One constant throughout my #CrossBorderRail projects – despite the name! – is my bicycle. The faithful Birdy folding bike has been with me throughout, in more than 30 countries. And mounted on the handlebars (using a Quad Lock mount – amazingly good as well) is an old iPhone 6s. And, until now, all my routes and turn by turn navigation, has been done with Komoot.

But now Komoot has been taken over by well known enshittifier Bending Spoons, resulting in 85% of the staff being let go. The joy having worked there, and the sadness of it ending, is palpable in this video from a former employee:

So I am going to do what I can do: abandon Komoot, seek alternatives, explain what I have learned – in the hope this might inspire some others to look for alternatives as well.

So what are the requirements for the alternative I seek?

Essential
1) Ability to plan and save bike tour routes on both a regular web browser on a computer, and on an iPhone, and save and sync these. These routes can be anything from “get me to that hotel right now” to “route me via 7 different very specific via points”
2) Altitude for routes
3) Turn by turn navigation that works on an iPhone
4) GPX or GEOjson data import and export

Ideal
1) OpenStreetMap as the underlying map
2) Opportunity to also plan walking and car routes in the same tool (allowing me to get rid of a few odd uses of Google Maps as well while I am at it!)
3) Some data efficient system, ideally offline maps and even offline navigation to save me when my data is low or mobile phone signal non-existent in odd corners of Europe

What did not matter
1) Public transport data (I have loads of other apps for that)
2) Having to pay a bit of money for the app, or not
3) Off-road or gravel bike routing don’t matter – the most extravagant I am ever going to need is a non-paved track
4) The quality of audio instructions when using turn-by-turn (I am mostly using the visual instructions)

First of all, what was excluded?
Solutions that had separate planning solutions on the web browser and phone. brouter together with Organic Maps was often proposed an option, and while I like brouter, the routing in Organic Maps was too poor on some test bike routes, so that was out. Likewise Google Maps is really variable when it comes to cycle routes in my experience, and Apple Maps likewise failed on the test routes, so those were out.

That left me with three tools that were more closely examined: cycle.travel, Ride With GPS and Mapy.com

cycle.travel immediately appeals with its emphasis on good quality routing, and it consistently gave me excellent routes – and that on both a web browser and in the iOS app. Altitude for routes, turn by turn navigation, and data import and export are all present, and offline maps also available. However the web interface is rather slow and cumbersome to use, and the whole system – including the way the maps are presented – has a rather retro feel to it. And it’s cycle only. I might return to cycle.travel, but somehow did not warm to it.

Ride With GPS is completely at the other end of the spectrum – the product is immensely polished, and it has every conceivable function that any sort of cyclist might ever want – and to be honest probably more than I would ever need! To get all the functions I need, I would have to pay $6.67 a month – perfectly reasonable for what you get, but given this app does much more than I ever need as a cyclist, I was reluctant. And it is cycling only as well.

So – for the moment – this has led me to Mapy.com as the solution, short term. It is a general map application, built by Seznam, a Czech firm. For €18/year it has all the functions I require, and also works well enough for walking and car routes, and the company has long been an OpenStreetMap contributor. Offline maps work fine, the way the maps render is the most beautiful I have seen (they remind me of Ordnance Survey maps of my childhood), default cycle routing passed for the test routes, and there is plenty of opportunity to customize if you want to, and the regular web interface is excellent. The only slight glitch I encountered is there is no way to turn imported GPX files into navigable routes, but in my case this is a minor headache.

So for the first part of #CrossBorderRail the finale 2025 – 6-23 June – Mapy.com will the tool I will be using. If it lets me down I will reconsider!

UPDATES
1.6.2025, 18:00 – Steven Clays has pointed me towards Route You which likewise looks good. I will add this to my list to evaluate!
1.6.2025, 19:00 – David Metti has suggested OutdoorActive which also merits a closer look. Will add to the list!
1.6.2025, 20:30 – apparently the audio turn by turn in Mapy can prove to be annoying – with too many audio instructions given (thanks Jan Koernicke for highlighting this). I have never paid much attention to the quality of the audio instructions, but in light of this comment by Jan have added a line on this in the post above.
2.6.2025, 14:00 – and one more from Eugenijus Radlinskas – and like Mapy also from Czechia – Cyclers