Stopa vs Runna
Runna writes your plan and coaches you through it for $119.99 a year. Stopa takes the plan you already have and puts it on your watch for $49.99. A side-by-side of what each one actually does.
Both put a structured workout on your wrist and coach you through the intervals. The difference is upstream of that, and it is the whole thing: Runna decides what the workout is, and Stopa reads what you already decided.
If you do not have a plan, that difference favours Runna and this page will say so plainly. If you do have one — from a coach, a book, or an hour with ChatGPT — you are paying $119.99 a year for an algorithm to overrule it.
Side by side
Runna's figures were taken from their own site on 16 August 2026. If something here has gone out of date, it is an error rather than a tactic — tell us and it gets fixed.
| STOPA | RUNNA | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the plan comes from | Yours — Excel, PDF, plain text, or ChatGPT/Claude output | Generated by Runna from your race and current fitness |
| Import an existing plan | Yes — that is the product | No |
| Build your own inside the app | Yes, workout by workout | Yes — "Train Your Way", 6–26 weeks, 5–50 km |
| Apple Watch structured workouts | Yes, pushed to the native Workout app | Yes |
| Other watches | Garmin, Suunto, COROS, Wahoo and Zwift — through a connected intervals.icu account | Garmin, COROS, Fitbit — natively |
| Plan adapts on its own | No, and deliberately — nothing changes unless you change it | Yes, adapts to your performance |
| Price | $5.99/mo or $49.99/yr | $19.99/mo or $119.99/yr |
| Free trial | 7 days on the yearly plan | 7 days |
| Free tier after the trial | No — your plan stays saved and comes back when you subscribe | No |
| Reads a plan written in your language | Yes — the plan reader itself speaks 7: EN, CS, ES, DE, FR, IT, PT-BR, so a Czech coach's spreadsheet is read in Czech | — no plan import, so nothing to read (see the row above) |
| Android | Planned, not shipped — iPhone only today | Yes |
| Owned by | Independent | Strava (acquired, announced 17 April 2025; runs as a separate app and subscription) |
The differences, in full
You bring the plan
This is the only sentence on the page that really matters. Runna is a plan generator with a good watch experience attached. Stopa is the watch experience first, with a generator off to the side that you do not have to use.
Feed Stopa the Excel your coach emailed, the PDF of a Pfitzinger block, or the sixteen weeks ChatGPT wrote you, and it reads the whole thing — every week, every interval, every pace target — and turns it into workouts your watch can run. Runna has no way to accept that file. Its "Train Your Way" builder lets you set your own targets, but you are still building inside Runna, session by session, not importing the plan you already own.
Nothing changes behind your back
Runna adapts. When you have no plan and no coach, that is a feature. When you and your coach have decided on a sixteen-week progression, an algorithm quietly rewriting it is the problem, not the service — and the aggressiveness of Runna's progressions is the single most common complaint among the runners who leave it.
Stopa does not adjust anything on its own. Your plan is your plan. You can edit any workout, and the edit is yours.
A third of the price
$49.99 a year against $119.99. That gap exists because Stopa is not paying to generate anything — you brought the plan.
What Runna does better
Genuinely, not as a formality.
Plan generation as the front door. Stopa's coach will write you a plan too, so this is a difference of shape rather than of capability: for Runna it is the product, built by coaches with real credentials and refined over years, and for Stopa it is a side door off a wedge that assumes you arrive with a plan. If you have none and want one written for you today, Runna is built around that and Stopa is not.
Android, today. Runna ships an Android app now. Stopa is iPhone-only; an Android client is planned and unscheduled, which is worth exactly nothing to you if you are holding an Android phone this morning.
Native Garmin and COROS. Runna talks to those two directly. Stopa reaches them through intervals.icu, which is a second free account you have to hold and connect. If you are a Garmin runner who wants nothing in between, Runna is the shorter path.
A community around it. Events, brand perks, referral giveaways, and a very large user base with a lot of shared experience. Stopa has none of that.
It is proven at scale. Tens of thousands of reviews, years of iteration on the in-run experience. Stopa launched in July 2026.
Which to pick
Choose Runna if
You do not have a training plan and want a good one today, you run on Android, or you want the plan to adjust itself as your fitness changes without you thinking about it.
Choose Stopa if
You already have a plan you trust and you want it on your watch without retyping it, you want the same plan on more than one brand of watch, or you object to paying $119.99 a year for an algorithm to decide your training.
Longer read
The argument behind this table, including what the alternatives are if neither app fits: A Runna alternative for people who want to keep their own plan →
Get your own plan on your watch
See week 1 of your own plan before you pay. The yearly plan starts with seven days free.
Runna is a product by its own authors and is not affiliated with Stopa. Their pricing and integrations were checked at runna.com on 16 August 2026.
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