All About Zwift Racing Score

October 8, 2024

LAST UPDATED December 4, 2024

Note: for the lastest news on Zwift Racing Score, see our post What’s happening with Zwift Racing Score?

Yesterday, Zwift officially graduated Zwift Racing Score (ZRS) from Zwift Labs and released it as the de facto race categorization method on the platform. As of today, the vast majority (over 80%) of public races on Zwift are using ZRS.

It’s a big change in the world of Zwift racing, and it comes after no small amount of development work by Zwift’s team plus months of testing and feedback from the Zwift racing community. I’ll be diving down the ZRS rabbit hole later this week, but first, here’s a straightforward post covering key Racing Score topics. Let’s go!

Zwift Racing Score: How It Works

Every rider is given a ZRS between 0-1000 (higher is better). But where does that score come from, how does it change over time, and how is it used in Zwift races?

Your Starting Score

Your score begins with what Zwift calls a seed score, and it is based on your weight and historic power numbers. Zwift looks at all your activities in the past 90 days and pulls out your best 30-second and 10-minute power performances, then plugs those values into their super-secret algorithm to produce a seed score between 0 and 1000. It’s this initial score that determines which group(s) you can join for your first scored race.

Your Race Category

While not all races on Zwift use ZRS for categorization, as of October 7, 2024, almost all races do. And while races can use custom ZRS bands, most scored races, including all Zwift-owned races, use the following category ranges:

690-1000
520-690
350-520
180-350
1-180

See below for more on joining your first scored race.

Updating Your Score

As you race, your score changes based on where you finished (podium? last place? somewhere in between?), as well as who you raced against (strength of field).

This makes intuitive sense, of course. A high finish against strong competitors should increase your score more than the same finish against weaker competitors.

Your score can also change (increase) if you set a new 30-second or 10-minute power best. And it may decrease if a current power best ages out of that 90-day window and gets replaced by a lower number.

There’s also a bit of decay built into the scoring algorithm, so if you don’t race or set new power bests, you’ll see your score slowly decrease over time.

If your score decreases, take heart: your personal score is just a moving probability of predicted race results. As it adjusts based on race results and 90-day power numbers, you should find yourself placed in groups that deliver a challenging yet enjoyable race experience.

Finding Your Racing Score

Your ZRS can be found in the Zwift Companion app and on your profile at zwift.com:

It is also visible on your ZwiftPower.com profile page.

Joining a Scored Race

You don’t need to know your racing score to race on Zwift, though! When browsing races in Companion or at zwift.com/events, Zwift highlights the “Recommended for you” group based on your current score:

Click the (+) sign to join your desired group. You can join a higher-scored group, but you cannot join a group below your current Racing Score.

Note: you must have at least three 10+ minute activities recorded in the last 90 days in order to race a scored event. This helps ensure an accurate seed score, thus improving Zwift’s choice of category for your first race.

Understanding Race Results

When you finish a scored race, your ZRS is recalculated so it remains an accurate reflection of your current abilities.

You can see your new ZRS under your profile as shown above, and it is also saved in the event results in Zwift Companion and on zwift.com under your activity details or the event’s homepage:

Race results show your new Racing Score, and an arrow indicating whether it increased or decreased as a result of this race:

A down arrow with a line below means you’ve hit your floor score – the lowest possible score you can reach based on your 90-day power numbers.

An up arrow with a line below means you set a new power best, which increased your seed (and thus your floor) score. This arrow only shows when your new floor exceeds what you would have otherwise had as a result.

What’s Next?

While Zwift officially launched ZRS this week, they’ve been very clear in saying that they will continue to monitor feedback and metrics and work to evolve ZRS for the foreseeable future.

Zwift says they are investigating the following:

Enhancing the seed algorithm to incorporate a broader range of historical data, considering the performance of racers who are transitioning back indoors after an outdoor riding season
Measures to prevent intentional score manipulation
Category enforcement applied when joining an event instead of at sign-up
An historical view of how your score has changed over time
Incorporating course profiles into the scoring system
Improving category ranges, including increasing the number of pens and also dynamic ranges

Concluding Thoughts

The implementation of Zwift Racing Score is the most game-changing update to Zwift racing that we’ve seen in recent years. Now, instead of categories being based purely on riders’ power numbers, they are results-based, taking racing smarts and other factors into account.

ZRS is the results-based categorization system Zwift racers have been requesting for a long time. While it may not be perfect in the eyes of some, it’s vastly improved in the eyes of most, including myself. Here are some of the ways the new ZRS system beats the old category system, in my opinion:

Harder to sandbag: in the old system, riders in every category below A could simply sit at the top of their category, winning race after race, without ever being upgraded. That will happen much less with ZRS, thanks in part to podium bonus points being added to scores.
Custom categories: race organizers can define custom category bands much more easily with ZRS than with the old system’s zMAP and zFTP metrics. This encourages events that group riders in fresh ways, mixing up who is at the top and bottom of each category.
Immediate feedback: your updated Racing Score provides immediate feedback as to whether you placed above or below your expected position in each race. This is a new, immediate feedback metric that wasn’t available with the old system.
A global KPI: While ZwiftPower’s Rider Rankings work decently well, the metric is flawed in various ways and not available on Zwift Companion or zwift.com. Zwift Racing Score is the closest we’ve ever come to a simple, single Key Performance Indicator that can be used to assess a rider’s overall racing ability.

There are improvements still to be made to the new ZRS system, of course. I’m particularly looking forward to Zwift incorporating more historical data into riders’ seed scores to help prevent them from blowing up lower-category races when they return to Zwift racing after taking a few months off.

But for now, I’ll take the much-improved system over the old one any day. Ride on!