The New Parkrun App Is Here – But Is It Actually Better Than the 5k App?

It’s 8:47am on a Saturday. Your trainers are already damp. You’re standing at the start line with 400 other people in high-vis, all pretending they’re not about to race each other to the death over 5 kilometres of soggy parkland. You go to pull up your barcode and – hang on. Something looks different. The app has changed. Again.

Yes. The new parkrun app has landed, and the parkrun community has opinions. Lots of them. The beloved 5k app – the unofficial, fan-built stat-tracking companion that thousands of parkrunners swore by – has officially been acquired by parkrun and reborn as the official parkrun app. New branding. New homepage. New everything. So what’s actually changed, and should you care? Let’s get into it.

What Was the 5k App, and Why Did It Matter?

For the uninitiated: the 5k app was originally built in 2019 by developer Michael Clayton of Clayton Industries, at the suggestion of a friend. It started as a hobby project for a small group of parkrunners who wanted better access to their stats, challenges, and result histories than the official parkrun website offered. It grew, quietly and organically, into something hundreds of thousands of runners relied on every Saturday morning.

The app let you check your results history, track your volunteering record, browse parkrun challenges (Alphabeteer, Stopwatch Bingo, Groundhog Day – all the good ones), see course info and cancellations, and pull up your barcode as a QR code. It even had a Voronoi map overlay added in 2024, for the kind of deeply committed parkrun tourist who needs to see their geographic coverage rendered as an abstract polygon art piece. We don’t judge.

In September 2025, parkrun acquired the app and Michael Clayton joined the parkrun staff on 1 December 2025. A happy ending, in theory. The developer got a career. Parkrun got an app users actually loved. Everyone wins.

And then the rebrand dropped.

What’s New in the New Parkrun App?

The headline changes in the latest version (rolling out now as an Android beta before hitting iOS) are mostly cosmetic but significant enough to cause the kind of mild outrage only the running community can generate before 9am.

Here’s what’s changed:

• The app is now officially called the parkrun app – the purple silhouette branding of the 5k app is gone, replaced with official parkrun branding throughout.
• There’s a new homepage layout, reorganised around “the most loved parkrunner features” according to the release notes – which is a diplomatic way of saying they’ve shuffled things around.
• The login page has been updated to align with the main parkrun account system, which is genuinely useful – one less password to forget at 5am.
• Dog and buggy data is now automatically pulled from the parkrun database, so you can finally check in advance whether a course is pram-friendly without ringing someone.
• New parkrun events are automatically added to the app as they launch.
• The app now officially covers the new parkrun Gibraltar event and other new locations.

The core features – result history, PB tracking, volunteering records, milestone tracking, challenges, course maps, and the all-important QR barcode – remain intact. That’s the good news. Parkrun’s own support page confirms that “the core features of the app remain the same and you can still access all of your core parkrun needs.”

What About Former Patreon Supporters?

Here’s where it gets slightly complicated. The old 5k app had a Patreon supporter tier that unlocked additional features. If you were one of those supporters and you’re now struggling to log into your “5k account” on the rebranded app, you’ll need to do a password reset – because your 5k account credentials are separate from your main parkrun account login. Yes, that is slightly annoying. No, there’s no way around it.

What Are Parkrunners Actually Saying?

Community response has been… mixed. There’s a contingent who love it – the new branding feels official, the tighter integration with the main parkrun database is genuinely useful, and having the barcode accessible as a QR code in one place is appreciated by anyone who has ever turned up without their token and had to mime their A-number at a volunteer.

Then there are the critics. Some users on Google Play have noted that the update has made text harder to read, that data now takes more taps to access, and that the “clutter-free” simplicity that made the 5k app so useful has been partially sacrificed at the altar of prettier design. One reviewer put it bluntly: the 5k app’s advantage was that it took away all the clutter of the website – and if the new app starts to resemble the website, it’s a step backwards.

This is a classic rebrand problem. You acquire the thing people love, then change enough of it that the people who loved it feel slightly betrayed. Runner’s World has long covered how community-driven tools like this build fierce loyalty – and loyalty, as any club runner knows, is not easily transferred.

That said: it’s early days. This is version 1.11 of the rebranded app, and parkrun have stated explicitly that future features will be decided through community consultation – surveys, focus groups, and other engagement. If the community keeps giving feedback, there’s a reasonable chance the things that made the 5k app great will be preserved and built upon.

Should You Download the New Parkrun App?

If you were already using the 5k app: yes, update it. It should update automatically in most cases – the rebranded parkrun app lives at the same place in the App Store and Google Play. Your data, your results, your challenges – all still there.

If you’ve never used it: absolutely download it. The new parkrun app gives you:

• Your full results and volunteering history in one place – no more trawling through confirmation emails.
• Your parkrun barcode as a QR code (though parkrun still recommend carrying a physical barcode or wristband for the ICE – In Case of Emergency – number).
• Milestone tracking, so you can see exactly how many more runs stand between you and that coveted 50-club t-shirt.
• Challenge tracking – from the Alphabeteer to Stopwatch Bingo, all your obsessive goal-chasing in one dashboard.
• Course info, maps, and cancellation alerts – because nothing is worse than setting your 5am alarm, eating your pre-parkrun porridge in silence, and driving 20 minutes to find a sign saying the event is cancelled due to waterlogged ground.
• A planning tool for parkrun tourism – because yes, some of us do plan holidays around which parkrun courses we haven’t done yet, and we’re not sorry about it.

If you want even more granular stats and you don’t mind a third-party tool, the separate Parkrunner app (not affiliated with parkrun officially) is still available and offers detailed analytics, weather insights per run, and smart NENDY (Nearest Event Not Yet Done) filtering. Worth knowing about if you’re a proper data nerd.

For the social side of your running life – tracking Sunday Long Runs, comparing splits with club mates, all that jazz – Strava remains the default companion. The new parkrun app doesn’t replace Strava; it complements it.

And if you’re looking for ways to improve the actual 5k time you’re recording each Saturday? Check out our piece on why you’ve hit a wall and how to break through it – because staring at your result history and going “hmm” is not a training plan.

Real Talk

The new parkrun app is the 5k app in a new kit. That’s not a criticism – it’s just the truth. The bones are the same, the features are mostly intact, and the developer who built something runners genuinely loved is now on the payroll at parkrun HQ. That’s a good outcome.

Is the new version perfect? No. Some of the early reviews suggest the redesign has introduced friction where the original was smooth. But this is version 1.11 of a community-led app now backed by a global organisation. There’s room for it to get better, especially if users keep submitting feedback through the app.

So: download it, use it, tell them what you think. And then set your alarm for Saturday, eat your porridge, lace up your trainers, and go run 5 kilometres with 400 strangers who are definitely your friends.

While you’re at it, have a read of our guide to what parkrun is really like – or if you’re thinking about making it more of a regular thing, our guide to joining a running club in the UK might be just the nudge you need. Black toenails and dodgy stomach included, no extra charge.