Zwift vs TrainerRoad: which is the right indoor cycling app for you?

TrainerRoad and Zwift are two of the highest-profile indoor cycling apps, but these two platforms take very different approaches to riding indoors. 

Zwift offers a video game workout for cyclists and interactions with other users, while TrainerRoad is ruthlessly target-driven with a huge library of workouts that you can do on your turbo trainer or outdoors.

Here, we’ll cover how each of the two cycling apps works and the reasons you might want to use each one, as well as answering the key question: which is the right indoor cycling app for you?

Zwift vs TrainerRoad at a glance

Reasons to use Zwift

Zwift offers the experience of a video game, but one in which you need to work to progress, gain rewards and move up the leaderboard.

Gamified experience

Zwift has the feel of a video game, where your avatar rides through virtual worlds at a pace determined by the effort you put in and you can choose which of the available routes to ride. It’s engaging, with scenery based on both real-world and imaginary landscapes. 

You can climb a virtual Alpe d’Huez, ride through London or New York, or around a Japanese island landscape – as well as in Zwift’s Watopia, which includes volcanoes and jungles.

Workouts and challenges

While Zwift offers many specific workouts and training plans, its emphasis is on the ride. It periodically adds new workout collections, such as its range of sub-60-minute routines.

If you have a specific training plan you want to follow, you can use Zwift’s workout builder to set up your own custom plan.

There are also periodic Zwift challenges, with targets to meet in specific time periods.

Interaction with other users

A key feature of Zwift absent from TrainerRoad is the ability to ride with or against others worldwide at any time of the day or night. There’s always someone on the app and you can join group rides and events, and chat with other riders.

Tactics can help you along, with drafting making riding easier, for example. You can ride with virtual riders too – Zwift’s Robopacers – which make sure you don’t ease off.  

Competition

That interaction with others encourages competition, which has become a major facet of Zwift. There’s a packed schedule of races you can join, day and night, with different formats and at different levels.

Zwift Racing Score enables you to keep tabs on your progress and ensures you’re racing against appropriate competitors. There are even prizes for winners and the chance to turn pro for elite Zwifters.

In-game rewards

As you ride in Zwift, you can collect rewards, including Drops, which can be used to customise your avatar and its hardware. Earn enough Drops and you can buy a faster frame or wheels, for example, and there are special bikes, such as the Pinarello Espada, available by invitation only.

Hardware

Zwift has branched out into its own hardware platform. Zwift Cog and Click offer virtual shifting from your handlebar, without needing to use your bike’s gears. 

Opt for the relatively inexpensive Zwift Play controllers, which hook over your brake levers and you can control Zwift without needing to touch the device you use to run the app. You can use them to steer in the game too.  

Finally, Zwift Ride offers a complete indoor smart bike setup that’s more affordable than the alternatives, so you don’t need to mount your outdoor bike to a trainer in order to ride. 

Reasons to use TrainerRoad 

TrainerRoad is intended to provide objective-driven training to improve your cycling performance. It's designed to offer many of the benefits of a coach, but without the associated price tag.

Goal-focused

TrainerRoad enables you to set goals for your training, whether that’s preparation for a specific event at a fixed date, an increase in your FTP or another target. 

It will then map out a training plan to meet your objectives, with a series of workouts and specific dates to achieve it.

Structured

TrainerRoad’s focus is on structured training. While Zwift has volcanoes, TrainerRoad has a screen with effort-level ramps and stats for your workout. 

It’s not as immersive, but much more focused and potentially more motivating if you’re aiming for a specific goal. You’ll be riding in your own bubble though, without any competition from other users.

Huge workout library

TrainerRoad boasts more than 25 million workout routines, so you can be pretty sure to find one that works for you. 

You don’t have to choose yourself though, because TrainerRoad will select an appropriate series of workouts, as explained next.

Adaptive training

A key aspect of TrainerRoad is it changes its suggested workouts and schedule depending on how well you’ve performed.

When you miss a workout, under or over-perform, or do a different exercise, if TrainerRoad knows about it, it will adapt your forward plan. It will schedule a rest day if you go for a particularly long outdoor ride, for example. 

TrainerRoad also offers TrainNow, where rather than setting an objective to work to and following a training plan, you can work out more flexibly. You can specify how long you have to train and TrainNow will offer a choice of three workouts to follow.

Multi-faceted performance measurement

While Zwift bases its assessment of its performance on your power output, and now on your performance in races as well, TrainerRoad works across seven different metrics, which roughly align to different training zones. 

It says this gives you a more rounded overview of your fitness, as well as your strengths and weaknesses. It also feeds into the mix of workouts it prescribes to meet your goals. TrainerRoad will automatically update your key metrics such as VO2 Max and FTP based on your workout performance too.

Indoor and outdoor workouts

Zwift will keep you indoors, but TrainerRoad enables you to complete its workouts both indoors on a smart trainer and outdoors, should you prefer. You can integrate other activities into your training too, so you can run or swim if you want a break from cycling. 

Zwift has running routes in its virtual worlds, but you’ll need a treadmill to follow them.

Minimised mode

While watching ramps loom on a screen may not be exciting, you can also run TrainerRoad minimised as a small window and watch or listen to something else as you ride. The app will control a smart trainer to increase or decrease the resistance to follow your workout, without you needing to think about it.

With Zwift, the virtual ride is the workout, so you’re going to have to keep watching the app, although it too will control a smart trainer automatically.

Support to meet your objectives

When you sign up to TrainerRoad, you’re given the option to talk via Zoom to one of TrainerRoad’s athletes. You can also get support via email or chat if you have specific queries.

There’s an extensive online library of written and video advice from experts, based on the latest thinking in sports science. Much of this is open to all, not just TrainerRoad’s users.

You can also join a group workout, where you get video and live chat with other users. You’re not competing against them directly, but seeing others suffer may help keep you going.