Ride Review: Trainer Software Comparison

Indoor cycling, like the rest of the cycling space, has evolved dramatically over the past 10-15 years.

Long gone is the era of rollers and stationary trainers (remember CycleOps?), and here to stay is the era of smart trainers, dedicated indoor bikes, and immersive training applications, each with its own strengths and unique value proposition. And while indoor riding still pales in comparison to riding outdoors, feeling like a necessary evil to many of us in colder climates, the quality of the training and the fitness gains are undeniable.

As training platforms have proliferated, cyclists now have a bevvy of options to choose from, ranging from hyper realistic courses to virtual competition, and gamification to adaptive, highly structured training plans that will get you fast and fit, and ready for just about any event you can think of, be it short or long distance, and road, gravel, or mountain biking.

With this backdrop in mind, we asked four Contender staffers to deliver a detailed Ride Review of four different training platforms, including long-time stalwarts TrainerRoad and Zwift, and more recent upstarts Rouvy and MyWhoosh. Less about crowning a single winner, this Ride Review is more about putting each platform into context: its strengths and weaknesses, the intended audience, likes and dislikes, and final verdict.

And if you need help dialing in your indoor setup before you commit to a platform, you're in luck: our recent Indoor Cycling Space Guide goes deep on all the things, including smart trainers and dedicated bikes from Wahoo, gorgeous laptop stands from TONS, and hydration and nutrition from Skratch Labs. Crunched for time? Simply jump to the bottom of this blog to check out the featured products.

Rouvy Pricing: $19.99/month or $180/year (free trial available)

Ezra's Context:

🚴 Indoor Setup: Wahoo KICKR Core

💻 Prior Platform: TrainerRoad

🔥Primary Motivation: Race prep & build fitness; more efficient use of time in winter months.

⏱️ Typical Indoor Session Length: 60 minutes

😬 Trainer Tolerance (love it, loathe it, or middle of the road): Middle of the road. I love how productive it is, but it doesn't come close to riding outside.

🔎 How Ezra Tested: Two total rides: one workout copied from TrainerRoad and completed using ERG mode, and the other, I just rode the course to simulate more of a real-world ride.

Ezra's Rouvy Scorecard (Scale: 0 to 5 Stars) :

✅ Ease of Use: 4 out of 5 stars | Rouvy was straightforward to set up, with intuitive navigation for selecting workouts, locations, or uploading custom workouts. Initial pairing with my Wahoo required a restart, and connecting to Strava or Garmin required some research. Once set up, everything ran smoothly and was easy to follow.

🌎 Realism: 5 out of 5 stars | Rouvy delivers highly realistic rides with accurate gradients, speed, and immersive locations. Features like pedestrians add vibrance and realism to the course. My favorite: I rode Chapman’s Peak in South Africa virtually, and the experience closely mirrored the real climb. Compared to Zwift, Rouvy places much greater emphasis on real-world simulation.

📈 Training Quality: 3.5 out of 5 stars | Rouvy offers a solid library of structured workouts, including branded sessions from pro teams like Team Visma | Lease A Bike. However, it lacks clearly defined long-term training plans tied to specific goals, such as events, base fitness, or FTP development, limiting its appeal as a primary training platform.

🏆 Gamification: 5 out of 5 stars | Rouvy offers strong gamification through scheduled events, races, and recurring 'Community Showcase' rides on user-created routes. Ongoing challenges mirror Strava-style goals, with coins earned to unlock virtual bikes and accessories, though I’m still waiting for a training platform bold enough to fully embrace Mario Kart–level chaos.

🔥 Motivation or Stickiness: 2 out of 5 stars | Rouvy is engaging and well designed, but it doesn’t quite match how I stay motivated indoors. I respond best to structured, goal-driven training plans, which is why TrainerRoad works better for me. For entertainment, I still prefer skiing or riding outside when conditions allow.

Ezra's Rouvy Review: 

• TL;DR (ie, if you had to summarize in a single sentence): If you want indoor training that feels closest to riding outside, Rouvy nails it.

• Likes: Realism of the platform; being able to preview actual races, or to 'virtually' ride iconic routes around the globe.

• Dislikes: Training library lacks rigor, especially for specific event prep or deeper fitness gains. Training Peaks integration is a start, but for me, more powerful would be a TrainerRoad integration. 

• Surprise Factor: Gamification features. I knew Rouvy was hyper realistic, but wasn't aware of the integrated events, challenges, rewards, etc. 

• Final Verdict: Rouvy is...an excellent platform for those who value hyper realism, and who want deeper levels of interaction (gamification). For more structured, goal-driven training designed to build fitness, I believe TrainerRoad remains the better choice.

Zwift Pricing: $19.99/month or $199.99/year (free trials available)

Kobe's Context:

🚴 Indoor Setup: Wahoo KICKR Core with Zwift cog

💻 Prior Platform: N/A

🔥Primary Motivation: Race prep & building fitness

⏱️ Typical Indoor Session Length: 1 to 3 hours

😬 Trainer Tolerance (love it, loathe it, or middle of the road): Middle of the road. Definitely took some getting used to, but it is extremely efficient for building fitness in the winter.

🔎 How Kobe Tested: I’ve been on and off Zwift for the past 6 weeks. Half my rides have been long endurance rides, with the rest being endurance rides with longer tempo intervals. Since it’s still early in the season, my focus has been to improve my aerobic and endurance base.

Kobe's Zwift Scorecard (Scale: 0 to 5 Stars)

✅ Ease of Use: 3.5 out of 5 stars | I say this because occasionally I will have connectivity issues, but this is most likely more of an internet issue on my end. Also, with the Zwift cog, the shifters seem to run through coin cell batteries pretty quickly.

🌎 Realism: 4 out of 5 stars | On Zwift, the routes are pretty realistic when it comes to gradient. On climbs, my KICK Core will increase resistance, and the opposite on descending, giving you a pretty realistic ride feel.

📈 Training Quality: 5 out of 5 stars | Although it’s not the most fun, Zwift helps me to lock in on the plan for the day. Specifically, I really value the ability to complete long endurance rides, along with keeping my power more consistent, whether I’m climbing, descending, or riding the flats.

🏆 Gamification: 5 out of 5 stars | I have not participated in many of these, but Zwift seems to always have fun competitions going on, and there’s always KOM’s and sprint leaderboards along every route.

🔥 Motivation or Stickiness: 5 out of 5 stars | As someone with big racing goals this season, I love how using Zwift is allowing me to have focused, intentional training sessions.

Kobe's Zwift Review:

• TL;DR (ie, if you had to summarize in a single sentence): Zwift is extremely efficient and will allow you to build great fitness in the winter months.

• Likes: Option to avoid riding in harsh conditions during winter; high-quality workouts and training; riding against others, along with the option to shoot for KOMs on major climbs or segments

• Dislikes: Occasional issue with connectivity (but I feel like this is something that would occur with any indoor training system)

• Surprise Factor: Pleasantly surprised at the quality, consistency, and ease of training indoors using Zwift--especially when contrasted with a year ago, when I only trained outdoors.

• Final Verdict: Zwift will continue to be my go-to for this season and possibly beyond. For cyclists who can't head south for the winter, if you need to build deep fitness and race readiness, or you just value efficiency, Zwift is the way to go.  

MyWhoosh Pricing: free! At least for now

Mike's Context:

🚴 Indoor Setup: Garmin Tacx Neo Smart Bike (no fan). 

💻 Prior Platform: Zwift. 

🔥Primary Motivation: In order of importance...build fitness, maintenance, race prep, fun.

⏱️ Typical Indoor Session Length: 90+ minutes

😬 Trainer Tolerance (love it, loathe it, or middle of the road): Middle of the road, trending to a strong like.

🔎 How Mike Tested: Mix of internal and endurance rides over a 2-week period.

Mike's MyWhoosh Scorecard (Scale: 0 to 5 Stars)

✅ Ease of Use: 4 out of 5 stars | For some reason, my MacBook is not liking the app, so I need to go through the browser. Verifying my data was a bit time-consuming and labor-intensive. Everything else was pretty smooth and very easy to get set up.

🌎 Realism: 3 out of 5 stars | The avatar was pretty realistic. The courses were less realistic from an environmental standpoint. I would classify them as “boring.”

📈 Training Quality: 4 out of 5 stars | For me, the workouts were on par with most other platforms. Bottom line, it is indoor training and racing. There is no better bang for your buck than getting on an indoor trainer and riding.

🏆 Gamification: 2 out of 5 stars | I had a hard time following the gamification part. Candidly, it seems like MyWhoosh just copied a lot of Zwift ideas.

🔥 Motivation or Stickiness: 3 out of 5 stars | The lack of participants on the platform was not very motivating. The gamification of the platform did not appeal to me, and it felt like a cheap casino game.

Mike's MyWhoosh Review:

• TL;DR (ie, if you had to summarize in a single sentence): There are two reasons to go with MyWhoosh. If you are on a budget or just ride indoors occasionally and don't want to pay a monthly fee, or if you want to get into indoor racing.  

• Likes: The platform is free; the avatar is large and pretty realistic; the data verification process, before racing; UCI connection, which gives me greater confidence in the data  

• Dislikes: UX and gamification are not strong and feel like a cheap casino, as I noted above; courses are moderately boring; lack of participants killed my motivation

• Final Verdict: If you like racing indoors or virtually, I recommend MyWhoosh. They have connections with the UCI, they offer real racing (authenticated data), and they offer real prize money. The company is a major sponsor of UAE, and they are looking to become the primary racing platform for cycling. That being said, the politics of ownership may not align with everyone. I became a cyclist because of racing, and I would use MyWhoosh for those days where riding hard, in a race situation, is on my calendar. Finally, budget means a lot to many consumers; this platform is currently free to use.

TrainerRoad Pricing: $21.99/month or $209.99/year

Nick's Context:

🚴 Indoor Setup: KICKR v6, paired with TrainerRoad and a second screen for streaming a show

💻 Prior Platform: Zwift

🔥Primary Motivation: Build fitness, race prep (Leadville this August, plus some others leading up). Fun? Nice try.  

⏱️ Typical Indoor Session Length: 45-60 minutes, with 2-3 a month in the 90+ minute range

😬 Trainer Tolerance (love it, loathe it, or middle of the road): Somewhere between Loathe It and Middle of the Road. I value the training quality and fitness gains of riding indoors, but deeply miss the benefits of riding outdoors.

🔎 How Nick Tested: 5 total rides, including TR’s ramp test, 2 tempo, and 2 endurance rides

Nick's TrainerRoad Scorecard (Scale: 0 to 5 Stars):

✅ Ease of Use: 4 out of 5 stars | Easy breezy to connect the bike and get going; doing TrainerRoad’s up-front ramp test was annoying–and why I’m not giving 5 stars–but ultimately beneficial, as everything is now calibrated to my updated FTP.

🌎 Realism: N/A | Although TrainerRoad now integrates with Zwift, offering the ability to complete prescribed workouts within Zwift’s virtual environment, TrainerRoad’s user experience is delightfully simple and lo-fi, with the workout displayed as a real-time chart, including warmup and cooldown, intervals, and rest periods.

📈 Training Quality: 5 out of 5 stars | Workouts on TrainerRoad feel highly personalized, based on past workouts on Strava or Garmin, one’s ramp test, workouts on the platform, and where applicable, upcoming races. For me, the net is a feeling that my time in the pain cave is intentional and making real progress towards my goals, rather than just riding to ride.

🏆 Gamification: N/A | Unless TrainerRoad is paired with Zwift, there are no gamification features or the ability to ride or compete with friends. For some, this might be a downside, but for the most part, I love the simplicity of just following a structured, personalized workout and rewarding myself with a movie or TV show for doing so.

🔥 Motivation or Stickiness: 4 out of 5 stars | Talk to me again in several weeks, after I’ve made TrainerRoad more of a habit, but so far so good. Between the simplicity of the UX, the quality of the workouts, the use of AI to adapt my workouts based on fitness, recovery, and race plans, and how well it complements a second screen for streaming, I’m bought in.

Nick's TrainerRoad Review: 

• TL;DR (ie, if you had to summarize in a single sentence): TrainerRoad is…the best platform if you want no frills, highly personalized, high impact, and adaptive training and race prep. Bonus: stream movies while you ride, without information overload (looking at you, Zwift).

• Likes: high quality workouts, informed by tons of data;  adaptive training plans, based on fitness, fatigue, schedule changes, and event details; simple UX pairs awesome with a second screen (ie, NetFlix), and doesn't compete for my attention; very user friendly, connecting with my KICKR without issue, along with easily uploading to Strava   

• Dislikes: lacks interaction of platforms like Zwift and Rouvy; while I mostly like the UX, it can also feel a bit sterile at times, lacking the vibrance of a virtual course or riding with others 

• Surprise Factor: TrainerRoad’s coaching nudges & factoids at the bottom of the UX were a surprise and delight. I found them to be insightful, and just the right frequency. A good example: TrainerRoad nudged me to work on my aero positioning in progressively longer blocks, while reminding me that building a stronger aerobic base will serve me well for race scenarios, reserving energy stores for higher intensity efforts. 

• Final Verdict: 100 percent would recommend TrainerRoad. In my 5+ rides, the platform has fully delivered on everything I had heard and hoped for. I plan on staying the course, making it central to my training and race prep for this year. 

Have questions on which indoor training app is best for you? Or still working to dial in your indoor setup, be it Wahoo trainer or full bike, Tons laptop stand, or hydration and nutrition?

We'd love to help! Reach out via the options below, and we’ll get you rolling.

📍 Visit: our Salt Lake City or Park City locations
📞 Call: 801-364-0344
📧 Email: info@contenderbicycles.com