I’m planning some multi day rides in parts of the country I don’t know. Komoot seems like a no-brainer for helping to plot routes. Is it as good as the marketings/ GCN / insta makes us believe? If not Komoot then which other apps or websites are good?

Apologies for not quite answering your question, and I haven’t seen any insta or add, but…

We’ve found it great round Europe. Suggests interesting routes, or side routes if we have main journey planned. Easy to put our own routes into. In fact, easy to use in general. Gives good directions. I like it v much.

That’s what I wanted to hear.

Thanks

I’ve used it quite a few times now and really like it. When planning, it does not discern between bridleway and footpath or other rights of way, so I always plan in conjunction with an OS map.

If you go in to settings, you can ensure your routes are stored on your phone by using an offline mode. I have then turned off roaming to save battery, so I do not have to have the phone constantly hooked up to a battery.

It has it’s quirks, and relies on OSM (free) mapping which is user entered, so you might find it varies from area to area whether someone either:
a) militantly ticked the “bikes allowed” box for all footpaths
b) militantly un-ticked it for all bridleways
c) had no idea and pragmatically ticked the options that best correspond to the actual path on the ground which is far too sensible.

Or got it right, or sometimes there’ll be a path up a hill, and a path down a hill, but OSM doesn’t link them so it won’t auto route. So you either have to login to OSM and change it (and wait for kommot to update which could be a very long time) or find a way to force it off the path.

Also, things like if you don’t set waypoints at each junction then as soon as you deviate off course it re-routes you. Frustrating on my first few rides with it until I realized as I’d asked it to plan circular routes, but as soon as you set off it would send to you the next waypoint which was the finish!

There are other route planning apps that use OSM mapping, but komoot does do a good job of the planning aspect. Just an odd business model that the (great) planning part is free, and the (mediocre, and free elsewhere) mapping is the bit you have to pay for!

Viewranger + OS maps subscription (£25pa).

You can plot routes online and sync to your phone using OS 1:25 000 maps.

I’ve had some shocking routes from Komoot, not it’s fault but the data being not really up to date and having stuff that is impassable because it’s overgrown.  Not sure anything can handle that though apart from sticking to well travelled routes.  In terms of finding routes it’s pretty good though and as long as you are open to rerouting if it looks crap then it’s a good optoin

i rate komoot highly, i used it to plan a gravel tour of slovenia and it was outstanding at accurately guiding along paths, singletrack and forest tracks . in romania it was a bit more hit and miss ( some of the routes were not really passable on a bike ). i found that playing about with it in your local area is good to understand its strengths and limitations.

Use it all the time in Germany, no real problems so far.
Only issue is that it measures your route with less frequency than say Garmin, so we always estimate +10% climbing if we are doing short, sharp hilly routes, rather than long, slow climbs.

i rate komoot highly, i used it to plan a gravel tour of slovenia and it was outstanding at accurately guiding along paths, singletrack and forest tracks . in romania it was a bit more hit and miss ( some of the routes were not really passable on a bike ). i found that playing about with it in your local area is good to understand its strengths and limitations.

Even going between England and Scotland highlights the limitations of any system.

In England there’s a reasonable chance that if it’s a bridleway, you’ll be able to ride it on a mountainbike. But then you miss out on all those cheeky footpaths that are actually fine.

In Scotland where you just have “paths” it’s entirely at the mercy of whoever created that path in OSM. Someone might “yes you can legally ride here”, someone else might think “this is a 10 mile hike across a bog, no you couldn’t take a bike”.

I don’t find it any better/worse than planning with an OS map, it’s just different, it does a lot of the work for you. You can guess from an OS map which bridleways are ride able on a gravel/CX bike based on gradients, topography, is it marked as a track, is there a wall on both sides etc, komoot just has a built in tag for each section which should be better than your guess, but can equally be very wrong. Neither is really a substitute for a decent guidebook, or locals .gpx file.

I use it a lot with Wahoo and works really well.

I tested it last year for UK riding. I used some local routes I ride regularly, just to see if it would be effective for areas I don’t know so well.

I couldn’t get it to work. It routed me alongb roads when there was a lovely bridal way system linking points A and B. Or  it would send me down down a road and a footpath and ignore another bridal way and  path better suited to get you where you wanted.  Several attempts and had the same problem each time. Have up in the end. Must be the underlying map data that was the issue as described above.