Free online route planners
Peter Seidl, 9. February 2024Plan your route and export a .gpx file
You want to connect a few trails and plan the whole tour? Know how far it is and how many height meters you have to overcome? Export a .gpx file to navigate on your GPS device, or upload it to Trailguide? Then a digital route planner is the perfect tool for that!
Free route planners
Several popular platforms provide route planners. But most of them require a subscription. Nevertheless, there are free alternatives! Here we want to briefly introduce two of them:
1) Locus Map
2) Bikerouter
Locus Map
Locus Map is a native app that also has a browser based web route planner. The work flow is:- Select a routing profile: "MTB"
- Zoom the map to where you want to go
- Right click to set a start or end point
- Drag the route in between to the points you want to go to
Positive: Locus Map provides elevation data to the route so you see a hight profile and how much you have to climb. They have a really good base map.
Bikerouter
Bikerouter is based on an open source project. The work flow is:
- Select a routing profile: "MTB standard"
- Zoom the map to where you want to go
- Just click on the map to add points to the route
- Drag the route in between to add further points
Positive: Bikerouter is configurable, so you can edit the routing profiles, and add custom map layers or overlays. It offers many routing profiles by default, and the workflow is very smooth. On the downside: elevation data is only available up to 60° North (just south of Oslo).
With both route planners you can export .gpx files to be used on your GPS device for navigation or to be uploaded to Trailguide. See how to add a trail to Trailguide here.