks belonged to the TrainingPeaks business and move with it, according to the5krunner (the5krunner). The marks cover the names rather than the calculations, which were published openly. TrainerRoad, for one, uses TSS “with permission” (TrainerRoad).

What happens to TrainingPeaks Virtual?

It transfers to Garmin with TrainingPeaks. TrainingPeaks Virtual was acquired as indieVelo in October 2024 (Peaksware) and is included with Premium (TrainingPeaks Virtual). Garmin has owned Tacx since 2019 (Garmin), so it now has two indoor cycling products.

Did Garmin buy all of Peaksware?

No. Garmin acquired TrainingPeaks and TrainHeroic. Peaksware still lists MakeMusic, Alfred Music and Fons as its brands (Peaksware).

Should I switch coaching platforms?

Not urgently, and not on the strength of a press release. Export your data, check how much of your roster runs non-Garmin hardware, and watch for changes to third-party sync or a Connect+ bundle. The more useful question is not whether to leave today but whether you were already waiting for TrainingPeaks to improve. If you were, we think this acquisition makes that wait longer, and that is a better reason to look around than anything Garmin might do.

If you are going to try something, try it properly: run one or two athletes on a second platform for a few weeks alongside TrainingPeaks rather than moving your whole roster on a hunch. If what you want is lactate testing, athlete feedback and planning in one place, put Coachbox through that test with the 14-day free trial, no credit card needed. Our Coachbox vs TrainingPeaks comparison sets the two side by side in detail.