Runner's Shadow vs Dead Watch Runz
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
Runner's Shadow
This app acts as a comprehensive companion for outdoor runners, consolidating run history from various sources. It helps track personal records, analyze courses, manage laps, and journal run experiences. Additionally, it offers shoe mileage tracking and photo integration for a complete running log.
- Consolidated run history from any supported app
- Course tracking and personal bests
- Interval lap management
- Journaling for run reflections
- Shoe mileage and lifespan tracking
- Integration with Apple Health/Activity
- Apple Watch app for on-the-go tracking
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Follow your runs like your shadow follows you. What Is Runner's Shadow? A runner's companion. A fantastic app for all outdoor runners to augment their kit. Runner's Shadow is an iOS Activity and Health-based app for the purpose of augmenting, tracking, logging, and understanding your outdoor runs, regardless of source; regardless of when the run took place. And it includes an Apple Watch app to get out and run with. Why Try Runner's Shadow? Run History A history of all of your runs, from any supported App. The run history is all your runs, grouped by week, month, year, and all-time. It has graphs, logs, journals, and more (like courses). Courses Which routes you've run. Do you tend to run the same routes repeatedly? Why not keep track of those as courses? This app keeps track of all of your courses; and your personal records for each course. Personal Records What's my personal best? Accurate and complete PRs. What is the best I've done so far at this distance? This course? This week? This month?. Runner's Shadow PR keeps my goals in perspective and my motivation on-point. This app finds and keeps your bests. Laps Keep and Recall interval laps. With a tap of a button in the Shadow Runner's watch app (included), you can set your laps. In the iPhone app, you can see how you did for them. What was the lap distance? Pace? Gain? It's all there. Journaling What are my thoughts after a run? How was the run? What do I find interesting about this course? Who did I run with? What did we laugh about? The journals are for these and/or anything else you want to write there. Labeling Tag runs for later retrieval. Label the people you ran with. Or label which runs were races. Or label which runs were your favorites. Tag runs with labels any way you'd like. Shoe Tracking Keep track of your running shoes. You may have heard that running shoes should be replaced between 300-500 miles or in 3-6 months. But how do you keep track of that? Simply add your shoes to the app, then tap on which ones were worn after a run. We'll keep track of how many run, miles, and days you've put on the pair. Photos Find photos taken near the time of your run. Want to find those shots you get before and after a run a year and a half later? Well, you just go to that run and click the 'camera' button, and there they all are. Graphs? Yes. Numbers? Of course. Maps? You bet. Running app for your Apple Watch? Yeah, that too. Watch Laps? Uh huh. Open to suggestions? We listen. What you'd expect? We try to be more than that. You can run with this or any other app that supports Apple Activity; we'll take it from there. ---- The data comes from Apple Health/Activity. That means that any outdoor running app that works with Apple Health/Activity will work with this one. The data goes nowhere. We don't take it. We don't keep it. We don't track it. We don't track you. We're not interested in all of that. We're just runners who want to enhance all of our running experiences. Contact us: support@alumra.ltd
Dead Watch Runz
Log outdoor activities like running, walking, or biking manually with GPS routes when your fitness tracker is unavailable. Recreate your path on a map and save your workouts to health platforms. Ensure your exercise is accurately recorded even without a device.
- Manual workout logging
- GPS route recreation
- Save to Apple Health
- Connect to Strava
- Supports various outdoor activities
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Dead Watch Runz is the ultimate solution for athletes who forget their watch or experience a dead battery before a workout. This app allows you to manually log your activity with GPS data, ensuring your efforts are accurately recorded. Whether you're running, walking, hiking, biking, or engaging in other outdoor workouts, Dead Watch Runz keeps track of your miles—even when your watch can't. Just add your manual activity and re-create your route on the map. Save the workout to Apple Health, then have other services like Strava connected to Apple Health to see your workouts.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is price: Runner's Shadow at Free against Dead Watch Runz's $0.99. Dead Watch Runz's advantage is update cadence (every 5 days vs every 6 weeks) and iOS requirement (17.4 vs 26.0). On rating, ratings volume, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Runner's Shadow is free to download; Dead Watch Runz costs $0.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
On the App Store both sit at effectively the same score — 5.0 for Runner's Shadow against 5.0 for Dead Watch Runz. Both are backed by a comparable volume of ratings — 1 and 2 respectively.
Runner's Shadow ships an update every 6 weeks, Dead Watch Runz every 5 days. The most recent releases landed on November 3, 2026 and November 4, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | Runner's Shadow | Dead Watch Runz |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free — better | $0.99 |
| Rating | 5.0 (1 ratings) | 5.0 (2 ratings) |
| Number of ratings | 1 | 2 — better |
| Update frequency | Every 6 weeks | Every 5 days — better |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Free — better | Paid |
| Devices | iPhone, Apple Watch | iPhone, iPad |
| Requires iOS | 26.0 | 17.4 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 26 MB | 46 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Alumra Ltd | Tim Wood |
Customer experience
Runner's Shadow
Dead Watch Runz
In-app purchases
Runner's Shadow
No in-app purchases
Dead Watch Runz
No in-app purchases
Questions
Is Runner's Shadow free?
Is Dead Watch Runz free?
Which has better reviews, Runner's Shadow or Dead Watch Runz?
Do Runner's Shadow or Dead Watch Runz have ads?
Which is updated more often, Runner's Shadow or Dead Watch Runz?
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