Direct comparison
Aster vs Strava Beacon
Aster is a live race-tracking platform. Same underlying capability, phone GPS broadcasting position live, but built for race events with leaderboards, a watcher page, organiser tools, and unlimited audience instead of a 3-contact personal ping.
What Strava Beacon is
We won't trash the competitor. Here's an honest summary.
Strava Beacon is the free live-location feature inside the Strava app. It sends a live link to up to 3 selected contacts so they can see where you are during a recorded activity. It's designed as a personal location share for the people closest to you. Strava Beacon's site →
Side by side
| Feature | Aster | Strava Beacon |
|---|---|---|
| Primary use case | Live race tracking for events and Just Ride | Personal location ping to family or partner |
| Number of watchers | Unlimited, anyone with the share link | 3 contacts maximum |
| Leaderboard | Live, route-distance gaps, category filters | None |
| Race and event support | Native, start lines, finish detection, cut-offs, DNF | None, just a location feed |
| Watcher needs an app | No, just open the link in any browser | No, link opens in browser |
| Organiser dashboard | Yes, manage all riders, see rider Alerts, manage roster | Not applicable, personal use only |
| Cost | Just Ride is free for riders. Race events, organiser subscription. | Free with Strava subscription |
Why organisers choose Aster over Strava Beacon
Not a 3-contact limit, your whole audience.
Beacon caps live-location at 3 contacts. Aster's watch link is unlimited, share it with your race's social channels, embed it on the event site, share it with everyone who pre-registered. Built for racing, not for a partner's peace of mind.
It's the right tool for the job.
Strava's product strategy treats Beacon as a personal location share. The 3-contact cap, the lack of leaderboards, the no-event-integration story, all consistent with that. Aster's product strategy treats live tracking as a race-watching audience product. Different product, different fit.
Real race infrastructure underneath.
Finish-line detection, cut-off auto-processing, DNF flagging, multi-day stage support, off-route alerts, and an Alert dashboard with two-way chat. Beacon is designed as a personal location share and carries none of it.
Editorial and storytelling built in.
Race recaps, a story feed and athlete profiles, so the whole post-race conversation lives in the same place as the live tracking rather than moving somewhere else afterwards.
Being honest
When Strava Beacon is the right call
Strava Beacon is the right tool for solo training rides where you want your partner or family to know roughly where you are in case something goes wrong. It's free, it's already in the app you're using, and the 3-contact limit is fine for that use case. For racing, group rides with a watching audience, or any event with a leaderboard, it's not the right shape, and Strava have shown no sign of intending to make it one.
Common questions
Why doesn't Strava just add a leaderboard?
We can only say what is observable, which is that Beacon has shipped as a three-contact personal location share for years without one. Live race-watching is adjacent to Strava's training-log and leaderboard product rather than the same product, and what they build next is theirs to say.
Do I need Strava to use Aster?
No. Aster is a standalone live tracking platform and needs no Strava account. You can put your Strava profile on your Aster profile as a link, but the two do not sync today, so finishing on Aster does not post the activity to Strava.
Is Aster free?
Just Ride, solo recording with unlimited watcher links, is free for riders, always. Race events run on an organiser subscription, not a charge to the rider. So as a rider, racing on Aster is free at the entry-line.
Garmin LiveTrack and Wahoo Companion are the same as Beacon, right?
Same category, slightly different shape. Garmin and Wahoo also treat live-share as a personal location share inside their broader fitness-tracking products, private URLs sent to a list of contacts, no leaderboard, no event infrastructure, no public audience. We dig into the Garmin LiveTrack comparison in detail at /vs/garmin-livetrack. Aster is in a different category by design.
Ready to put your race on Aster?
30-minute call. We'll walk through your race, the dashboard, and what a launch on Aster would look like.