Frequently Asked Questions

There are three plans, all in US dollars: Monthly at $10 a month, 6 Months at $54 every six months ($9 a month), and Annual at $100 a year ($8.33 a month). Every plan includes all rides (4K too), Training Plans and workouts, challenges and leaderboards, and covers up to 3 members of the same household at no extra cost. All plans start with a 14-day free trial, no credit card required, and you can cancel any time. See the Pricing page for full details.

Use the Pricing or Buy Subscription link in the left navigation bar.

Use My Account or the 'Dashboard / Account' link in the left navigation bar.

You can have up to 3 members of the same household (primary user + 2 family members) use the same subscription at no extra cost. They can use different computers and logins, but must reside in the same household.

Go to My Account and click Add Member in the Family Subscription section. You can add up to 2 family members. Please make sure your family member has created a BigRingVR account with their email address first; we can only add an account that already exists.

Major credit cards and PayPal. Payment with BigRingVR is always 100% secure. We encrypt your data with an SSL connection and never save credit card details.

Go to My Account or the 'Dashboard / Account' link in the left navigation bar and click the Cancel Subscription button.

No problem! You can continue to use BigRingVR until the end of your current billing period. Use My Account or the 'Dashboard / Account' link in the left navigation bar to see your subscription details.

No, it will be charged automatically each month.

You can effectively pause any time: cancel when you're not riding (you keep access until the end of your paid period), then start a new subscription whenever you're ready to ride again. There's no penalty for stopping and restarting.

No — rides you recorded yourself are always free to use. A subscription is only needed to stream our library of web rides.

No, you will need a subscription to stream in real-time or to use downloaded rides.

Not from My Account yet. To move to a longer plan, cancel your current subscription on your My Account page — you keep full access until the end of the period you've already paid for — and subscribe to the new plan once that period has ended.

Yes, try it free for 14 days — no credit card required. Sign up here.
The trial starts when you create a BigRingVR account. If you signed up but didn't have a chance to ride during the trial window, please send us an email and we can extend it.

Make sure you create a BigRingVR account on the website before trying to sign in to the application. It only takes a couple of minutes.

This may be because you have cookies disabled (required by Google) or are using an ad blocker. We don't have any ads on our website, so temporarily disabling the ad blocker or enabling cookies should fix the problem.

You can permanently delete your BigRingVR account and personal data at any time. If you have an active subscription, please cancel it first so you are not billed again. When you delete your account we remove your profile, ride history and settings; we keep only a limited set of financial records that we are required to retain by law (for example, payment records for tax and billing-dispute purposes).
To get started, visit our Delete Account page.

That depends on your hardware and internet connection. We stream in 4K, 1080p and 720p. Rides available in 4K show a '4K UHD' badge in the Rides list. Video playback is hardware-accelerated (it uses your graphics card), so even 4K plays smoothly while keeping your computer cooler and quieter on long rides. More information can be found here. Also check out some of our demo videos.

Use the highest quality your computer and connection can handle. Video is hardware-accelerated, so most computers from the last few years handle 1080p easily and reasonably modern machines handle 4K well. Streaming needs about 4 Mbps for 720p, 8 Mbps for 1080p and 16 Mbps for 4K, so for 4K a fast connection — or downloading the ride first — helps. If video stutters, step down one level. The easiest option is to run the automatic test that measures your connection speed and graphics performance and picks the best setting for you (turn on Determine Web Ride Settings Automatically in Settings → Videos, or click Run Test… in the setup wizard — Settings → General → Re-run Setup Wizard…).

If your internet connection is fast enough for real-time streaming, there is no need to download the ride.

If your internet connection isn't fast enough and you get "buffer low" messages while streaming, use the download option. Downloading is also useful for higher-quality playback: if you want to ride in 1080p or 4K but your connection is only fast enough for a lower quality, select the quality you want first, then download the ride so it plays smoothly.

On the BigRingVR Web Rides tab, tick Downloaded only at the top.

In Settings → Videos → Quality Options, choose 4K UHD Video. Rides available in 4K show a '4K UHD' badge in the Rides list, and when you start a badged ride the 4K version plays automatically. 4K uses more bandwidth than 1080p, so a fast connection — or downloading the ride first — is recommended, and it looks best on a large screen or TV.

Training Plans are structured programmes you ride inside BigRingVR. There are 18 plans in six categories: Getting Started, General Fitness, Build FTP, Climbing, Endurance / Gran Fondo, and Race & Event Prep. Each category has three plans, from easier to harder, so you can start where you are and step up when you're ready. Every workout scales to your FTP, and you ride it on a real road you choose.

Click Training in the left bar and open Plans. Pick a plan, choose your training days, and start it — BigRingVR schedules your sessions. My plan then shows today's session and your schedule week by week. Click Choose a Ride to pick the road for today's workout, or Skip to pass on a session. Today's session also appears on the Home screen.

Open Training → Workouts, pick a workout, click Choose a Ride, then pick the road — the workout comes along with you. You can also start from a ride: pick it in Rides and choose a workout before you start. During the workout, Up/Down adjusts the target power, E toggles ERG mode and Tab skips to the next interval.

80+ BigRingVR workouts, plus any of your own. Filter them by name, type, tag, time, TSS and intensity (IF); each one shows its power profile.

Yes. Add your own .zwo, .erg or .mrc files to your Workouts folder and they appear in Training → Workouts next to the BigRingVR library. Choose Show → My workouts to see them — the folder's location is shown right there.

Yes — it's the same plan in the app and on the website. Browse all plans at bigringvr.com/training and see your own plan at My Training. Start a plan on the website and ride today's session in the app, or the other way round. On the website's My Training page you can also undo a skip for today's or a future session, and mark a session Done outdoors if you rode it away from BigRingVR — it counts as completed and can't be undone, so check before you confirm.

No. Training Plans and workouts are part of your BigRingVR subscription.

Yes. Every workout is set as a percentage of your FTP, so it scales to you automatically. To see how BigRingVR works out your FTP, see How do you calculate FTP?

Very likely — BigRingVR controls a wide range of smart trainers over both ANT+ (FE-C) and Bluetooth (FTMS or Tacx FE-C), including Wahoo, Tacx, Elite, Saris, BKool, Wattbike and JetBlack. See the supported trainers list for details.

If your trainer supports the ANT+ FE-C protocol, or Bluetooth (the standard FTMS protocol or Tacx's FE-C-over-Bluetooth), it will work with the BigRingVR app.

Yes. BigRingVR fully supports Bluetooth (BLE) on both Windows and Mac. You can connect sensors and trainers over Bluetooth, ANT+, or a mix of the two — for example an ANT+ heart-rate strap together with a Bluetooth power meter and smart trainer. For smart trainers we support the standard FTMS protocol as well as Tacx's FE-C-over-Bluetooth, so Tacx NEO trainers can be controlled over Bluetooth too. For step-by-step pairing, see Using BigRingVR.

BigRingVR runs on Windows 10 and 11 (64-bit, including Snapdragon/ARM PCs) and macOS 13 or later (a universal app for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs). The video is hardware-accelerated (it uses your graphics card), so most computers from roughly the last 3–4 years play 1080p easily and reasonably modern machines handle 4K well. 4K needs about 16 Mbps (1080p about 8 Mbps) and benefits from a modern GPU. If you're not sure, run the automatic video-quality test (turn on Determine Web Ride Settings Automatically in Settings → Videos, or click Run Test… in the setup wizard — Settings → General → Re-run Setup Wizard…) and BigRingVR will measure your connection and graphics performance and pick the best setting. See the recommended requirements for details.

Click Settings at the bottom of the left bar. The panes are General, Ride Experience, Account, Rider Profile, Videos, Sensors, Trainer, Integrations and About. Shortcuts: the sensor lights open Settings → Sensors, and your profile picture opens Settings → Account. To run the first-time setup again, use Settings → General → Re-run Setup Wizard….

Home shows today's training session, your scheduled rides, top-rated rides you haven't done yet, current challenges, your recent rides and what's new. It also shows your Rider Level (level, stars and Rings) and Explorer (how much of the catalogue you've ridden), and each recent ride shows the Rings it earned. To open BigRingVR on a different page, set Settings → General → Start screen to Home, Rides, Challenges or Training Plans.

Rides are saved in the Big-Ring\Rides folder under your Documents folder. They're saved as FIT files (.fit) by default. If you also want the older TCX format, set File format to “FIT and TCX” in Settings → General.

Yes. BigRingVR records rides as FIT — the compact, modern format used by Garmin, Strava and most cycling platforms. FIT files are far smaller than the old TCX format (often around 30× smaller) yet hold more detail, so uploads to Strava, TrainingPeaks and Intervals.icu are faster. If you ride dual-sided power-meter pedals, your left/right power balance is recorded too. If your heart-rate strap provides beat-to-beat (RR) data — all ANT+ monitors and most Bluetooth straps do — your heart-rate variability (HRV) is recorded to the FIT file as well, so TrainingPeaks and Intervals.icu can analyze it. You can still keep a TCX copy via the File format option in Settings → General.

Yes, if you ride dual-sided power-meter pedals, over ANT+ or Bluetooth. Pair the pedals as your power meter in Settings → Sensors, and keep your smart trainer as the smart trainer so your power comes from the pedals. To see the split while you ride, choose the Training layout in Settings → Ride Experience → Metrics layout. Your average appears in the End Ride summary and is saved to your FIT file for Strava, TrainingPeaks and Intervals.icu. Single-sided meters and smart trainers can't measure balance. If your pedals show up as two separate entries over Bluetooth, see Using BigRingVR.

The Tacx Genius T2021 is not a Tacx Genius Smart — it is one of the older models. It communicates with computer software using a proprietary, secret protocol rather than ANT+ FE-C (the ANT+ trainer standard). This means it cannot be used with BigRingVR.

Yes. The Kickr Climb is controlled by the Kickr, not by BigRingVR. The app sends the slope to the Kickr, which then sends it to the Climb.

Yes. Road Feel works on rides with a surface other than normal asphalt, such as cobbles or gravel. Turn on Enable Tacx Neo Road Feel when available in Settings → Trainer. It works over ANT+ and over Bluetooth on NEO trainers connected using Tacx's FE-C protocol (it is not available over plain FTMS). Try it on rides like St. Gotthard Pass and Tour of Flanders (Part 1), among others.

Open Rides, pick a ride, then click Create new course. Drag the sliders to select your portion, give your custom course a name, and click Save. Both the full course and your custom course then appear in the courses list.

Just stop pedaling. You'll coast to a stop and the video stops with you, and when you start pedaling again you carry on from the same spot. On a descent you'll keep rolling for a while, just as you would outdoors.

The ride clock keeps running while you're stopped, like on a ride outdoors, so leaderboard times stay fair and everyone on a live ride shares the same clock.

If you're riding a workout, it pauses by itself after 10 seconds without pedaling and picks up where you left off when you start again.

Yes. In Rides, switch from List to Map to see every ride as a pin coloured by difficulty. Choose a country or type a name and the map shows where those rides are. Click a pin to open the ride.

Yes. In Settings → Sensors, create a sensor configuration that uses your trainer as a power meter but not as a controllable smart trainer: set the smart trainer to "Don't use" and set the power meter to your trainer's power channel. This works over both ANT+ and Bluetooth.

Yes, but only for loop rides — look for rides with "Loop" in the name (there are about 20). After selecting a loop ride, tick Multiple laps in the ride details. To make this the default, turn on Ride multiple laps for loop rides in Settings → Ride Experience.

To ride several different routes back-to-back (not just laps of one loop), use Ride Queues — see the question below.

Setting "Trainer Difficulty" lower than 100% will decrease resistance on climbs. For instance, at 50% a grade of 10% is communicated to the trainer as 5%. BigRingVR's speed calculations still use the original grades, so it will not make you faster — you can think of it as virtual low gears. The default setting is 100%.

If Garmin or Suunto applications (Garmin Express, Suunto Movescount, etc.) are running in the background, they may block the USB port and ANT+ communication. Closing them should resolve the issue. If that does not help, remove and re-insert the ANT+ USB stick to reset the ANT+ channel.

Alternatively, you can connect your trainer and sensors over Bluetooth instead, which needs no ANT+ dongle.

Unlike Windows 10, Windows 11 does not automatically install proper ANT+ drivers. You can find and install them here.

Alternatively, connect over Bluetooth, which needs no driver.

This issue may have several causes:

1. The ANT+ dongle you are using is not compatible with BigRingVR. We are aware of two brands — Anself and Cycplus — that are problematic because they do not support the complete ANT standard. You can read more here.
2. Another program may be occupying the dongle. Make sure all programs that might be using it (e.g. Garmin Express, Zwift) are closed.
3. The USB port the dongle is in may not provide enough power — try a different USB port.

You can also connect these devices over Bluetooth, which avoids ANT+ dongle issues entirely.

Not all BKool trainers have ANT+ FE-C enabled by default, which is required for ANT+ control in BigRingVR. You can use the BKool software to check and enable ANT+ FE-C if necessary — see this support article. If your BKool supports Bluetooth (FTMS), you can also connect it over Bluetooth.

Some anti-virus applications may cause this error. Temporarily disabling them should resolve the issue. Google sign-in only needs to be done once, so there should be no issue for subsequent sign-ins when your anti-virus is re-enabled.

Yes, but not all. Some RLV publishers (e.g. TACX) encrypt their control files, so they cannot be used in BigRingVR. If your video comes with a GPX, CycleOps (.xml), RLV or PGMF control file, it can be used. Note that only rides with GPX files have GPS data and will show correctly on the map when uploaded to Strava — others will only show ride metrics without a map. The location of your local rides can be configured in Settings → Videos.

The ride screen is fully keyboard-controllable, so you can drive it from anything that sends keystrokes. During a ride, press H to see every shortcut. The main ones: F fullscreen, V views, P profile views, O profile overlay, R ranking, M map, Z map size, Space mark a lap, L lap figures, T queue totals (ride queues), S screenshot, E ERG mode, C coach, Q or = and A or - coach power, Up/Down target power in a workout, Tab skip to the next interval in a workout, and Esc to stop.

To do this from your phone, some riders use an app that turns the phone into a Bluetooth keyboard, such as Serverless Bluetooth Keyboard. This is an unofficial workaround rather than a built-in feature: it requires your phone to pair with your computer as a Bluetooth keyboard, which works on most setups but depends on your phone and operating system.

Click once anywhere on the ride screen. Your key presses reach BigRingVR only while its window has keyboard focus. If something else takes the focus mid-ride, such as a Windows notification, a Bluetooth pairing pop-up or another app, the keys go there instead. One click on the video brings the focus back, and all the shortcuts work again.

You can also right-click the video at any time for a menu with every command.

Yes. The ride map comes in three sizes: Small, Medium and Large. Press Z during a ride to step through them, or right-click the video and choose Map Size. To set your usual size, go to Settings → Ride Experience → Map Options → Map size. BigRingVR remembers the size you finish a ride with and uses it next time.

The Large map also zooms out one step, so it shows much more of the landscape around you. Press M to hide or show the map.

When your activity is saved, we look at your 20-minute maximum power × 0.95. If this number is higher than your existing FTP, we update it.

Almost. A downloaded ride plays its video from your computer, so the ride itself doesn't use your connection. BigRingVR does need a brief connection when it starts and when you start a ride — only a few KB, so a phone hotspot is plenty. If there's no internet when you finish, your ride is saved on your computer and uploads automatically the next time BigRingVR starts. Live-streamed rides need a connection the whole time.

This is a privacy feature that prevents others from riding against your previous efforts or riding with you in real-time. You can change this in Settings → Account → Activity Sharing. When activity sharing is on:

1. Other people will be able to ride against / with your efforts.
2. You will be able to ride against / with efforts of others.
3. You will be able to ride together with others in a live ride.

You can share your own rides with other riders: put the video and its control file on a cloud or file-sharing service, and others can download them and ride them locally in BigRingVR.

For GPX files, please make sure that:
1. The video file and control file have the same name, except for their extension (e.g. my_local_ride.mp4 and my_local_ride.gpx).
2. Supported codecs are H.264 and H.265; supported containers are MP4 and AVI.
3. The control file must be a GPX, CycleOps (.xml), RLV or PGMF file.
4. The GPX file must contain a track, and each track point must include a timestamp.
5. The GPX track and video file must start at the same location so the video and GPS track are in sync.

Link your Strava, TrainingPeaks or Intervals.icu account in Settings → Integrations. When your ride is saved it is automatically uploaded to your linked accounts. For Intervals.icu, paste an API key from your intervals.icu profile → Developer Settings, then use the Test Connection button in Settings → Integrations. Each Strava upload's description also shows the ride's Rings and your rider level. See Using BigRingVR for the full walkthrough.

Yes. In Settings → Videos, click Change download location and choose a folder on your external drive. On Windows, make sure the drive always gets the same drive letter (for example F:).

Screenshots are saved in the Big-Ring\Screenshots folder under your Documents folder. Unfortunately, we cannot automatically upload them to Strava, as Strava does not offer that capability in their public API. To add images to your Strava ride: open your ride in Strava, click 'Edit Activity', then drag images to the Photos section.

To join a challenge, simply complete one of the rides in the challenge. Your result will automatically be added to the challenge leaderboard. You can browse challenges and their rides in the Challenges tab in the app's left bar, or on the website.

Yes. Click Challenges in the left bar for every challenge — live now, coming up, and those that ended in the past year. Open one to see its distance, elevation, difficulty and dates, your progress (rides done out of the total), every ride in order with the ones you've completed shown as a green row with ✓ Ride again, and the Challenge Leaderboard (Fastest and Distance, with My position to jump to your row). Ride it starts any challenge ride straight from there, and your progress updates by itself when you finish. Your challenges also appear on the Home screen. You can also tap the 🔔 on any ride to schedule it — scheduled rides appear on Home, and a ride drops off your schedule once you complete it.

Unfortunately, no. A ride will appear on the leaderboard and be marked as completed only if it is done as a full ride in a single attempt.

When you ride multiple laps of a loop ride, it will not appear on the leaderboard. To ride a single lap, untick Multiple laps in the ride details after selecting the ride. To change the default, use Ride multiple laps for loop rides in Settings → Ride Experience.

Open Rides and turn on Build a Queue (next to the List | Map switch), click the rides you want in the order you'd like to ride them (reorder or remove them before you start), then press Start Queue. BigRingVR rides them one after another and auto-advances the moment you cross each finish line — there's no need to stop pedaling. Each ride is still saved as its own separate activity on BigRingVR, so your ride history and leaderboard placings stay per-ride. During a queue, press T to switch the on-screen figures between the current ride and the whole queue.

On Strava, TrainingPeaks and Intervals.icu it works the other way: when the rides genuinely join up on the road — each one starting within 50 m of where the previous finished — BigRingVR offers to upload the whole run as a single activity, so a route you rode in one continuous effort appears as one ride instead of several. Decline and you get one activity per ride.

The join is re-checked against the track you actually rode, not just the rides you queued — so if you stop partway through one of them, the run is split at that point instead of being merged with a straight line drawn across the map. Either way a “Queue complete” summary shows your combined totals at the end.

Open the sensor pairing screen (Settings → Sensors, or the setup wizard). It scans for ANT+ and Bluetooth devices side by side, filtered to real cycling sensors. Pick each one — heart rate, power, cadence, smart trainer — from either protocol; you can freely mix them, for example an ANT+ heart-rate strap with a Bluetooth power meter and a Bluetooth smart trainer. The sensor lights at the bottom of the left bar turn green while data is flowing — click them at any time to jump to Settings → Sensors.

Yes. NEO trainers use Tacx's FE-C-over-Bluetooth protocol rather than the standard FTMS. When you pair over Bluetooth your NEO may appear twice — choose the entry labelled '(Tacx road feel)' to get full resistance control and Road Feel. You can also connect a NEO over ANT+.

Yes on both counts. BigRingVR for Mac needs macOS 13 or later and is a universal app that runs natively on Apple Silicon (M-series) and Intel Macs — no Rosetta needed. ANT+ works on Mac too with an ANT+ USB stick, alongside Bluetooth.

No. BigRingVR keeps itself up to date — new builds install automatically in the background, so after your first install you won't need to download an installer again. This works on both Windows and Mac. To check right away, click Updates at the bottom of the left bar, or use Check for updates in Settings → About.

The current version is BigRingVR 8.0.1.158. Settings → About shows yours, with Check for updates and the open-source licences BigRingVR is built with.

Yes. Click Theme in the left bar for a quick theme menu, or choose one in Settings → General → Theme — there are nine light and dark themes, including Trailblazer (the classic lime-on-charcoal BigRingVR look). For language, go to Settings → General → Language — BigRingVR is available in English, German, Dutch, French, Spanish and Italian, and the change takes effect the next time you launch the app.

Yes. Settings → Ride Experience has three in-ride looks: Modern, Classic and Daylight. Modern and Classic are both light-on-dark; Daylight is dark text on a pale panel, which reads better in a bright room or a sunlit pain cave.

The theme is purely visual — it never changes which metrics appear or where they sit, which are the two settings beside it. This is also separate from the Theme menu in the left bar (or Settings → General → Theme), which styles the rest of the application rather than the ride screen.

If a Bluetooth sensor in your configuration hasn't connected for 10 rides in a row, BigRingVR offers to remove it. Configurations outlive hardware — a cadence sensor paired years ago stays in the list for ever, and the app keeps scanning for it, which costs battery and slows down reconnecting the sensors you do use.

Choose Remove it to tidy up, Not now to be asked again later, or Never remind me to keep the sensor and stop the prompt. Nothing is ever removed without your say-so.

BigRingVR only judges a sensor on rides where at least one other sensor connected — so browsing the catalog with your trainer switched off never counts against anything. ANT+ sensors aren't included.

At the end of each ride the summary shows: Normalized Power (NP) — an estimate of the steady power that would have cost you the same effort as your variable ride; Intensity Factor (IF) — your NP divided by your FTP, i.e. how hard the ride was relative to your threshold; and Training Stress Score (TSS) — how much training load the ride added, combining intensity and duration. The summary also shows peak power, time in power zones, your elevation profile and your leaderboard placing.

Go to Settings → General, type a short description of the problem in the box, then click Upload Logs to Support…. BigRingVR bundles your logs and sends them to us with your note. If your network blocks the upload, click Save Logs to File… and send us the file. You can also use Feedback → Report an Issue at the bottom of the left bar.

Click Feedback at the bottom of the left bar and choose Give Feedback or Report an Issue.

We're actively working on it. Android is currently in beta testing, the iPhone / iPad version is at an early alpha stage, and we've recently started work on an Apple TV version. None of these are publicly available yet — for now BigRingVR runs on Windows and Mac. Keep an eye on our newsletter and the BigRingVR Facebook group for announcements as each platform opens up.

No. BigRingVR is digitally signed with a Microsoft-issued certificate. What you're seeing is Smart App Control, a Windows 11 feature that also weighs how widely recognised a program is — and BigRingVR 8 is new, so it hasn't built that recognition yet. Windows blocks it as a precaution, not because anything is wrong with the file.

Smart App Control can't allow a single app, so the only way past it is to switch it off, under Windows Security → App & browser control. It's a one-way setting — Windows doesn't offer a way to switch it back on later — while Microsoft Defender, SmartScreen and the firewall all carry on as normal. Full steps are on the download page.

Almost always radio interference rather than a fault with the sensor or the app. ANT+ and Bluetooth share the 2.4 GHz band with Wi-Fi and a lot of household electronics.

Three fixes, in the order most likely to help:

Put the ANT+ dongle on a USB extension cable. USB 3 ports emit noise across the frequencies ANT+ uses, so a dongle plugged straight into the computer is often swamped. Moving it a foot or two away — and closer to the bike — fixes more dropouts than anything else.

Switch your computer to the 5 GHz Wi-Fi network, if the signal there is strong. That removes your Wi-Fi from the band your sensors use, and gives 4K video more bandwidth. If your setup is far from the router, though, a solid 2.4 GHz connection beats a weak 5 GHz one.

On 2.4 GHz, prefer router channel 1 or 6. ANT+ transmits on a fixed 2457 MHz, which sits inside Wi-Fi channel 11. Bluetooth hops between frequencies and copes better — so if ANT+ sensors drop while Bluetooth ones hold, that's the likely reason.

Full details are on the Using BigRingVR page.

Rings measure how much riding you've done. Every ride earns Rings: 1 Ring for every kilometre you ride, plus 1 Ring for every 30 metres you climb.

For example, a 40 km ride with 600 m of climbing earns 40 + 20 = 60 Rings.

A ride that ends lower than it started gives back 1 Ring for every 30 metres it drops overall, but every ride earns at least half its kilometres. A 20 km loop that climbs 1,000 m and comes back down still earns 53 Rings; a 22 km descent that drops 1,200 m earns 11, half its kilometres.

Long flat rides and big climbs count alike, and speed doesn't come into it — a ride earns the same Rings whether you take one hour or three.

A full ride of Tour of Flanders (Part 1) earns about 36 Rings, Alpe d'Huez about 52, Mont Ventoux from Bédoin about 74 and the Stelvio from Prato about 90.

Each ride also gets a size: Short (under 25), Solid (25–40), Big (40–60), Huge (60–90) or Epic (90+).

Every ride counts: repeats, rides you finish over two sessions, and custom courses. A ride that works out at more than 100 Rings an hour is treated as a recording glitch and earns 0 — even a pro climbing all day stays well below that.

Your Rings add up to your rider level: Grey (from 0), Bronze (100), Silver (500), Gold (2,000), Diamond (7,500), Royal (20,000), Legend (40,000), Immortal (80,000), Transcendent (160,000) and Eternal (320,000).

Each level up to Transcendent has 5 stars along the way, so there's always a next step in sight. Legend is close to riding every route in our catalogue once. Your Rings add up for good, and levels never go down.

The Rider Level tile on your Dashboard shows your level and stars, your total Rings, a bar to your next star, how many Rings to your next star and level, this week's Rings, and when you'll reach the next level at your recent pace.

My Activities shows each ride's Rings and size, and so does each activity's page. In the v8 app, the Home screen shows the same Rider Level and Explorer tiles, and your recent rides there show the Rings each one earned. Every ride you upload to Strava also carries two extra lines in its description: the ride's Rings and your rider level.

"This week" runs Monday to Sunday, so it starts again from 0 every Monday. Rides from last week are already in your total.

Explorer shows how many of the rides in our catalogue you've completed, as a number and a percentage.

A ride counts once you've ridden it to the finish in one go, and riding it again doesn't add to the count. Resumed rides and custom courses earn Rings but don't count for Explorer. The rides page marks the rides you've completed, and Not ridden yet → on the Explorer tile lists the ones still waiting for you.

No. Rings, levels and Explorer measure only your own riding. They grow every time you ride, at whatever pace suits you. The leaderboards are separate.

You can add rides to scheduled / favorites on the rides page. Make sure you are logged in — in the rightmost column, click the Star icon (favorite) or Bell icon (scheduled).

You can also add rides to scheduled / favorites on the individual Ride page.

In the app, every ride card and ride page has the same ★ and 🔔 buttons as the website — it's the same favourites and schedule. To list only favourites or scheduled rides, open Rides → Filters → Show. Scheduled rides also appear on the Home screen.

Use the 'Dashboard / My Rides' link in the left navigation bar, or go directly to My Rides. Click on the Date link to see details of an individual activity.

Navigate to My Rides. In the rightmost column you can delete an activity permanently (click the delete icon) or make it private (click the lock icon), so it won't appear on the ride leaderboard. Please note that once an activity is deleted, there is no way to restore it. You can, however, toggle your activity between private and public at any time.

Go to My Account and find Notification Preferences to turn individual options on or off. To get our emails at a different address from your main Google account email, add it there as your Notification email.

Go to My Account, find Notification Preferences, and turn on New ride alerts, Challenge updates or App notifications, then click Save Preferences. These are off for new accounts until you turn them on, and you can change them at any time. News & updates is our newsletter.

Please join our public BigRingVR Group on Facebook. Connect with fellow BigRingers, share and learn, and get help from fellow cyclists!

Join our public BigRingVR Group on Facebook to get help from fellow riders.
If you come across any issues, please report them here.
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