For Planning: Komoot

What it is: A robust navigation tool for planning everything from short commutes to big adventures.

Apple App Store rating: 4.7/5, 582 ratings

Google Play rating: 4.6/5, 85k ratings

Price: Free (in-app purchases for extended features)

IOS ANDROID

Komoot is everything you love about Google Maps, but for cyclists. For anyone who’s ever wondered how to get from A to B on their bike as safely and efficiently as possible, Komoot is the answer.

Drawing from the open-source OpenStreetsMap database, Komoot allows you to plan road, MTB, and commute rides by choosing beginning and end points, as well as features or addresses you’d like to hit along the way.

It then selects the most efficient path for you AND your fitness level, taking into account bike-friendliness of pathways. Your preride rundown shows an elevation profile (which you can scrub along); what kind of surfaces you’ll run into, and where (also scrub-able); what kinds of pathways you’ll run into, and where (bike path, vs. lane, vs. street, vs road, etc.); exactly where you might run into hurdles, and how far into a ride those hurdles will arise (for me, it’s moveable bridges). It also adjusts anticipated ride time based on your fitness level, which it correlates with speed.

Planning bike rides on your phone is orders-of-magnitude easier in Komoot relative to competitor apps, although it’s still easier to adjust those ride routes at a computer. The interface allows you to drag the route to your preferred locations—much like Google Maps, but with the route-beta specificity beyond what even Strava offers.

If you want to ride a very specific route, you can upload a GPS file to the web portal and then send it to your phone app, or select a fellow Komoot member’s activity and copy it right to the app for replication. It is possible to sync Komoot with a bike computer. It took quite a few steps to pair it with my Garmin, but once it synced, I had easy access to any of the routes I created in the app. Once in my Garmin, however, many of the features that make Komoot attractive to commuters are stripped away.

If you prefer to follow directions via phone, you’ll get lots more readily accessible data than via your bike computer. The Navigation screen not only shows your real-time speed (not the most responsive), average mph, distance traveled between the most recent pre-determined waypoint, distance to your next waypoint, total distance traveled, and how many miles you have left to travel; but also allows SUPER fast interactivity with the map in such a way that you can change your route on the fly (literally, one second), and explore points of interest. Each point of interest offers the option to read the most accessible info drawn from the web about it, usually via Wikipedia.

[Everything You Need to Know About Biking to Work]

Cool perk: You can take photos directly from within the app, geotagged to your location at the time. But my absolute favorite things about it are the voice navigation guidance that kicks in about 50 feet in advance of a turn; and how the route can recalculate almost instantaneously if you go off course (it’ll tell you how many feet away you are from getting back on course, too, if you’re only a little bit lost).

Lacking heart rate and power data, it’s not a competitor with Strava: The goal of a Komoot user is exploration (and sometimes transportation), not competition. This app is best for people who want to get places fast and in one piece, while getting to know their city and the wilds that surround it.

NOTE: Komoot also offers a badge system, whereby the more highlights/photos/tips you add to the crowdsourced map, the more points you get toward becoming an ‘expert’ in a given place or athletic activity. It’s gamified contribution—you get rewarded for being knowledgeable and engaged, not athletic.