New York Road Runners Reviews

I’ve been following runners on the official NYC Marathon app for years now - this is by far the worst version. I searched ahead of time for my runners to follow. 1. NewYorkRoadRunners didn’t list their anticipated start times in the followed runners’ info section. 2. NewYorkRoadRunners kept deleting my saved runners and replacing them with random people. 3. During the race when I was trying to find my runners, it wouldn’t let me re-add them - it just kept giving error messages. 4. The few times I could see my 2 runners listed, the map loaded so slowly I couldn’t actually see their location. 5. It didn’t seem like the search worked well, and the ability to find runners based on run club seemed like it wasn’t working. Overall, it was absolutely worthless. Please bring back an old version. Sure, they would lag a teeny bit when everyone was using it at once to track all the runners, but the features and functionality were there 95% of the time and you at least could know in real time if your runner was coming or had already passed you. This year’s version was totally useless.

I never write app reviews but this is such a bad experience I felt I had to. Trying to track the marathon and everything takes 20secs before failing with “there’s been an error. Please try again later.” Leaderboard is blank. Hard to find anything to begin with. Literally fails at the most basic tasks you’d want it for. I’d be fine with the bad ux design if it actually worked. Embarrassing for NYRR, they should focus on big improvements asap.

Every year I use NewYorkRoadRunners to track people I know who run the NYC Marathon. The features of NewYorkRoadRunners are great. The problem is, and has been for years, that on marathon day, it basically stops working. It’s all spinning wheels and “oops, something went wrong” messages. You need a tech team that can make an app that can actually function on the one day it’s meant to function. Otherwise you have garbage.

I downloaded NewYorkRoadRunners for the 2025 New York Marathon. For an event of this scale and prestige, NewYorkRoadRunners ’s instability/ poor functionality is completely unacceptable. Random runners were inexplicably added to my tracking list, and I was unable to add the runners I actually wanted to follow. The interface was unresponsive, slow, and at times entirely unusable. It’s honestly shocking that an event of this size and reputation would release something in such a broken, unfinished state

Every year NewYorkRoadRunners ’s efficiency and reliability is questionable, this year it was beyond all I experienced in the past. The apps kept adding -out of nowhere- runners in my following list that I do not know. Regardless how many time I removed them, new runners were adding as part of the ones I tracked (same things for several of my friends). Then, the trackability is not even accurate. NewYorkRoadRunners is not intuitive either. Worst app so far.

I never review apps on here so that says a lot. Literally my first review ever. If you want NewYorkRoadRunners to see upcoming events then cool. Other than that it’s useless. I hope there a major updates in the future because there was no need for NewYorkRoadRunners. You changed your whole website around and that’s a whole other issue in itself. Probably can’t revert your changes on the website either which is truly disappointing.

It pains me to write this, but NYRR is slowly losing my support after they updated their website and app to make them confusing, unclear, and unpractical. Not to mention the sold-out races that you can’t even sign up for with the $60 membership, instead you need the $120 membership that gives you early access. This used to be about the running community and now it’s a mere corporation running nothing but lucrative business.

This (2025) is my fourth year spectating for the marathon. This was by far the absolute worst year for tracking runners/using NewYorkRoadRunners. They should honestly just do away with pretending to offer any app functionality, since it was unusable. NewYorkRoadRunners did not load fully at any point during the 5+ hours we were watching. It dropped all of my follows, during the full time of the race, except for two different male marathon professions for both my friend and I. It randomly followed I it If this is the work of Tata (I sure hope not) they are doing a terrible job. NewYorkRoadRunners made the experience extraordinarily frustrating and we instead resorted to using the NYT article on the race, a screenshot of the route, and hopes and prayers. NYRR, do better next year.

When they “updated” NewYorkRoadRunners in March all of my running and volunteering history disappeared. My credit card info didn’t transfer. My gift card was rejected and I couldn’t upgrade my membership level. The menu is too deep and overly complicated. Races that are sold out or not yet available are listed wo any status update. You have to click on each race listed to find registration status. What a headache! Bring back the pr-covid app, it was great!

As someone who has participated as an athlete or spectator in three world marathon majors, I can say with confidence and certainty the NYRR is the worst of them by a country mile. Having to make an account for the basic task of tracking athletes during the NYC marathon is annoying enough (other majors simply let do so on NewYorkRoadRunners ), but then to have it crash during the race itself is downright insulting. The NYC marathon is one the premier marathon events in the world, it is such a shame that NYRR doesn’t seem to treat it with the respect and love it deserves.

Very disappointed former marathon finisher. NewYorkRoadRunners randomly selects people to track, which I never asked it to do. The people I do want to track, who I manually input, are randomly removed and replaced by strangers. And when NewYorkRoadRunners finally shows the correct people, it displays an error message: “There was a problem, please try again later.”

This is not a new app. This is not your first marathon. You should seriously review your internal team and fix this before next year. As you’re ruining the joy that is the NYC marathon. Shame!

When I open NewYorkRoadRunners to get the latest of who I am tracking, my carefully crafted list of runners is empty, or worse, replaced by a list of strangers.

Plus, NewYorkRoadRunners needs to be native with lightweight REST api’s and json responses. Not a web app that is a menace to all the cell towers near the route - contributing further to the “Something went wrong! Please try again later” messages.

And everyone knows this - we have all experienced our cell phones behaving poorly at the finish lines. So do better guys

Currently caught up in the YT TV - Disney spat, so no ESPN. Was planning on using NewYorkRoadRunners to watch on my iPad but it only shows up as a phone app.

Updating this to be a 1. Gave up trying to watch on my phone because it kept freezing and going dark. Came back after the race to see the results and the home page is a blank white screen and when you try to pull up the marathon from the events page, you get an error saying something went wrong. The phrase “you had one job…” couldn’t be more appropriate right now.

It was extremely laggy, tried to track my friends and they would not recognize them the first time I typed it in. It was only until the third time I typed it in that it would pick up people‘s names. When I finally got my friends in the tracker, it was showing like their projected finish all the way to the end like they had already finishedwhen I close NewYorkRoadRunners and came back to it, but it lost all the names that I had put in there and it kept having me track this random person and that’s the only person I got notifications from when they crossed the finish line and when they exited the park, the absolute worst app ever the Chicago app is far superior as well as Boston.

NewYorkRoadRunners needs major improvement. If you’re gonna have over 2 million runners. You have to think there’s 1 million people trying to watch family members friends. They are not able to participate in being out there. I’ve been kicked out so many times today. It’s disrespectful. Get it together.

Why is there no Marathon course map(s) in NewYorkRoadRunners . It’s available in the website but not elsewhere. It’s one of the most important pieces of info for all. Also, had to reload runners I want to track 3x.

Lastly, the entire interface and lack of any real functionality - overall just a bad app for 2025 (see London’s as a good example) is just one of the reasons I stopped supporting NYRR.

I get notified for races I’m not running in or even tracking. You also can’t access your NYRR account. Now NYRR has a main website, account website, and mobile app - all of which barely talk to each other. Oh, and the NYC Marathon app is a stand alone too. Not sure what consulting team / dev team recommended 4 platforms.

The design for NYRR’s revamp is much better than what it was before, kudos to the design team. It does what it needs to. It does feel poorly coded though, from frontend to backend. A lot of the UI looks like it was coded and strung together with thoughts and prayers. The backend is even worse with data migration from old to new.

I don't get why people are so upset bc NewYorkRoadRunners is much better than prev marathon app in functionality and design. NewYorkRoadRunners does exactly what i need to do. Track ppl and see other NYRR races. It is a bit confusing that I can't login and see my account but for what i want in an app, it does everything. Not too complicated, simple and straight forward.

Not sure why people are so harsh on NewYorkRoadRunners … maybe because they didn’t see the disaster it was many years ago lol. it does everything I need - current race info, tracking info, upcoming events. And, design-wise, absolutely leaps and bounds ahead of what was before because it’s much easier to navigate and even just look at, so that’s gotta be my favorite part.

Thanks NYRR — looking forward to more improvements in the future!