Direct comparison
Aster vs Trackleaders
Aster is a phone-first live tracking platform. Riders carry their phone, organisers get a dashboard, watchers get a link — no hardware to ship, no batteries to chase, set up in an afternoon.
What Trackleaders is
We won't trash the competitor. Here's an honest summary.
Trackleaders is the hardware-based GPS tracking service that has powered ultra-endurance events like Tour Divide and Trans Am for 17 years. It runs on dedicated satellite devices (Spot Gen 4, Garmin inReach, Zoleo) shipped to each rider. Trackleaders's site →
Side by side
| Feature | Aster | Trackleaders |
|---|---|---|
| Tracking device | Rider's phone | Satellite tracker (Spot / inReach / Zoleo) |
| Set-up time | Under an hour | Weeks (ship trackers, train riders, recover devices) |
| Per-rider hardware cost | £0 | £100–250 per device, recovered or replaced |
| Watcher experience | Mobile-first live page, real-time leaderboard, story feed | Desktop web table, 2009 UI, refresh-to-update |
| Editorial layer | Story feed, race recaps, athlete profiles on the platform | None — DotWatcher provides this externally |
| Offline tolerance | Pings queue on-device for 7 days; uploads when signal returns | Satellite uplink — works in true wilderness |
| Pricing model | £3 / rider / event, capped at £6,000 | Per-event setup + per-device rental |
| API / embed | Embeddable widget for organiser website | Per-event microsite at trackleaders.com/<slug> |
Why organisers choose Aster over Trackleaders
No hardware logistics.
You don't ship anything. You don't recover anything. You don't pay for batteries, SIMs, or trackers that don't come back. The phone is the tracker.
Built for the 95% that have never had tracking.
Trackleaders works for the marquee 5% — Tour Divide, Trans Am, Atlas Mountain. Aster works for the regional gravel race, the club championship, the Tuesday-night chaingang that never got live coverage because hardware tracking was out of reach.
A watcher experience from this decade.
Live map on mobile. Real-time leaderboard. Push notifications when their rider starts, stops, finishes. Story feed for race recaps. The audience is on their phone — meet them there.
Editorial and tracking in one place.
Trackleaders is infrastructure; DotWatcher is the editorial layer on top. Aster is both — race recaps, athlete profiles, sponsor frames, all native to the platform the audience is already on.
Being honest
When Trackleaders is the right call
Trackleaders is still the right call for true wilderness ultras where phone coverage is genuinely absent for days on end — Tour Divide stretches in remote Wyoming, the Iditarod Trail Invitational, Atlas Mountain at altitude. Where there's ZERO cell signal for hours, a satellite uplink is the right tool. For everything else — and for the 95% of races that never had tracking at all because the hardware-shipping economics didn't add up — Aster is the better fit.
Common questions
Is Aster a Trackleaders replacement?
For most events, yes — and at a fraction of the cost and setup complexity. For deep-wilderness ultras where there's genuinely no cell coverage for days, Trackleaders' satellite trackers still have an edge. We're honest about that.
What about DotWatcher coverage?
DotWatcher.cc syndicates editorial commentary on top of Trackleaders' tracking. We respect what they do and have reached out about partnership. In the meantime, Aster bakes the editorial layer (race recaps, athlete profiles, sponsor frames) directly into the tracking platform so there's one place to follow a race, not two.
Does phone tracking actually work in remote areas?
Yes, for the vast majority of events. Modern phones (iPhone 14+ with multi-band GNSS, latest Androids) match dedicated bike computers for GPS accuracy. Aster's offline-tolerant ping queue holds 7 days of pings on-device and uploads when signal returns, so dead zones don't lose data — the line picks up where it left off.
How long does an Aster set-up take?
Under an hour for a typical race. Sign up, upload your GPX, set the start/finish line, share the watch link with your riders. We're on the phone with organisers during their first race-day for the first season as a baseline service.
What's the pricing?
Event Organisers choose a monthly registration-cap plan: £79.99 for up to 100 registrations, £149.99 for 500, or £199.99 for 1,000. Build and test with up to three registrations free. Riders carry their own phones, so there is no hardware cost.
Ready to put your race on Aster?
30-minute call. We'll walk through your race, the dashboard, and what a launch on Aster would look like.