
## The Best Bikepacking Navigation App Is the One Whose Failure You Can Live With

For most riders the best bikepacking navigation app is Ride with GPS to build the route and Komoot to sanity-check the surface, exported as a GPX and followed on whatever you already own. One thing changes that answer: if your route leaves the road network for public land, Gaia GPS is the better map.

Every roundup of these apps is a feature table, and the table is useless. **All five will draw you a line and follow it.** They all record a track, show your position on it, and speak a turn. On features alone the comparison collapses.

The useful question in [bikepacking route planning](/posts/bikepacking-route-planning-navigation-guide) is not which app has more layers. It is which app's failure you can live with at 4 p.m. on day three, 40 miles from pavement, when the line on the screen and the ground in front of you disagree. Each of these apps has a characteristic way of being wrong.

<Highlight label="The short version">
**Komoot** — pick this if you want a route without learning a routing engine. Best surface data of the group, confident routing, occasionally confidently wrong off-pavement. One-time regional purchases instead of a subscription.

**Ride with GPS** — pick this if you are building a multi-day route and want control over every foot of it. The most capable planner here and the least pleasant to learn.

**Gaia GPS** — pick this if you are riding public land, forest roads, or anywhere the important question is "whose land is this." Best map layers, ordinary bike routing.

**OsmAnd** — pick this if offline is the whole point and you would rather pay once than subscribe. The most capable offline app and the hardest to look at.

**Organic Maps** — pick this if you want a free, no-account offline map on your phone as a backup. Not a route planner. Still worth installing.
</Highlight>

<SectionDivider variant="trail" />

## Komoot: Confident Routing, Sometimes Confidently Wrong

Komoot asks you almost nothing and gives you a plausible route anyway. Set a sport, drop a start and an end, and out comes something rideable with an elevation profile and a surface breakdown attached.

That breakdown is the genuine advantage. [Komoot](https://www.komoot.com/tour-characteristics) publishes way types — path, cycleway, street, highway, trail, singletrack or road — and surface types including sand, asphalt, cobblestones and gravel, for every route it builds. On a loaded bike, "how much of this is sand" matters more than distance.

**What it is bad at is being argued with.** Dragging the line onto a specific dirt road you know about is fussier here than in Ride with GPS, and where map data is thin Komoot still hands you a confident, fully-formed route across it. That is the failure mode: it never signals uncertainty.

### What offline costs

Komoot's money model is the most unusual here and, for many riders, the friendliest. As of September 2026, [komoot](https://www.komoot.com/product) sells offline maps and voice navigation as one-time regional unlocks — $3.99 for a single region, $8.99 for a bundle, $29.99 for The World — with no recurring charges, and new accounts get their first single region free.

Komoot Premium is separate and is a subscription. As of September 2026, [komoot](https://newsroom.komoot.com/182344-go-further-with-komoot-premium/) prices it at €59.99 a year, including on-tour weather, sport-specific maps, a multi-day planner and global offline maps.

For a bikepacker the one-time purchase is usually the correct buy and Premium usually is not. The multi-day planner is pleasant; it is not €59.99-a-year pleasant when Ride with GPS plans multi-day routes better.

<SectionDivider variant="rule" />

## Ride with GPS: The Best Route Planner Here, and the Least Pleasant to Learn

If you are building a two-week route by hand, this is the tool. It gives you per-segment control, real cue-sheet editing, and — the part that matters for touring — planning across multiple linked routes rather than one enormous file.

[Ride with GPS](https://ridewithgps.com/premium) lists multi-route editing for multi-day tours, an Auto-Trace tool for tracing an existing line, and export and sync to Garmin, Wahoo and Strava. Its mobile planner carries satellite, OSM and topographic base maps, so you can rebuild a route in a motel room without a laptop.

**The cost is the learning curve.** The web planner is dense, control point behavior is unintuitive at first, and nothing about the interface is trying to charm you. Expect an evening before you are fast in it. Most roundups pretend that cost does not exist.

### How the tiers work

The [plans page](https://ridewithgps.com/pricing) describes three levels. Free Starter lets you explore routes, record rides, plan on the website and sync to devices. Basic adds what you actually need on tour: turn-by-turn voice navigation, offline maps, live logging, and 7- and 30-day heatmaps on mobile. Premium adds all-time global and personal heatmaps, custom cues, ride analysis, custom maps and private segments.

Prices move, so check that page rather than trusting a number in a blog post, ours included. The structural point is stable: **turn-by-turn navigation and offline maps sit behind the first paid tier, not the free one.**

<PullQuote>
A feature table cannot tell you which app will lie to you about a road. That is the only comparison that matters.
</PullQuote>

## Komoot vs Ride with GPS: Confidence Versus Control

**Komoot decides. Ride with GPS lets you decide.** Komoot is better when you do not know the area, do not want to research it, and will accept a good-enough route in five minutes. Ride with GPS is better when you have a specific route in your head — a particular rail trail, a resupply town you must pass through — and the file has to match it exactly.

For a weekend overnighter, Komoot wins on effort. Past about three days, Ride with GPS wins on control. Plenty of experienced riders simply run both, which is the next section.

## Gaia GPS for Bikepacking: The Best Map, an Ordinary Bike Router

Gaia is a mapping app that also routes bikes, not a bike app that also shows maps, and that ordering explains it.

Its strength is land data. [Gaia GPS](https://blog.gaiagps.com/access-private-land-data-for-the-us-with-a-premium-membership/) puts a Public Land overlay and a US Private Land overlay behind Premium, with parcel-level ownership — exactly the question you are asking when you want to know whether that two-track is a legal shortcut or a driveway with a dog at the end of it. One quirk Gaia notes: Android displays the Private Land overlay, but only iOS lets you tap a parcel for ownership details.

**Where it is ordinary is routing.** Its snap-to-trail planner offers hiking, cycling, driving and manual modes, but [Gaia's help documentation](https://help.gaiagps.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406144762135-Offline-Snap-to-Trail-Routing) says snapping only works on trails and roads shown on Gaia Topo, relies on OpenStreetMap data, and needs your route points close to the line to snap at all. Competent, but not a cycling router the way Ride with GPS is, and with nothing we could find equivalent to Komoot's surface breakdown.

### What the free tier gives you

[Gaia GPS](https://www.gaiagps.com/membership/) lets you record, track and navigate for free. Premium buys downloading maps for offline use — which for a bikepacker is the entire product. Offline snap-to-trail routing is Premium-only too, so free users cannot re-route once they are out of service. That limitation is not unique to Gaia.

<Warning title="Free tiers stop working exactly where bikepacking starts">
Across Komoot, Ride with GPS and Gaia GPS, the feature gated behind payment is offline maps. That is not a coincidence and it is not a coincidence you can route around — the free tier of a navigation app is a product for people who ride in cell coverage. If your route has a 60-mile gap in service, you are buying something before you leave.
</Warning>

<SectionDivider variant="ornamental" />

## OsmAnd: The Most Capable Offline App, and the Ugliest to Use

OsmAnd is what you get when an app is built offline-first rather than selling offline as an extra. [OsmAnd's documentation](https://osmand.net/docs/user/plan-route/create-route/) states its Plan a route tool works in offline mode, and its [navigate-by-track feature](https://osmand.net/docs/user/navigation/setup/gpx-navigation/) follows an imported GPX, including reversing a saved track and recalculating directions the other way. Bail out halfway, reverse the track, ride home.

**What it is bad at is being an app you enjoy opening.** Deep settings tree, engineer-first terminology, busy default styling. Nothing here is designed to be discovered; it is designed to be configured. Budget an hour with the documentation before your trip, not during it.

### The money, and the download limit

As of September 2026, [OsmAnd](https://osmand.net/docs/user/purchases/android/) gives free users 7 map downloads on Android and [5 on iOS](https://osmand.net/docs/user/purchases/ios/), where downloading or updating a country or region map spends one — the world overview map, altitude correction, map fonts and voice prompts do not count. Maps+ is listed at €14.99 a year or €69.99 as a one-time lifetime purchase, unlocking unlimited downloads plus topography data. OsmAnd Pro is listed at €5.99 a month or €39.99 a year, adding cloud sync, 3D relief, faster updates and a weather plugin.

**That €69.99 lifetime figure is the most interesting number here.** It buys permanent unlimited offline maps once, and it is why OsmAnd keeps a following that has nothing to do with its interface.

<SectionDivider variant="trail" />

## Organic Maps: The Free Bike Route Planner Fallback Worth Installing

Organic Maps is not a route planner in the Ride with GPS sense and replaces nothing above. Install it anyway; it costs nothing and removes a whole category of failure.

[Organic Maps](https://github.com/organicmaps/organicmaps) is an open-source Android and iOS offline maps app built on crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data, with no ads, no tracking and no account, funded by donations and grants. [Its own site](https://organicmaps.app/) says it supports 100% of its features without an internet connection — offline search and turn-by-turn walking, cycling and car navigation included — and that countries and regions do not take up much space.

Its role is narrow and real: **a second, independent offline map that does not depend on your subscription being current, your account being logged in, or your main app not crashing.** It is also the honest answer for anyone who flatly refuses to pay for navigation software.

## Free vs Paid: What You Are Actually Buying

Strip out the marketing and there are three things you pay for.

1. **Offline maps.** The one that matters. Every paid tier here exists mainly to sell you this.
2. **Turn-by-turn voice navigation.** Useful on unfamiliar pavement, close to irrelevant on a forest road with no turns for two hours.
3. **Planning depth.** Multi-route editing, custom cues, heatmap layers. Worth money only if you build routes rather than download them.

Ride mostly in coverage on published routes and a free tier plus a downloaded GPX genuinely works. Ride out of coverage and you buy offline maps in whatever form is cheapest — a $29.99 komoot World unlock, an OsmAnd lifetime purchase, a subscription — then stop optimizing.

<Tip title="Buy the cheapest thing that solves offline, then stop">
The difference between these apps' paid tiers is much smaller than the difference between having offline maps and not having them. Pick a lane, download the region for your route before you leave home, and put the remaining energy into the route itself rather than the software.
</Tip>

## The Pairing Most Bikepackers Actually Run

Almost nobody experienced uses one app for everything, and this is the part the roundups miss. The common setup is **plan in one app, navigate in another, verify in a third.**

- **Build the route** in Ride with GPS, where you control the exact roads.
- **Check the surfaces** by pasting the same route into Komoot, or reading the ways on Gaia Topo, before you commit.
- **Cross-check the recon** on the Strava global heatmap. [Strava](https://stories.strava.com/articles/strava-routes-and-heatmap-how-to-find-new-places-to-go) says the darker the line, the more often that section is used, and its [route builder](https://support.strava.com/en-us/articles/15401971-routes-on-web) lets you say whether you would prefer paved or dirt surfaces. A dirt road with no heat on it is not necessarily bad, but it earns a second look.
- **Export a GPX** and load it wherever you will actually follow it.

That last step is where hardware enters, which is why this article does not recommend a device. If you follow the file on a dedicated unit, our comparison of [GPS navigation devices for bikepacking](/posts/gps-navigation-devices-bikepacking) and the roundup of [the best cycling computers for bikepacking](/posts/best-cycling-computers-bikepacking) cover that choice. Loading a GPX onto a Garmin, Wahoo or Coros, and the case for phone-only navigation, are separate subjects.

If you navigate on the phone, plan the battery first — our guide to [portable chargers for your phone and GPS](/posts/navigating-with-power-the-best-portable-charger-for-your-phone-and-gps) covers what to carry. Ride with GPS claims offline maps let you [navigate in airplane mode with "70% more battery life"](https://ridewithgps.com/premium), which is the right instinct whatever the exact figure: downloaded maps stop the radio working.

<SectionDivider variant="rule" />

## The Thing That Actually Breaks: The Road That Is Not There

Every app here, paid ones included, routes on OpenStreetMap data. Gaia says so for snap-to-trail; OsmAnd and Organic Maps are built on it outright. That shared foundation is why they fail in the same ways.

**A road that does not exist.** Someone mapped a logging spur since decommissioned, or traced a connector from an aerial image that is now ten years of alder. Your app routes you onto it confidently, because a line in the database is a line in the database.

**A track that is private.** The one that ends days: a real, rideable ranch road with a locked gate and a sign. Routers depend on access tagging to know, and in [OpenStreetMap's tagging scheme](https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:bicycle) the bicycle key is what records the legal restriction on a way — "yes" where cycling is permitted, "designated" where the way is signed for it. Where nobody tagged it, the router guesses.

**A "path" that is a hike-a-bike.** Legitimately a way. Not a way you ride a loaded bike up.

A quieter fourth version: [Bike Streets](https://bikestreets.com/blog/troubleshooting-an-unexpected-route) points out that unexpected routes often come from paths not actually joined in the data, or gates tagged incorrectly, so the router detours miles around a connection you can see with your own eyes.

**The fix is manual, every time.** Zoom in on satellite imagery along every unfamiliar dirt section before you leave, looking for the gate, the washout, the place the track fades into a field. Then edit the line by hand — our walkthrough of [how to build a GPX route](/posts/how-to-build-gpx-route-bikepacking) covers that, including what to do when the router refuses to follow the road you want.

<Warning title="Assume one route error per remote day">
On unfamiliar dirt, plan as though one section per day will not be what the app says it is. That means carrying a bail-out option, water for longer than the plan requires, and a way to call for help. When the reroute puts you outside coverage, [emergency communication with no cell signal](/posts/emergency-communication-no-cell-signal) stops being theoretical.
</Warning>

<SectionDivider variant="ornamental" />

## What We Would Use, by Rider Type

**First overnighter, 40 miles, home Sunday.** Komoot's free single region, or a published route someone already vetted. Do not buy software for trip one — start from our list of [beginner bikepacking routes in the US](/posts/best-beginner-bikepacking-routes-us) and [how to plan a first bikepacking trip](/posts/your-first-bikepacking-trip-planning). The route file is the least of your problems.

**Two-week gravel tour with resupply constraints.** Ride with GPS, paid tier, multi-route planning, one evening learning the editor. Nothing else handles a route that must hit specific towns on specific days as well.

**Remote public-land route.** Gaia GPS Premium for land ownership and topo layers, with the route built elsewhere and imported. You are buying the map, not the router.

**Refuses to pay a subscription.** OsmAnd with the one-time Maps+ purchase, or komoot's World unlock at $29.99, plus Organic Maps as a free backup. Permanent, offline, and nobody emails you about renewing.

**Wants to think about this as little as possible.** Komoot, one region, download, ride. Least effort per acceptable route of anything here.

## The Bottom Line

We would build in Ride with GPS, check surfaces in Komoot, use Gaia when land ownership matters, and keep Organic Maps as the app that still works when the others do not. Four apps sounds absurd until you notice all four are free to install and only two of them ever need paying for on a given trip.

What we would not do is choose from a feature list. **Every app here will draw a confident line across a road that closed years ago.** The right one is the one whose particular blindness you have planned around — Komoot's confidence, Ride with GPS's learning curve, Gaia's ordinary routing, OsmAnd's interface, Organic Maps's refusal to plan anything at all.

Download the offline region before you leave the house. Check satellite imagery on every dirt section you have not ridden. Carry a bail-out. Then the app barely matters, which is the point. For the rest of the workflow — offline maps for bikepacking, getting the file onto a device, and what to do when the route falls apart — start with [our complete route planning and navigation guide](/posts/bikepacking-route-planning-navigation-guide).


gear-reviews

Best Bikepacking Navigation Apps: Komoot, Ride with GPS, Gaia GPS and OsmAnd Compared

Best Bike Travel Cases and Bags for Bikepacking: Hard Shell vs Soft Compared

High-Visibility Gear for Bikepacking: Be Seen on the Road

Bikepacking Bike Security: Preventing Theft on the Road

Best Satellite Messengers for Bikepacking: inReach, ZOLEO & SPOT Compared