Tour Tracker Subscription Prices

NOTE: This blog post originally was just explaining why I was raising prices a few dollars a year after 3 years of no increases while adding tons of new races and a new dedicated reporter to the team.

BUT THEN THINGS WENT CRAZY.

On Android, it turns out that Google had NOT updated pricing for existing users 3 years ago or 6 years ago. So for my most dedicated users the new price was more than DOUBLE what they had been paying. That was NOT my intention. As a result I have put the Android price back to what is was one month ago, for new and old users alike. I can't undo the jump for old users, but I'm hoping that the smaller jump is okay.

Also, Google Play has a bug: They send notifications about INCREASES but not DECREASES. So the notification you received might still show the higher price. So, while I'm 99% sure that you will NOT be charged that much next year if you say "Okay", the safe move would be to say say "Not Now" and check the price when your subscription expires.

On iOS, there was also a huge unforeseen issue: When Apple says they will "calculate prices for other countries" based on the new price, they no longer just use the current exchange rate, something they neglect to tell developers. They now add taxes to the converted price - US users pay taxes on top of the published price - and THEN adjust the price UP a bit more to still have a ".99" at the end. WTF? This is relatively new behavior from Apple, and when I set the price three years ago this did not happen. So for users outside of the US, the new price might be a higher percentage increase than here.

As such I have lowered the price on iOS also to a smaller increase than planned to compensate for that stupidity as best I can. Please email me if this increase is too much for you.

SO, back to the original purpose of this blog post...

As mentioned last year, Tour Tracker subscription prices will be rising in 2026 after 3 years of keeping them unchanged. This blog entry is my attempt to explain why they are going up. It is important to me that users feel like they are getting great value from what I've spent 15 years of my life creating.

I first wrote Tour Tracker 15 years ago for the Tour of California, and for the first 10 years my primary business was providing custom apps to U.S. races and broadcasters like NBC and SBS. These partnerships enabled me to create the direct-to-cycling-fans Tour Tracker Pro Cycling app you know. This setup was great as it let me provide an app to the public that focused on covering cycling, while the NBC and race-specific apps really focused on advertising and sponsorship placement. And it let me price the app at less than a cup of coffee a year for live coverage of the Grand Tours.

Things, however, have changed a LOT over the past few years. SBS and NBC's switch to streaming meant they no longer wanted a Tour de France app. And as you might know all of the U.S. races folded. So my "golden geese" disappeared. At the same time, however, users kept asking for more. More races. More features. Women's races. The World Championships. The Olympics. Fantasy cycling. The list goes on...

The result is that the app has gone from basic coverage of 3 races to complex coverage of over 30 races a year. And that of course requires resources. More reporters to cover the races. More licensing fees for the data including the routes, rosters, tracking and results. More servers to manage races. More databases to hold the data. And significantly more payments to Amazon for distributing the data to your phones in real time.

So, while I wish the price increase meant I will be able to retire in Italy soon, the reality is that it is just making sure the app can continue to deliver what you have come to expect without compromising quality. That you will get the best reporters in the industry. That you will get flawless data delivery via expensive-but-reliable Amazon services. That you will never see advertising. That the app will continue to add new content and features every few months.

I'm hoping that what we have built is worth a few cups of coffee every year. If the new prices are too much for you, send me an email directly and we can figure something out. Thanks for reading this. Allan

Women's Cycling Coverage, Part 2

Clara and I wanted to share some information about the state of women's coverage in our Tour Tracker Pro Cycling app. This is a topic we discuss every season, and a topic our users ask about often.

To start, let us say that we do care about women's cycling and have provided coverage of the women's peloton in some form for the last 10 years. That has included providing free custom apps for women's races, providing an app for Tour de France Femmes in select countries, and when possible including coverage within our main app. We have both have close friends who race, and Clara is past US national champion cyclist.

The challenge, however, is resources. Tour Tracker is just Clara and me. I do the development. She covers the races. And while I can do my part in adding more races to the calendar, ultimately Clara is just one reporter working crazy hours to cover the races we can. And even if she could duplicate herself, as mentioned in a previous blog entry, getting the detailed data our apps need has proven impossible for most women's races.

For 2025 we thought we had an ideal solution and have been working on it since the middle of last year. Specifically, we agreed to build a dedicated women's app for a group that intended to cover the entire women's season. We were doing this at no charge, and the app was looking great. But in December they backed out and we were left with a beautiful app with no data.

So for this year we are going back to what we have been doing for the past 4 years and covering the races that provide good data and for which Clara is available. We know this isn't the answer people want to hear, but it is the best we can achieve with our very limited resources. We will continue to look for partners who want to use our platform, however.

Thanks for reading this and thanks for your support.

Allan & Clara

Tour Tracker Pro Cycling

Tour Tracker Pro Cycling is our flagship, award-winning, 5-Star mobile app that provides unmatched live coverage of the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, Vuelta a España and 25+ other World Tour races, Monuments and Spring Classics. It is available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

Tour Track Pro Cycling has over 100 exclusive features that provide cycling fans with the ultimate companion to following pro cycling races. Just a small list of those features includes:

• Live GPS tracking of the race on interactive course maps and profiles.

• Live multi-media commentary from cycling reporters Peter Cossins & Clara Beard.

• Live mid-race results for every sprint and climb, with a virtual leaderboard.

• Previews of every race including start lists and interactive profiles & maps.

• Full results and standings for every intermediate, stage and jersey competition.

• Exclusive video rider interviews before and after each race.

• Extensive race data including ranking riders by time in the break-away.

• Keep track of your favorite riders and teams and check their results with one tap.

• Integrated Fantasy Cycling competitions with national and private leagues.

• Exclusive Time Machine feature that allows rewinding to any time or distance.

• Time Machine lets you synchronize the app data with any race video feed.

• Curated cycling news feed of the best stories we can find on the web.

• And literally 100 more features that you will discover in the app!
  

Tour Tracker Pro Cycling is available for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.