What does Shed do that Runna does not?

Three things. It has a coach you can talk to in plain language, which Runna has no equivalent of. It adapts on your sleep, resting heart rate and HRV rather than only on whether you completed the session. And it will explain where any number in your plan came from, traced back to your own running.

Does Shed work with Garmin?

Partly. Your Garmin runs reach Shed through Apple Health, so the coach sees every run, every split and your heart rate, and the coaching is fully informed. What does not happen is the reverse direction: Shed cannot push tomorrow’s structured session onto a Garmin watch. Runna can. If wrist delivery matters to you, that is the deciding fact.

Is Shed cheaper than Runna?

Monthly they are the same, around $19.99. Annually Shed is $149.99 against roughly $119.99, so Shed costs about $30 more a year.

You can, and some people do while they decide. It is a waste of money past a couple of weeks, and running two plans at once is worse than running either one, because the load adds up even when the calendars disagree.

Runna is owned by Strava. Does that matter?

For most runners, no. It means tighter Strava integration and a company that is not going to disappear. If you care about who holds your training data, it is worth knowing the answer.

Compare

Shed vs Runna

Runna hands you a well-built plan and adapts it when you miss a run. Shed writes the same block and then lets you ask it why, changes it when your body says to rather than when your calendar does, and rebuilds the week when the week falls apart. Runna is the better app if you own a Garmin or an Android phone, and that is worth saying up front.

Head to head

Bold marks the decisive difference on that row, whichever side it falls.

	Shed	Runna
Talk to the coach	Yes. Ask why a session exists, ask to move it, argue with the pace, explain a niggle in words.	No chat of any kind. You adjust the plan through settings.
What it adapts on	Sleep, resting heart rate and HRV from Apple Health, alongside your executed pace and what you tell it.	Completion and pace of the runs you log.
Explains itself	Ask where any number came from and it answers from your own data.	No explanation layer.
Editing a session	Per-workout. Change one interval and the week reflows around it.	Swap or skip at the session level.
Price	$19.99 a month, $149.99 a year.	About $19.99 a month, $119.99 a year.
Distances	5K through marathon.	5K through marathon, plus open-goal and multi-race blocks.
Watch	Apple Watch, through WorkoutKit.	Garmin, COROS, Suunto and Apple, plus a native watch app.
Platform	iPhone only.	iPhone and Android.

The real difference is what happens when the week breaks

Both apps write you a periodized block. Both move sessions when you miss one. The gap opens on the day you had a bad night, your resting heart rate is up six beats, and the plan says threshold.

Runna reads what you ran. If you completed the sessions on pace it keeps building. That is a reasonable model, and it works well for people whose lives are stable enough that compliance is a fair proxy for readiness.

Shed reads what your body did overnight as well as what your legs did on the run. Sleep, resting heart rate and heart rate variability come in from Apple Health, and a morning where those three point the same direction changes the session before you leave the house. It also tells you which number moved and what it swapped, because a change you cannot interrogate is just an app being unpredictable.

Runna is a plan. Shed is a coach.

The most concrete way to feel the difference: open Runna and you are looking at a calendar. Open Shed and you can ask it a question.

"Why is Thursday 6 x 800 and not 5 x 1000." "I am travelling next week, what do I do." "My calf has been tight since Sunday." Those are the questions that decide whether a block survives, and a static calendar cannot take them. Shed answers from your actual data and changes the plan on the spot.

That matters more the longer the block runs. Twelve weeks is a long time to hold a spreadsheet, and the reason most plans fail is not that the sessions were wrong. It is that week seven went sideways and nobody rewrote week eight.

Pick by what actually constrains you

You want to ask the plan questions. Shed. Runna has no conversational layer at all, so this is not a matter of degree.
Your sleep and stress swing hard. Shed. Adapting on completion alone keeps prescribing threshold into a week you should be backing out of.
You are coming back from injury or illness. Shed. The readiness layer and being able to describe a niggle in words is the whole point of a return.
You want to understand your training, not just do it. Shed. Every number in the plan can be traced back to something you ran.
Garmin or Android. Runna. This is not close and it is not a matter of taste.
You want the cheapest good plan. Runna, by about $30 a year.

Frequently asked

What does Shed do that Runna does not?: Three things. It has a coach you can talk to in plain language, which Runna has no equivalent of. It adapts on your sleep, resting heart rate and HRV rather than only on whether you completed the session. And it will explain where any number in your plan came from, traced back to your own running.
Does Shed work with Garmin?: Partly. Your Garmin runs reach Shed through Apple Health, so the coach sees every run, every split and your heart rate, and the coaching is fully informed. What does not happen is the reverse direction: Shed cannot push tomorrow’s structured session onto a Garmin watch. Runna can. If wrist delivery matters to you, that is the deciding fact.
Is Shed cheaper than Runna?: Monthly they are the same, around $19.99. Annually Shed is $149.99 against roughly $119.99, so Shed costs about $30 more a year.
Can I use both?: You can, and some people do while they decide. It is a waste of money past a couple of weeks, and running two plans at once is worse than running either one, because the load adds up even when the calendars disagree.
Runna is owned by Strava. Does that matter?: For most runners, no. It means tighter Strava integration and a company that is not going to disappear. If you care about who holds your training data, it is worth knowing the answer.

The short version

Shed writes the block. Every session, every pace.

You give it a race and a date. It builds the weeks around the days you can actually run, reads every run off your Apple Watch the same day, and rebuilds the week when the week falls apart. $19.99 a month. The block is written and on your phone before you decide.

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