Alternatives to Strava Routing

Equipment
21

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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