That is very helpful: thank you.
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Always use RWGPS. Definitely ditching Strava premium.
I do like gravel map. Iâve not come across that one. Thanks @RONDAL
Iâm a big fan of RWGPSâs âcollectionâ feature whereby you can group routes and they all show on a single overlay. You can then click routes of interest. I group mine by area so, if I want to ride from my house, for example, I can see all routes Iâve created or imported near me and select the one I want. Link it to your Garmin head unit and then âpinâ it to have it automatically sent.
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Features I really like with RWGPS that are not available in other mapping programs:
a) all I have to do is âpinâ the ride and it automatically shows up on my Garmin. With Strava, I have to use a Garmin IQ app that works maybe once in a blue moon. In fact, when someone sends me a Strava route I automatically export / import it into RWGPS.
b) When I am using a route and Garmin goes bonkers, I can pop open the RWGPS app with no cell service and see my current position on the route. Canât do that with Strava.
C) When I want to plan out my camp spots on multiday adventures, RWGPS lets me select a portion of a route, and then shows me stats on the selection portion, i.e. not just mileage, but elevation gain, which has a huge impact on timing.
D) speaking of timing - RWGPS uses all of the ride data you have uploaded to estimate how long it will take you to complete your route, OR even a selected portion of a route.
E) you can save a selected portion of a route as a new route.
D) you can reverse a route and save as a new route.
E) you can type U or R to endlessly undo/redo changes you made to a route AND you can do this even after saving and re-editing.
Maybe not everyone needs this level of sophistication, but when you do, paid RWGPS handles all these things. Itâs invaluable to me for bikepacking and other long routes.
Komoot is cool for discovering new routes, but I gave up on it because it seemed too opinionated about where I wanted to go and perhaps it wasnât able to handle trails very well at the time. That was early early days though and I am curious to see how it has evolved.
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Star a route in Strava and it is automatically pushed to Garmin.
The RWGPS mobile app has offline maps, if you pay. Great feature Iâve used it on rides in remote areas of the mountains where there is no cell coverage.
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As many others Iâm looking into alternatives for Strava. I make a lot of routes; road, gravel and mtb. Some questions:
#1
Is actually routing a paid feature in Strava? Or is it only the heatmaps?
#2
When planning mtb routes in Strava I can change the map to our national mtbmap overlay and Strava tracks (not sure if this is the right working) according to the trials. Does any of the other planners have this feature?
Creating a Route is a paid feature, look under the âExploreâ tab
great post thanks
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Does Komoot have heatmaps and in particular good heatmaps that show the volume usage of a path? Iâve played around with Komoot in the past and Iâm looking at it again because of this thread, but canât find anything about such functionality and it would help for Komoot, because Iâve noticed it doesnât have a few paths I know about.
Because in the end, the main reason I pay for Strava is for their route builder combined with heatmap/usage information.
No they donât. I guess this is because Komoot is primarily used for planning, not tracking your activities. So they donât have that much data to show. On sport specific maps (premium feature) you do see âsingletrack difficulty grades for mtbâ which may also help to locate routes. But not how popular they are.
Have you looked at Garmin Connect? They have heatmaps.
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I see no one mentioned it yet, but for quick routing on the iPhone my go to is Easy Route app. Itâs lightweight, super simple and has one big advantage over all the bigger apps - very fast and intuitive interface.
For some reason other routing apps havenât figured out how to easily create waypoints with one finger tap, something that easy route excels at.
Thanks. Iâll have another look at Komoot 
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Okay thanks, figured that was the case. But thought Iâd double check because Komoot does have a lot of pluses.
As for Gamin Connect, Iâm heavily into the Garmin family so that would be an obvious natural choice if the Garmin heatmaps didnât suck so bad compared to Stravaâs heatmap data. Which frankly baffles me because with all the Garmin head units and watches out there in use there should be an abundance of data they could map. But, heck Garminâs heatmap doesnât even show a trail Iâve taken (between riding and running) a hundred times over the past few years, not to mention the thousands of others whoâve been on it. And sadly, there are countless examples like that. 
So long story short, I became a Strava subscriber mainly for their routing combined with heatmap usage data and it looks like Iâm going to stay a subscriber for that until/if Garmin ever gets its act together.
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Im not sure if Garmin heat maps relies on a ride being public. If so most folk I know keep their Garmin Connect file private as I donât think GC has privacy zones.
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Not really any alternatives. The ability to find routes with segments is unmatched
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I have used Plotaroute for years, including when I was Club Run Co-ordinator for a local CC. Is good for building and sharing routes, which can easily be dowloaded as GPX, etc. and direct to some GPS devices (Garmin, etc.). There is a free option with some advertising or a paid for âpremiumâ option with a small (18GBP) annual subscription. I like that it is independent of Strava, Garmin, etc. so route sharing makes no assumptions about what brands and subscriptions others have.
Iâve been taking a look at Trailforks pretty closely. I am a BIG Gaia user and have been since well before they were bought by Outside, so this year I spent the extra $10 to get Outside+ which got me Trailforks too. Maybe I need to take another look at Gaia for Road / MTB too as I primarily use it for Hiking / Hunting / Fishing / Exploring / Overlanding type stuff.
I will say the one thing I donât like about Trailforks is that Iâm a road rider too, and when I look at Strava upload all of my road and trainer rides too. Itâs just nice to see everything in the same place, and be able to do road routing, etc.
My Strava subscription doesnât renew until September, so wonât find out what my price hike will be until then, but should probably let Premium lapse with what I spend on apps / services like this.
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Its a setting in Account Settings | Privacy: I have activities etc set to private, but âPopularity Routingâ toggled on so that my rides contribute to heat maps. It may that this setting is disabled by default so a lot of users may be unaware that theyâre not contributing data.
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