Leveling Ain’t Easy: Zwift Increases XP Level Requirements
If you’re the sort of Zwifter who pays attention to your level progress and XP totals, you may have noticed a change Zwift quietly rolled out last week, increasing the XP required to level up if you are at level 28+.
Read below to learn how we got here, what’s changed, what hasn’t… and more.
A Short History of Zwift Levels
Zwift levels have been part of the game from early days, but initially they only went up to level 25. Many Zwifters reached that max level, and eventually Zwift added levels 26-50 in December 2018. This was the first time we saw accelerated leveling, where riders who had banked XP while sitting at level 25 could achieve higher levels more quickly (8x faster!) if they opted to. Riders enjoyed leveling up more quickly, but there was one problem: accelerated leveling was confusing.
In September 2022, Zwift added levels 51-60. Again, accelerated leveling was used if you had been at level 50 for a while. But this time it was only 2x faster, and you couldn’t opt out of accelerated leveling.
In December 2023, Zwift added levels 61-100. They also revamped how accelerated leveling worked, making it significantly more complex. On top of that, the overall level curve was also reduced and smoothed, so it was much easier to achieve each level and the amount of XP needed to go from level to level increased steadily.
While lower-level riders were happy about easier level progression, Zwifters without math degrees were largely flummoxed about how accelerated leveling now worked. Additionally, it quickly became apparent that it was much too easy to level up, when at least one Zwifter rode their way from level 61-100 in 25 days.
In April 2024, Zwift announced that they were planning to change XP requirements for levels 28 and above to make leveling up more difficult. (The XP required to reach level 100 would increase from 591,000 XP to 1,000,000 XP, so this was no small change.) Additionally, they decreased the weekly streak bonus so you only received it once per week.
Zwift got a lot of pushback on this proposed change (peruse the 500+ comment thread at your leisure), and the planned May rollout never happened.
Then last week, with no fanfare whatsoever, Zwift flipped the switch and enabled an updated XP/levels table. I started seeing comments almost immediately from Zwifters confused about why the XP needed to go to the next level had changed.
And that brings us to today. The new XP/levels table isn’t what was proposed in April. While it does increase level requirements from what rolled out in December 2023, it does not increase them as high as Zwift had proposed in April. More on that below…
Further Reading: All About Zwift XP, Levels, and Unlocks for Cyclists >
Out With the Old, In With the New
The new level requirements are spelled out on our main XP/unlocks page, but here’s a nice chart that makes them easy to understand. (Mouse over a line for details.)
As you can see, Zwift’s new level requirements are a significant increase from what was rolled out with levels 61-100 in December 2023. But they’re still much easier than what they would have been if Zwift had kept going with the original curve from 2022!
Note: while it’s not shown above, the XP required to repeatedly fill level 100 has increased from 12,000 to 20,000 with this update.
Why the Silence?
Reading Zwift’s forum, it seems Zwifters are more irked by Zwift’s lack of communication on this change than by the change itself. Why did Zwift choose to rejigger the levels without an announcement?
Unfortunately I can’t say, because I’m under an NDA with Zwift. (Why? Because that gives me access to advance notice on upcoming features and a place at the table in certain high-level discussions on overall product direction, among other things. I consider the “cost” of the NDA to be well worth the return.)
But what I will say is that Zwift’s XP table change would have gone unnoticed by many more Zwifters if it wasn’t for two (what I can only assume to be) bugs in the release:
- The graphical indicators for accelerated leveling were inexplicably removed for your current level, prompting Zwifters to think their acceleration was gone. (The acceleration is still there. Oddly enough, it seems those indicators return once you level up.)
- The XP needed for your next level-up seems to have increased with the rollout, so Zwifters who were tracking how many XP they had left to the next level saw that figure jump. This isn’t how Zwift had proposed the change would work in their April 2024 post: “There will be no change to the amount of XP required to reach your immediate next level – you’ll earn your next level based on the requirements of the previous system and the revised system will take effect after that.”
Unified Frustration
Zwifters disagree on many topics, but ask any rider who pays attention to levels and unlocks, and they’ll tell you two things:
- Leveling out, then playing catchup when new levels are added, is silly. Zwift should have built some sort of steadily-growing or even infinite leveling system into the game from the start.
- Accelerated leveling is ridiculously complicated.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Zwift needs a simple level system that never ends, giving every Zwifter something to shoot for. It’s mystifying how Zwift has done so much complex work to make indoor cycling accessible and engaging but still hasn’t rolled out a simple level system that consistently motivates all Zwifters.
Accelerated Leveling
Every time the topic of XP and levels pops up, questions about accelerated leveling are sure to follow. This is even more true this week, with the accelerated leveling indicators disappearing and XP requirements changing for most of the levels in the game!
So I’m just going to point you to this post, which has an “accelerated leveling” section that explains exactly how it works. At this point, I’ve learned to point people there, because if you can’t figure out the math from that post’s explanation, my explaining it to you personally probably won’t work either. (You can also read Zwift’s description of accelerated leveling, if you’d like.)
The nice thing is, like the internals of whatever device you’re reading this on, accelerated leveling works just fine, even if you don’t understand it. Each time you earn XP, the system does the math to get you to higher levels a bit more quickly. You just need to Ride On.
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