Tiiks vs BikeHealth: Rider Memory vs a Receipt Scanner

BikeHealth wants everything known about the bike through invoices and a fast Strava hookup. Tiiks reads it from the rides and the parts those rides wore.

You are still in the shop parking lot, the rotor still smelling like new compound, when you photograph the invoice. Line items become a list. A headset that you did not think about becomes a row with a price. For a moment the bike is completely known, the way a receipt is completely known: someone charged you, so it happened. Then you ride home a different way than you arrived, and the receipt does not take those kilometers. It takes the afternoon.

Invoices are a superb memory for money and a mediocre memory for wear. They know what a shop touched. They do not know the commute you did not invoice. They do not know the chain you lubed in the kitchen. If you build a bike out of parsed line items, you will have an excellent cost history and a suspiciously tidy component list. Tidy is not the same as ridden. The gap shows up the first month you do not buy anything and still destroy a tyre.

BikeHealth and Tiiks both want “everything known about the bike.” They start from opposite evidence. One starts from the shop paper and a fast Strava connect, plus a prefill from make and model. The other starts from the ride and a catalog you confirm. If you are a person who keeps every receipt, you will love their scanner. If you are a person who keeps every ride, you will want the wear to come from that habit, not from the last time you paid a counter.

Memory from rides versus memory from receipts

BikeHealth, at bikehealth.app, is a consumer iOS app that can hook Strava in seconds and prefill components from the bike’s make and model. Alerts are hybrid: hours versus miles, which is a grown-up way to talk about a fork that cares about time as well as distance. The signature move is invoice AI — snap a shop receipt, parse the line items, fold them into a gear record with cost and history. The product is built as everything-known-via-invoices. That sentence is a compliment if you live at shops. It is a warning if you live on the bike.

Prefill from make and model is a head start on a stock build and a fiction the moment you changed the cassette. Hybrid alerts will please anyone who has watched grease age on a bike that sat. Invoice AI is the feature the landing page wants you to remember. Parsing is only as good as the shop’s printer and the model’s appetite for abbreviations. A line item that says “labour” is not a part. A line item that says “chain” is not a catalog model. Treat the scan as a draft of money, then decide whether it is also a draft of the bike.

What the bike did, not what the invoice said

We built Tiiks so the rides are the memory. Native iOS first, Android as well. Automatic Strava sync. Mileage on each fitted component after the ride you already published. A real parts catalog you confirm, instead of a prefill you have to unwind. Verified rider reviews that include mileage. A home-screen widget. Service versus replace. Full history that stays when the new part goes on. Wear from kilometers, not from the last time a shop printed a total.

We do not scan invoices. We do not parse line items into a cost ledger. We do not claim that a receipt is everything known about the bike. A receipt is everything known about an afternoon at a counter. That is a useful object. It is not a drivetrain. If you want a cost history, keep the paper or use a scanner that admits it is a scanner. We kept the rider’s job: what wore, on which rides, and whether you service it or replace it.

A receipt scanner versus wear from the road

BikeHealth’s invoice AI is a receipt scanner with a bike costume, and that costume can be tailored well. Snap, parse, file. You will remember what you paid. You will remember what a shop said they installed. You will not automatically remember the 800 km you rode before the next invoice exists. If your maintenance life is a sequence of shop visits, the scanner will feel complete. If your maintenance life is a sequence of rides with the occasional shop, the scanner will have quiet months that look like health.

Tiiks stays noisy in the months you do not pay anyone. The commute still lands. The chain still moves. The widget still changes. That is rider memory: the bike as a thing you used, not a thing you purchased an intervention for. Cost can be written down elsewhere, in a folder that already exists. Wear cannot be reconstructed from a stack of totals unless you also rode nothing, which is a different hobby, and a suspiciously cheap one.

Prefill from make and model versus parts you confirm

Prefill is generous on day one. A stock Canyon or a stock Trek can look finished before you have touched a bolt. The generosity turns into cleanup the first time the shop’s invoice disagrees with the factory spec, or the first time you fitted a cassette the original bike never saw. Riders who trust a prefill will ride a ghost build. Riders who confirm will take twenty seconds and own the list.

We would rather you pick the part from the catalog. Specs are there. Reviews with mileage are there. You confirm the object that is on the bike, not the object that left the factory two owners ago. If BikeHealth’s prefill plus invoice parse gets you to the same truth, good — that is two drafts. The catalog confirm is one draft that already knows what a part is. We chose the shorter path to a named component.

Hybrid hour-and-mile alerts versus service or replace

Hours versus miles is a real fork for suspension, grease, and bikes that sit. BikeHealth is right to offer both. Tiiks is more stubborn: wear from the rides, then a service-or-replace decision with history behind it. If your fork needs hours, you can still be a grown-up about time without making time the whole product. If your chain needs kilometers, a hybrid alert that talks hours can dilute the number that actually matters. Pick the clock that matches the part, not the clock that matches the marketing of completeness.

Cost history versus reviews with real mileage

A gear record with cost is a finance app wearing Lycra. Useful at tax time, useful when you sell the bike, useful when you want to know what a year of shops cost. It does not tell you what a chain felt like at 2,200 km. Verified rider reviews with mileage tell you that. We put the social proof on distance, not on a parsed total. If you need both, keep the receipts in a folder and the wear on the bike. Merging them into one AI capture is convenient. Convenience is how a price becomes a substitute for a review.

Who files invoices, who files rides

BikeHealth fits the iOS rider whose truth lives on paper: Strava in seconds, a prefill from make and model, hybrid hour-and-mile alerts, and a scanner that turns shop invoices into a gear record with cost. If “everything known” means everything purchased, they built your definition. Use the scanner on purpose. Then go ride, because the receipt has already stopped paying attention, and the next tyre will not wait for another line item.

Tiiks fits the rider whose truth lives on Strava. iOS first, Android too. Catalog parts you confirm instead of a factory prefill you have to unwind. Reviews with miles. A widget. Service or replace. History that stays. We are enthusiasts who remember the bike by riding it. If that is your memory too, you do not need a parking-lot photograph to know the cassette. You need the next sync, and you need the part to still be the part after the shop smell fades.

Questions we get

Does Tiiks scan shop invoices?

No. We do not photograph receipts or parse line items into a cost ledger, and we will not call that a hole in the product. BikeHealth does the scan, and that is a real feature if money-memory is the job you came to hire. If wear-memory is the job, a scanned labour line will not move a chain. Keep the paper if you like paper. Track the kilometers where the kilometers happen, which is after you leave the parking lot.

Can Tiiks prefill parts from the bike’s make and model?

We do not treat factory prefill as the way the garage becomes true. You pick parts from the catalog and confirm what is actually fitted. BikeHealth’s make-and-model prefill is faster on a stock bike and messier on a bike that has lived. If your bike is still factory-fresh, enjoy the head start — then check the cassette, because stock lists lie as soon as a shop does a “while it’s here.”

Should I track hours, miles, or both?

Track the clock the part respects. Grease and suspension often care about time. Chains and tyres care about distance. BikeHealth’s hybrid alerts are built for that split. Tiiks keeps wear on the rides you did and then asks service or replace. If you need hours on a specific part, do not let a single app ideology stop you from using a calendar like an adult. Do not let a hybrid alert talk you out of the kilometers sitting on the chain.

If the invoice is already in the camera roll and the ride home is still ahead of you, let the receipt be the receipt. Money can have its photograph. The headset can have its line item. The afternoon at the counter is already complete. Track this bike in Tiiks so the parts keep the kilometers the shop never billed, and so the next quiet month still counts as wear even when nobody printed a total.