Today, Zwift announced an upcoming change to their free trial setup:
We’re writing to let you know about a forthcoming change to simplify our free trial offerings.
Effective from August 1st, the current 25km free trial offered to paused, or lapsed, Zwift members will be discontinued. We want to thank all our members who took advantage of this offering in the past.
Please note that we will continue to offer a 14-day free trial for new members to discover the benefits of our platform.
For years, Zwift has effectively had two different “free trial” offerings running in parallel:
- New accounts aren’t charged until the end of their 14-day free trial, which begins the day they start pedaling on Zwift
- Paying subscribers who pause or cancel their membership could ride up to 25km each month for free. This offer renewed on the 1st of each month, and also applied to people who signed up, took part in the 14-day free trial, but never became paying subscribers.
It’s the second offering that is being done away with on August 1st.
Note: These changes don’t affect Zwift running, which is still free to use unless you have a Wahoo KICKR RUN and want to pay for automatic incline control.
Ready the Pitchforks
Zwift will surely receive some blowback on their decision from “seasonal Zwifters” who enjoy riding outside in good weather while still popping into Zwift once or twice each month. (And after last year’s price increase, there are certainly more of those Zwifters on the platform than ever before.)
While some riders abused the free monthly 25km, I can’t help but think it also kept seasonal Zwifters engaged with the platform. Will the cost savings of removing those “freeloaders” from the ecosystem outweigh the value of keeping past subscribers engaged during sunny weather? And how many of those riders will now restart their subscription earlier than planned, so they can maintain access to Zwift?
Those are significant questions, with actual dollar figures attached. But only Zwift will know the answers…
Questions or Comments?
Share below!
I’m 100% Indoors as far as Road Bike Cycling/Racing. I’ve become adamantly AGAINST “age categories” in amateur outdoor racing. It would be interesting to see what the percentage of Zwifters who are also 100% indoors is.
I am 100% indoors as well. When you’ve been in a bike accident with a vehicle and survived, it changes your perspective!
Wonder if this change impacts Sauce users as Sauce for Zwift uses a second free account…. Anybody know ? Thanks.
Pretty sure it will not, since those free accounts don’t need to be able to move in game… they’re just a login.
Pettiness on the part of Zwift, and a lame attempt at trying to force seasonal users into becoming annual subscribers. MyWoosh or Rouvy will be my choice once the weather cools.
Well it’s also biting your nose to spite your face. Every so often I don’t get in a daytime workout during the “warm season” and free Zwift through my 25km. It keeps Zwift a year-long habit. Don’t want to give all my stats to another platform, all things equal.
Now I’ll be tempted to MyWhoosh my way for those 1-2 extra monthly rides (admittedly it was already picking up those rare thirds). And then we’ll see who gets my winters. Probably Zwift, but now I’m more likely to see what the others are offering. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Maybe they’ll counterbalance by giving more free months. I just picked up my second or third 2 month free offer.
User X wants 3-4 months in the winter then you pay $60-80 and so what from there? I just don’t see where it forces anyone to do anything but pay for a service. I don’t work for free so I do not expect them to either. I completely miss where this “forces seasonal users to be annual subscribers”. 🙅
I don’t know if you noticed that “Rouvy” has significantly raised its prices since July 15 🙂
Rouvy has this option on paused subs as well. I just have never been able to wrap my head around it as useful. Who gets on and only does 25km? An hour ride for me is always at least 30-35km….what am I missing?
Well obviously anyone who rides less than 15 miles.
But the way they had it set up you could take the second as far over as you wanted.
So on your first monthly ride a hard climb for 15 miles then your second was a long ride of any length you wanted. Made for two solid free rides a month.
Great for the Zwift offseason.
Also rouvy has day passes. Which I am happy to buy for the occasional rainy summer day.
It might make some sense for Zwift to replace the 25K freebie with a reasonable day pass.
At one point not too long ago one of the zwift pages had code referring to day passes. That might have been cleaned up but it’s at least something that they’d considered. Maybe they’ll see how many people they convert to annual subscriptions before rolling out the day pass option.
You can do the vent top every month, thats atleast an 1.5 hour workout: https://zwiftinsider.com/route/ven-top/
It wasnt realy 25km, because you could do one ride 23km. Than you start another ride , but after 2km you only got that your free 25 km ended, but you could continue to ride as you like untill you didnt go out from that ride.
I used more times. I will miss that 25km free 🙁
I only do structured workouts when I’m riding indoors, and typically only ~40 minutes. I don’t really care about the scenery at all. So I put on a steep route, do my workout, and end. I get 2-3 rides out of 25km like that. Serves (served) me well during the summer months. Nixing the free 25km gives the vibe that Zwift has moved from “build user base” to “squeeze user base”, and feels… icky. For now I can drive my indoor workouts with my Garmin head unit (slightly more fussy than Zwift). In the Winter I’ll explore non-Zwift options and see what works best for me. As with gym memberships, it is rarely a good idea to force your userbase to think about their membership. Most thinking about a membership involves thinking about *quitting* the membership, not spending more on it.
If it’s bad weather during my off period I did these free 25km as alternative for outside.
i will not start/continue during summerperiod. Will start subscription in October until April (the costs for yearly subscription are higher)
I’m not sure “abuse” is the appropriate term – Zwift offered 25km it and people used it. Ultimately I think this will backfire as it encourages infrequent users to totally cut ties.
The “abuse” was to go uphill to maximize the time of the 25km. And then with the last free km left participate in a long event which you could finish even above the 25km limit. This way you could do hours of riding in several sessions.
“I ride Zwift less than 25km per month and I refuse to pay. They’ll be sorry when they lose my business!!”
By “abuse”, I assumed Eric was referring to people creating multiple accounts and using them to ride much more than 25km each month.
Good move by Zwift. But just like file sharing services, “shared” Netflix accounts, etc, etc, you’ll now get the thieves claiming some convoluted legitimate use.
re your first sentence, The people presumably subscribe to zwift in the winter, just not in the summer, so only use it on rainy days.
re multiple accounts if thats what Eric was referring to then he should have been more specific.
Well done Bob, you’ve successfully won another argument you’ve made up entirely in your head. Your incredible intellect and willingness to defend corporate interests are a credit to humanity.
Where is the Zwift family plan we are wishing for for years? My daughter will now finally go to another platform to do her one or two indoor rides a month.
We can use MyWhoosh occasionally for indoor rides, then switch back to Zwift in the winter
I use my 2nd and 3rd “free” accounts to fan view my rides in order to provide different camera angles in my live streams. I guess this will be done away with as well?
Should be fine as long as the riders aren’t moving.
Goodbye Zwift, Hello Mywoosh
Try Biketerra.com it’s the best!
It’s weird that you acknowledge pitch forks in this article (which I think is a pretty minor one) but not on other articles. Maybe you are doing it ironically, I’m not sure.
Anyways, zwift can decide their free trial policy, that’s up to them. But who inside zwift thinks this will have a positive impact on their bottom line? Do they expect more than a few people to pay full monthly price for 25 kms? Seems unlikely.
They should have an ad supported tier. The amount of targetted marketing they could do would pay a lot of Zwift’s bills.
Even without personal stuff, for example if your main in-game ride is a Tarmac with 454s then showing you Specialized and Zipp ads before you upload to Strava/Garmin or in a little pop up window during rides would be OK.
There is a risk that would lead to everyone being exposed to ads or having to pay an extra fee to avoid ads. (cough, cough Amazon “Prime” Video, January 29, 2024.)
MyWoosh is so bad, Zwift probably doesn’t really feel any pressure. Rouvy is weird too. As long as the competition is thus, Zwift can do what they want as it’s $250/year better than MyWoosh and worth double Rouvy to most serious cyclists.
If any company cracks the code I’d switch too, maybe. I just got level 80 so it might be hard to walk away from that
You can transfer your Zwift stats into MyWhoosh.
But that doesn’t change the fact that you are riding a ghost town on pretty much any free platform. For better or for worse, Zwift’s huge community is one of the biggest reasons to use it over anything else and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon.
Funny they treat their community in this manner then….
“you get what you pay for”
There’s plenty who would disagree with you. Zwifts graphics remain dated and look more so every year.
Given MyWhoosh is currently Free it’s a valid alternative for a growing number of people and I think more so after this move by Zwift.
I stopped using Zwift app because for some reason it stopped connecting, switched to Rouvy and has been fine. Does this mean I can’t try Zwift to see if it has corrected itself? Seems to me like they have lost customers for good by doing this
If Rouvy is so great, why are you here on a Zwift-related website…
If there were any ‘abuse’, the less drastic solution would have been to make the 25km an absolute max. Your ride ends at 25km.
Not asking much for £17.99 pm!
It’s the sort of greediness that will make me go elsewhere.
Or make it a 5km trial
Make a family plan now!!
Does the outdoor ride streak preservation count etc whilst unsubscribed? I mainly used the free 25km to do a couple of miles every week to keep that going. I’m not subscribing for 12 months when I’m only using it 7, and I’ll only ever use it 7, there’s nothing Zwift can do to make me use it regularly enough in that time to be worth paying for (especially after the price increase a couple of years ago).
Streaks only count if you do the ride on Zwift, in fact outdoor rides don’t add any XP either if you are unsubscribed. My advice – forget about the streak – its just a way to keep you paying!
“Streaks only count if you do the ride on Zwift…”?
Not true… you can extend your week streak by doing an outdoor ride.
There’s been a bug for a while now that wouldn’t give you the streak extension XP bonus if your first ride of the week was outdoors, but that bug is (supposedly) being fixed this week.
You have to be an active subscriber to extend your streak. See https://zwiftinsider.com/week-streaks/
That’s not how it has been working for me.
I use the trial account in Summer and my streak has continued but about 5-6 weeks ago, I stopped getting the 500 XP bonus.
That wasn’t how it was working – I was unsubscribed for a couple of months this summer (just doing small rides within the trial 25km) and my streak was extending. Not sure if I was getting the bonus (which I don’t care about), but I’ve kept me squirrel and the number keeps going up.
use it 7 months pay for 7 months, you want (for reasons I fail to understand, but that is a Me Thing) a streak to continue then paying for it and using it is perhaps a solution for you
Not sure if your reply was directed to me.
I agree with you 100%.
We should expect to get what we pay for.
Zwift has always offered carrots to suck us into their eco system and they worked very well.
Many of my rides would have ended early but I pushed on to level up, complete a badge or challenge etc.
More recently, it was ride streak.
All the carrots seem to have vanished for me.
I will be lvl 100 this year and levels are nerfed anyway because of all the double XP gimmicks etc.
Yes, I did Big Spin to last year for XP.
I’ll just race and work out.
That’s what I pay for.
It’s not that deep. I’ve had a streak since the start, and I like my squirrel. He’s cute. It’s no more than that. Those things aren’t enough to get me to waste £90 on something I’d not get enough use out of. I was just wanting to know if I could keep them by linking up the outdoor stuff whilst unsubscribed. It would be nice if I could, but if the squirrel has to go, then the squirrel will have to go.
The currency exchange rate in Brazil makes the subscription price impractical for most people. 90% of my contacts have abandoned their subscriptions simply because of the price. And Zwift has no plans to adjust the subscription price based on the currency exchange rate.
global economics are not the fault of Zwift
I understand, but I also believe that Zwift is interested in the return of those who stopped being subscribing members…. there are many good solutions for both parties
If I were the financial manager of Zwift, I would sell hours to use… $1 for each hour to use, instead of simply removing the 25km option
Still looking for family subscriptions. It’s insane that Zwift hasn’t looked at this.
As an annual subscriber, I have never used a single free kilometer. Nevertheless, this is a change for the worse.
Just ride Rouvy.
…and they can stop posting their illogical comments on a Zwift-related website.
This is really dumb. I lost motivation on Zwift a few months back and the free 25km gave me a chance to try the new things Zwift rolled out which has got me to resubscribe in the past but now it would take me a lot more to come back.
I was sometimes using the 25km free option in summer during bad weather periods, so i guess wont do this anymore. Just wondering why they dont offer like a package of daily tickets to buy which you can use on those days?
Guess someone has to pay for all that “Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift” PR budget…
I have seen several users in my riding club who said, they are off subs during the summer. That worked for them about 2 summers but usually by the 2nd winter, they never came back. Based on this, even if they offered “free” a lot of people eventually don’t use it any more, and seems they are willing to lose some users. I am wondering if anybody used the Day Pass on other systems, I personally will not likely.
Zwifting today is a lot also to do with the community and friends you get to know there, and with that, I see most people I know, probably in 100s of users, I see them 2 or 3 times a week, or even every day on the platform, usually by means of giving ride-ons and bumping into them on pacer rides etc. So people are using it a lot or never.
I love Zwift. I have been an avid zwifter for 12 months per year since 5 years. And I loved it, among other things, since price was fair, they offered free account to kids and also these 25km free monthly.
Then they removed the free account to kids. Then they increase horribly the price and I became an avid zwifter for 8 months per year + random rides in summer when weather was bad. Now the removed also the 25km free.
It seems they are doing everything to push me to other platforms.
I don’t understand the tone of some comments. Nobody steals nothing.
I simply don’t want to pay 20Euro/month to ride 3 times/month in summer. Year subscription give you only 2 months for free.
It would be great to have the option for buying a day ride only, then.
Anyway, mywhoosh is still free and for just a ride is ok. But if people starts to spread on other platforms, then they might also decide to stay there.
In the past I used only Zwift, now they forced me to try others.
I’m not alone in having a second account which sat dormant (ie never turned a single km) but which was used to create Meetups for various groups of friends. I have been doing this for many years, originally due to the absence of “Club” functionality.
To create a Meetup this account now needs to subscribe.
Hopefully the capabilities of the “Club” arrangements can now suffice.
Used to pay year round for Zwift whether I rode indoor or outdoor.
They put the price up, failed to promote community vibe or on fix bugs that just screwed the whole ride experience me.
It’ just another corporate JPM financer looking to milk it for cash until it crashes and burns
I’m outta here better communities, charities to support and things to do like IRL Ventoux, Roubaix, 312, Raid, Tour 21
Did do the occasional monthly subscription during the winter until Zwift put the prices up by 33%. Only used the free 25km as cross training as im a runner. Guess i will be uninstalling Zwift and will be using mywhoosh instead as i can’t justify paying £18/month for something i only use occasionally.
For me, losing the 25 km per month (which I would use during the summer) is actually going to be the difference between “Pay for Zwift in the Winter, use the 25 km per month to get me thru the summer” and “Never use Zwift at all”. I realize they have been bleeding $ and need to find a way to juice their subscriber numbers, but in my case, this change moves from them getting $100.00/year from me, to $0.00/year. Oh well… at least I have other options now. So long, Zwift. It’s been a fun ride.
I just wanted to try the race mode on my tacx neo 2… Mywhoooooooooo here I come…
This is very sad(( I go to MyWhoosh.
Normally I suspend Zwift by April and not return until late November as there’s no good reason (for me) to be inside during the warmer months, unless the weather is absolutely miserable out. Which is when I’d take advantage of the free trial Zwift offered to get a ride or two in.
With the death of this feature, I gave Rouvy a spin (twice now) on the two crappy days we’ve had since July. Something I wouldn’t have done otherwise, having been with Zwift since just after the jump to Watopia from Jarvis. Thinking I’m not returning to Zwift this November- Rouvy is $5 cheaper, better graphics and I can ride for free (12.5 miles, better than nothing) when not an active subscriber. That’s a few rides churning up a climbing route with how slow I am uphill. The social aspects of Zwift have never appealed so I’m not losing anything there.
Thank you Zwift for prodding me to have a look at what else is out there by trying to get $20 you were never going to get in the summer.
Used to Zwifting in the wintermonths, approx 4-5 months a year. No more 25k free? When there was a change of seasons, a full subscription was not worth it, perhaps 1 or 2 rides a month in Zwift, and then in the bad weather months a full subscription. Since that is not possible anymore, this was the limit for me. Bye Zwift! Gone to MyWhoosh. Saves me 4-5 times 20 euro’s.
Stupid move when Rouvy are offering both a 20km free ride a month and option for a day pass. Smacks of spreadsheet management. For those occasional riders I’ll move to Rouvy and then when i’m there perhaps i’ll start to get used to the platform then why would i move back to Zwift, I use it less for racing others and more for structured training or getting in the climbs which we don’t have where i live. All it oes is encourage people to google an alternate and try a competitor
Just came back to find this out. I have been a seasonal subscriber from the beginning but will no longer be. There is a way to zwift for free and will just do this if I need an indoor session or pay for another provider. Zwift going the way of Strava I see,
Me too…..at least the first part. I’ve been using My Whoosh for about the past year. Went back to Zwift to give it a go again, only to find that when I tried to start a ride I couldn’t. So I’ve gone back to My Whoosh. It does almost everything Zwift does, only for free. The only thing that isn’t as good is the companion app.