MileTruth vs Stride
Stride costs nothing and will lose the trips you forget to start. MileTruth costs $59.99 a year and is designed not to need you. That is the entire comparison, and for a lot of drivers Stride wins it.
Stride is genuinely free — no paid tier, funded by health-insurance and tax referrals — with a strong reputation in driver communities. Its limitation is structural: tracking is manual start and stop. MileTruth's design premise is that manual start is the largest source of lost deduction in this category, because you forget on exactly the nights you drive most.
The break-even is low. At about 22 cents of real tax benefit per business mile, a $59.99 app pays for itself at roughly 270 recovered miles a year — under six miles a week. If Stride's manual flow costs you more than that in forgotten trips, automatic capture is cheaper than free. If it does not, stay on Stride and keep the money.
Side by side
| MileTruth (ours, in development) | Stride | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $59.99/yr or $7.99/mo planned | Free, no paid tier |
| Business model | Subscription | Health insurance and tax referrals |
| Trip capture | Automatic — motion activity + geofence | Manual start / stop |
| Miles lost when you forget | None by design | All of that trip |
| Classification | Swipe, unclassified by default | Manual |
| Earnings tracking | Yes | Basic income and expense entry |
| Cost per mile from your vehicle | Yes | No |
| True net $/hour | Yes | No |
| 2026 two-rate handling | Yes, split at June 30 | Verify in-app before filing |
| Export | PDF and CSV | Yes |
| Platform | iOS | iOS, Android |
| Available today | No — in development | Yes |
The honest case for Stride
- It costs nothing, forever. No trial, no cap, no upsell to unlock the core feature.
- It ships today on both platforms. MileTruth does not.
- It is well-regarded. Strong App Store ratings and a large user base built without a paid tier.
- The referral model is transparent. Stride makes money if you buy health insurance or tax help through it. That is a real incentive to be aware of, but it is disclosed and it is not "we sell your data."
- For a driver with a genuine habit, manual tracking is fine. If you start it as reflexively as you put your seatbelt on, automatic capture buys you nothing.
The honest case against manual tracking
The problem is not that manual tracking is worse in principle. It is that the failures are not random.
You forget when you are rushed. You are rushed when you are busy. So the trips you lose are systematically the long, dense, high-mileage ones — which means a driver who is diligent 90 percent of the time loses considerably more than 10 percent of their miles.
You also lose the ambiguous miles first. Driving to a hotspot, repositioning between offers, the stretch after a drop before the next ping — nobody starts a timer for those, and for delivery drivers they are 30 to 50 percent of total miles. They are generally deductible business miles. Which gig miles count.
The one-week test that settles it
Do not take either side's word for it. Measure.
- Photograph your odometer today.
- Use Stride exactly as you normally do for seven days.
- Photograph the odometer again.
- Subtract, then compare against Stride's total for those seven days including personal driving.
If Stride is within a couple of percent, you have a habit that works and you should keep your $59.99. If it is 10 or 20 percent low, multiply the missing miles by 52 and then by roughly 22 cents — that is what your free app costs you per year. The full capture-rate method.
Where the comparison stops being about tracking
Even with a perfect log, Stride will not tell you whether the driving paid. It totals miles and records income; it does not price your miles against your own vehicle or produce a net hourly.
That is MileTruth's second half, and it is a different product goal rather than a better version of the same one: build a cost per mile from your vehicle and costs, apply it to every mile including the unpaid ones, and report what an hour actually left you. If that question does not interest you, Stride does the tax job for free and there is no reason to pay. Why gross hourly is misleading.
Questions and answers
Is Stride really free?
Yes. Stride has no paid tier. It funds itself through health insurance and tax referral revenue rather than subscriptions, which is a legitimate model and worth knowing about because it shapes what the app promotes to you.
What is the catch with Stride?
Tracking is manual start and stop. You have to remember to start it every shift, and the shifts you forget are disproportionately the busy ones. That is a behavioural cost rather than a monetary one, but at 2026 mileage rates it can easily exceed the price of a paid app.
Is a paid mileage app worth it over Stride?
Only if it captures miles Stride would lose. At roughly 22 cents of real tax benefit per mile, a 60 dollar a year app breaks even at about 270 recovered miles. If you reliably press start every shift, Stride is the better deal. Most drivers do not.
Can I use Stride and a paid app at the same time?
Yes, and for one week it is a good idea. Running both and comparing their totals against your odometer is the cleanest way to find out whether manual tracking is costing you anything.
MileTruth. “MileTruth vs Stride.” Baker Ventures LLC, September 6, 2026. https://miletruth.bakerventuresstudio.com/compare/miletruth-vs-stride/