Alternatives to Strava Routing

Given the recent Strava price increase announcement, and the fact most people kept the premium for routes only, creating this as place for Strava routes alternatives for search purposes.

If others have alternatives, pay or free please list below and we will update this post.

  1. https://ridewithgps.com/
  2. https://www.komoot.com/
  3. https://www.outdooractive.com/
  4. gravelmap.com
  5. PlotARoute
  6. bikerouter.de

see below description and feedback on the above links

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I’m not sure about Komoot but I like RWGPS better than Strava mainly because of the integration of streetview.

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RWGPS routing and mapping blows Strava out of the water. And Komoot, And GaiaGPS. But, only if you pay for it. :wink:

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If you want to create a route online, upload to Garmin/Wahoo, and then let it handle the turn by turn directions - which of the RWGPS packages would be required?

I use https://www.outdooractive.com/

It’s great for route creation in the UK and Europe so far as I can tell.

Recently posted this on another thread, with some minor edits:

I paid for RWGPS in 2016 when I started cycling, to dual record the DeathRide. The offline maps are a premium feature, and a great feature. Back then another feature for Garmin 520 users was downloading a route with the RWGPS turn-by-turn data. But my 530 doesn’t need it. The largest clubs I’m with has a premium account, and I still use RWGPS to modify a route and then export it. The free RWGPS account works well enough.

Nowadays I prefer Strava maps and routing.

One example - I did a gravel event on the CA Central Coast and the Strava route correctly displayed the 2 gravel sections, while the RWGPS route only displayed 1 gravel section (6 miles) and it missed the other 8 mile section of gravel road. They both claim to use OSM but Strava must be supplementing the data.

Strava:

RWGPS:

The Strava route has the lunch stop and is .6 miles longer. Sadly the Eroica team published two routes and I loaded the wrong one and missed the lunch stop on the ride :frowning_face:

I have other examples.

3 Likes

Note that Gaia is part of Outside now, so I question committing to that platform.

I do use Gaia heavily for hiking/climbing type activities where it really excels. I have a few years left on that sub and will see if outside has ruined by the time I need to renew.

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I can do that with the free version with some limitations, namely it won’t let you edit the cue that get imbedded in the .fit file for the route. It genreates those automatically. It also won’t let you edit the expected pace and sticks in something like 5mph.

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Yes, the free RWGPS works just fine for me.

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I’ve had many instances in the other direction where RWGPS says a section is gravel and I know it’s not. When making new routes, I always cross reference gravelmap.com. Too many experiences ending up on gravel while riding 23s.

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Maybe they are pulling the data at different times of the year and someone updated the surface between data grabs? Weird

Before rwgps came out with surface types, i actually suggested to them incorporate gravel map into their data…they were all “ we already got surface type covered, coming soon”. Too bad As osm is not anywhere near as good as gm.

I use PlotARoute. I need to make a decision on what to do about Strava. Looks like I will have to wait until February the 2nd!

I have a premium subscription in Komoot and I just love it. Planning a multi-day trip is easy as Komoot adjusts the daily routes according to accommodation etc. I can see all the national bicycle routes on the map. And they just introduced Google Street View which helps to check the surfaces on your planned routes. You can also upload a gps file and start planning from that.

[edit: I use Garmin Edge as my main navigation tool while riding and Komoot uploads all the planned routes automatically to my Garmin Connect account.]

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bikerouter.de looks interesting. Haven’t used it much though. It creates different routes from A to B based on the chosen profile (an endless list of road, gravel, mtb etc profiles).

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Until Garmin starts leveraging the data it has about routing for heat maps, any competitor to Strava is going to be worse and provide worse rides, on average.

That said, I used a gift card back in 2020 and for some reason I have free Strava for life now.

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You can see a Heat map in Garmin Connect while creating a route. But it’s still based just on Garmin data. Strava has data from Garmin, Suunto, Polar etc. On the other hand in Garmin you can see ride specific heat maps (road, gravel, mtb) which should help you with creating a better ride for yourself.

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This occurred to me while reading the Strava pricing thread, but I didn’t want to go OT.

While I quite like the social aspect of Strava, and I do use certain segments as fitness tests, what I mainly use it for is route mapping.

I’ve tried Komoot and found it quite unwieldy, though it seems quite a powerful tool, potentially at least. Does anybody have a) any other good route planning apps, and/or b) tips for getting the best out of Komoot?

I like Komoot for my Road route planning and prefer it to other tools I’ve tried.

I plot routes on desktop, like this:

  • Click on Route Planner and select Route Type = ‘One Way’ on the LHS
  • Find my route’s starting location by zooming the map and/or searching
  • Click on the map to create the start location - the first Waypoint - and choose ‘Start Here’
  • Begin plotting my intended route by creating the 2nd Waypoint by clicking on the map somewhere and choosing ‘Set as Destination’ NB this isn’t your intended final destination (unless your route will have only one waypoint!), it’s just the first waypoint on your planned route
  • Continue like this creating the 3rd, 4th, 5th etc Waypoints, choosing ‘Set as New End Point’ each time, extending the route until you’ve plotted it all the way to your final destination (which commonly, but not always, is back to my house again).
  • If doing a cafe stop, then if it’s on Komoot’s map, click on it and choose ‘Include on Route’. This makes it easy to see where the cafe lies on the route by looking at the Elevation Profile pane
  • Ensure that Sport and Fitness are set appropriately on the LHS, so that the estimates for route duration (and cafe stop timing) are “right”
  • Optionally, use drag & drop on the route, creating additional Waypoints or deleting some, to tweak the route until it’s exactly how I want it.

I think that’s mostly it.

Note, route planning like this does not require a subscription - it just requires that you have Komoot maps for the area you’re plotting. They give you a small area for free, but you can purchase other areas as a one-time purchase, and unless you ride only in your back garden, you’ll need some maps.

The simplest thing is to just buy their World Pack, again as a one-time purchase. 29.99 USD / 29.99 GBP / 29.99 EUR. I paid that 4 years ago, and have plotted hundreds of routes with it since then, all over the world, with no on-going subscription required.

Routes automatically sync to my Bolt nicely over WiFi

You can subscribe to Premium (annually), which adds some features that might be useful for some people, but not really for me. I avoid subscriptions if I can help it, so the one-time purchase of World maps has worked well for me, and is cheap as chips for what I’ve got out of it.

HTH.

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Komoot has an even cooler feature. It’s called Trail View. Shows you user taken photos of the surface. Depends a lot on how popular Komoot is in your region, though.

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