Hey everyone!
I shared this project here about two weeks ago — and wow, many of you jumped in, tried it, and reported all kinds of interesting bugs. Huge thanks 🙌 I’ve fixed them all (at least the ones I know of 😅) and would love for you to give the app another try.
I've just built a new cycling app that creates great road routes with a single click. The goal? Fun, scenic rides — not just the shortest point A to point B.
Link if you are too lazy to read a post! 👉 https://routecycle.com
Here's how it works:
- Choose your distance (10–300 km) and whether it’s a loop or point-to-point.
- (Optional) Pick a target elevation gain.
- (Optional) Add sightseeing stops.
- (Optional) Include natural springs to refill your bottles.
- (Optional) Add custom stops along the route — for me, that usually means food places.
Hit "Get Route" — and the magic happens. You get a custom route, ready to ride.
It's free for now. If you like it, you can buy me a coffee, send brutally honest feedback, or even help out.
Why it’s different from Komoot/Strava/Garmin/etc
Most apps still try to give you the shortest or fastest route from A to B. That works if you know the area really well and can manually spot which roads are actually nice for cycling. But if you don’t — like when you’re going on a long weekend ride or traveling somewhere new — it’s hard to tell which routes are safe, smooth, and fun.
This app takes the guesswork out. Routes are optimized specifically for road cyclists: less traffic, smoother tarmac, and better scenery. And instead of sending you down the same roads over and over, it also tries to mix things up — making your rides more diverse, fun, and full of little discoveries.
The idea came from two frustrations:
- Planning routes is a time sink — especially checking traffic, road quality, and sights for a safe, pleasant ride.
- I love discovering hidden gems while riding. But too often, they're just 100 meters off the path and I miss them. This app helps find them before I do.
If that sounds familiar, you'll probably love it too.
And if you find a critical bug, please report it — you'll be my hero.
Knows issues:
- Sometimes the route makes unnecessary turns in cities instead of taking the straight road out. It may also leave a main road and then rejoin it — this usually happens because the app is trying to avoid traffic.
- The UI on mobile phones isn’t great yet — it works much better on PC. On Android (especially in Firefox), the address field may not work properly.
- Routes and data aren’t always ideal (it depends a lot on the area). I plan to improve this and add more data sources so routes get better and better with each release.
- Anything else you notice — I’d love to hear about it!
The future roadmap:
- Gravel support
- Direct export to Garmin, Strava, and Komoot (GPX download already available)
- Mobile apps
- Your ideas here — what would you like to see?
Try it out and tell me what you think:
👉 https://routecycle.com (Sign up — more features are coming soon!)
by Interesting_Watch365
2 Comments
Pretty good. At least it’s faster and more responsive than Garmin’s builder.
The main thing I want to see, and as a software dev I understand that this is a big ask, is a prioritization of “safe” roads. I just generated a route near my house, and it wants me to take 3 major roads in a loop, when there are plenty of safer small roads that follow a nearly identical route. The biggest time-suck for me when building a route is finding roads that aren’t basically mini-highways (US problems I guess). I know Strava solves this using route popularity, but even just weighting the roads by size when route finding would probably be more than enough.
Nice work!
This is great! Thanks for sharing.