Over the last few weeks, Komoot has pretty significantly expanded the moat around their platform, specifically when it comes to doing (executing) the very routes you create on Komoot. Going forward (from Feb 27th, 2025), all new users of the platform will require a Premium subscription ($59/year) in order to sync those routes to connected devices, such as a Garmin/Wahoo/Hammerhead/etc…This will not affect any accounts that purchased something from Komoot prior to that point (either a paid map unlock, or a Premium membership).
Still, this is a pretty big deal, at least in terms of the future of Komoot. It obviously isn’t going to impact most existing customers (unless you had a free Komoot account for some time, but never used the sync feature, and now want to). Some have said this is Komoot saying “we don’t want any new customers”, and to be honest, there’s a pretty strong nugget of truth there. Yet, at the same time, there’s also a reality that Komoot is a business. And free users only take you so far. That’s no different than any business. You don’t pay the bills with free.
So, let’s take a closer look at exactly what’s changing, isn’t changing, and what this means relative to the competition.
What Changes?
First up, for those not familiar with Komoot, at its core, it’s a route-planning platform. Their strength has historically been more European-centric than other regions, but there’s still a boatload of content beyond Europe. Their secondary strength has been the ability to plan tours (e.g., multi-day or multi-route efforts) as a cohesive thing, establishing not just collections but also adding photos and descriptions for those collections. Whereas most other routing/mapping providers tend to skew towards per-route features. Meaning, each route is a route unto itself, rather than being seen as part of a larger collection. Again, others like RideWithGPS can do collective routes too, but collections has long been Komoot’s main jam.
Ok, setting that aside, let’s talk about what you could (and can still do) within Komoot.
Planning routes: This piece, the act of creating a route, you can still do with a free account, just like before. That remains the same.
Doing the routes: This is the piece that changes. And ‘doing’ has three core feature areas: Downloading a GPX file, doing the route with the Komoot app, and syncing the route with a connected device like a Garmin/Wahoo/Polar/COROS/Suunto/Hammerhead/etc…
Option 1 – Downloading a GPX File: This requires either a map unlock, or a premium subscription. In other words, you can create routes all day long, but at the end of the day, if you want to download that route and actually do it, you’re gonna have to pay. The map unlock fee lets you do a one-time region unlock that lets you ‘own’ that region for future purposes.
The regions tend to be very small (literally a single 8.99EUR region is barely 1/3rd of the island I live on). But, Komoot lets you pay a 19.99EUR one-time fee to unlock the entire world (it’s 29EUR normally, but a new account gets a 10EUR discount for the first 10 days). Thus obviously, if you ever plan to use Komoot again, it probably makes sense for the one-time 20EUR payment:
Once that’s done, you can download that GPX file, and any future files for routes you create within the region you bought (either that tiny sliver of a region, or the entire world unlock). To reiterate, none of those features have changed at all (well, at least anytime that I can remember).
Option 2 – Komoot App Navigation:
Now, the second option you’ve got to ‘do’ the routes you create is the Komoot app. This includes offline access for the maps, turn-by-turn prompts, voice navigation, and a pile of other features. This, too, though, requires some sort of purchase. Either the map unlock I described above, or Komoot Premium. Below are the extra features. The first column on both chunks is if you pay for a map unlock, the second column is with Premium:
Again, none of the above has actually changed at all relative to the payment required for Komoot app navigation. The shifting into Premium has changed in recent years, but it did at least always require some sort of payment (map unlocks) previously.
Option 3 – Native Device Integration:
Lastly, and probably of most interest to people here, is the syncing of a route to your 3rd party device. Examples being Garmin devices, Hammerhead, Wahoo, Polar, Suunto, COROS, and probably others as well. This now requires not just a map unlock like it did previously, but now the Premium subscription. That subscription is $4.99/month or $59/year (parity pricing in EUR & GBP). Previously, simply unlocking the applicable map region would do the trick (or the world unlock for $20-$30.)
And this is where things get messy. Up till now, you could buy a single region the activity was in (as cheap as $3 in some cases) and be cooking. Now, you’re looking at a monthly/annual fee, simply to sync the route to your device. This will be a substantial barrier to getting new users onto the platform, especially if those new users are coming via event-type websites. Events will often share links to routes on Komoot, Strava, RideWithGPS, and others – usually picking a single partner in most cases. But none of the others require payment to simply ride the route in question.
If we compare Strava, they require payment (a subscription) to *create* a route, but not to ride/run/sync that route. This means that others can create and share a route, and then you simply add it to your saved/favorites, and it syncs to your device in question (or you can download the GPX file). No payment is required to sync a route to your device (Garmin/Wahoo/etc). Strava only requires a premium subscription if you wish to save the entire offline map area to your Strava app on your phone.
Likewise, RideWithGPS is the same. It does not require a payment/subscription to sync routes to your device. Last week, I was going on a week-long gravel bike ride in Morocco, and the company uses RideWithGPS for all their routes. They’ve got these route collections made, and I was simply invited to the route collection for that ride, which synced all of those routes to all of my devices (COROS/Wahoo/Hammerhead/Garmin), instantly, without any payment.
You can see here, how RideWithGPS splits up its tiers:
As seen above, RideWithGPS does not require a subscription to plan routes, explore routes, or sync with various bike computers.
Wrap-Up:
Only Komoot knows, or will soon know, whether or not this strategy will work. Obviously, as I alluded to at the beginning, Komoot is a business, and ultimately, it’s the goal of the business to increase revenue. However, where it gets tricky is crowd-sourced platforms like Komoot. While Komoot certainly pays for certain mapping/trail/etc data, they’re also *HEAVILY* dependent on user data to contribute photos, actual trail usage data, and plenty more.
In fact, I’d argue that user-generated content, like its extensive uploaded photos, collections, and the like, is the single biggest differentiator between Komoot and other platforms. Even despite Strava adding photos to Strava Routes/maps in recent years, it’s still not as easy to see those photos in all Strava apps/platforms/places. Let alone things like route collections, which Strava announced two years ago, and I’ll be darned if I can find any reference to that actually arriving/happening.
I suspect within 30-60 days, we’ll know whether or not Komoot’s big shift is the right one. They’ll easily be able to look at year-over-year trends, and see whether new-user sign-ups (and more specifically revenue) are up or down. That said, given they didn’t sideswipe existing users, the trickle-down effect could take longer to manifest itself.
Still, I can’t help but think that long-term this move will hurt them. I totally understand their push for users to Premium, but in an ever-increasing landscape of subscription offerings, it’s going to be hard for many users to justify yet another monthly/annual subscription, simply to sync a route. Just my two cents.
With that, thanks for reading!
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I’m curious how polar is going to react to this, because the only way to get turn-by-turn navigation on polar devices is by syncing via komoot.
No, that is incorrect. Strava Routes is supported as well.
No TBT, though.
This isn’t the first time Komoot revamping its idea of “what is a premium tier”. I’ve been subscribed to them for quite a while and I remember that at the very beginning their premium subscription even included a sport insurance plan, which was a very compelling offer.
I’m curious if you could still create a route that starts in your “unlocked” area and ends somewhere else and ride it via Komoot app for free. I remember it was the case before – you were free to create as many routes as you wanted and ride them for free as long as the start point was within the unlocked region, even when the route took you out of it.
Still, personally Komoot Premium brings me more value than Strava Premium while being 10 EUR cheaper as well.
Good old “get venture capital, use that money to hire enough people to never ever become profitable, panic when the runway runs out” pattern.
At least they don’t seem to be at risk of getting even more capital through questionable pivots that would only allow them to dig themselves an even deeper hole. Remember Zwift when they had golden futures just waiting for them, with running and with hardware tron bikes? Running is still in “free forever” mode, that’s how golden that future was. I guess komoot’s sudden rush to break even will mean quite a renaissance for other “here’s a link to our route for tomorrow” platforms. All that community and suggestions stuff on Komoot has been little more than window dressing in large parts of the cycling community.
An entirely different field are all the other user groups. For example I know first hand just how much pensioner winter-expat community here on Tenerife (and surely also elsewhere) is using Komoot for hiking. Super difficult to predict their reaction to a price hike.
Did Komoot raise any more capital over the last decade?
I don’t see many similarities between Komoot and Zwift. The latter obviously made a bunch of mistakes including that specific piece of hardware but the play was pretty simple: blow it up and IPO. For that they needed hardware like Peloton. Hard to blame them too much for trying if you look at Peloton getting to a market cap of almost $50bln in 2021. Besides that, it’s obvious that Zwift investors pushed hard for it, otherwise they would have kicked out Eric Min instead of getting him a co-CEO who didn’t last very long.
Curious to find out where the roads lead Komoot. I guess they needed some kind of pivot.
Didn’t hear anything like that, and being European and all that they certainly never raised even remotely close as much.
But every runway supporting non-profitability will eventually run out, even when it’s at a fat more modest scale than Zwift. Only referenced them as an extreme example. That pattern can exist on a much smaller scale, and without those absurd “let’s dig a deeper hole!” follow-up rounds. What we see at Komoot, i think, is what happens when you don’t want to (more likely: can’t, no choice involved) raise more money and profitability isn’t there yet. They have to do *something*, and try to pick the last bad option. Or does this look too you like a well oiled money maker just trying to attune themselves even better to the market?
Looking at a few sources (I’m too cheap to pay for full access to Crunchbase or others), but the other sources I’m seeing shows Komoot had two funding rounds for roughly $1.5M, years ago. Honestly, that’s nothing for a company like Komoot these days.
I don’t think this has anything to do with investors at this point. I suspect it’s just like every other company trying to increase revenue.
Bending spoons just announced that they have finalized their acquisition of Komoot. The changes in the business model are most likely a direct consequence.
Personally, I think this is now the end for Komoot, the app is going to be enshittified until it dies, as that’s the modus operandi for Bending spoons (see what they did to Evernote and other acquisitions). Also, the original dev team will be laid of in the near future, that’s a given :(
I guess the issue is they have expected more joining PREMIUM.
But the most realised quickly – as me – that there are not a lot of meaningful advantages of PREMIUM.
I tried it with a discount and quit it after. Even being Mountainbiker I would not need the special map that often.
So for me the biggest issue of this decision is – even it not affects me – not the device sync in general. As the GPX download would be still allowed, it would be just a bit less comfortable – at least 1 step more.
BUT if you need a re-plan during your ride that could be a mess and if possible anyway may need a lot of time.
To me they should more focus on fixing issue or adding years old feature request on the basic functions, i.e. connect routes, deleting several done routes in ones. A good number of those improvements may more likely justify PREMIUM
I’ve heard of Komoot from you, and I gave it a try. But I wasn’t ever able to easily create a route. I’ve tried it on the phone (via the app) or in the browser, but it was a miserable experience.
In the end I just used the built in navigation from Garmin.
“One time only, yours forever” – forever doesnt mean forever, only while the platform lasts, or the product is available, or they change their mind. Garmin did this to me a while back – lifetime maps but clarified they meant “lifetime of the product, which just ended”. Komoot will be the same.
I’ve bought areas I’m interested in to create routes that sync to Garmin upon creation.
There’s just the extra step/s to download and upload the GPX to Garmin now, for no extra cost – have I interpreted that correctly?
Doesn’t seem too much of an issue, and won’t get me to a premium subscription
Indeed, as long as you can download a GPX for free, there is not really a big problem. Will this function remain free?
This is too much trouble to figure out and get nickel and dimed by. There are other alternatives to Kamoot.
Komoot (web app) is my preferred route planner, making use of a one-off “worldwide maps” purchase years ago.
I tried a Premium membership but there was nothing of any use to me other than the ability to organise routes into Collections. I’m not paying a monthly subscription fee just for some ultra-basic (and v poorly implemented) file organising feature, so no more Premium for me.
I’ll carry on using it for now (free of charge), but if they extend their subscription-drive efforts by trying to force me to pay for syncing/downloading WITHOUT ALSO PROVIDING SOME TRULY USEFUL FEATURES ALONG WITH IT then I’ll simply switch to another platform.
Although I hope not, with this move I suspect they’re now flirting with terminal decline…
In the worst case, you can pay 20€ and have unlimited access to the world map to create routes, download and import them on your device.
However, I don’t see the need to use a paid app to create routes. I have cycled routes up to 11 days without paying for any planner.
I think in general, for road cycling, Komoot doesn’t offer a meaningful advantage compared (well, especially compared) to Strava, or RideWithGPS.
However, when you cross into the hiking realm, especially a bit more remote, and especially in Europe – it’s often hard to beat.
Hi Ray
Do you have a link to komoot statement? BikeRadar published that story a couple weeks ago and linked to a page on the website that had been taken down: link to support.komoot.com
Premium page on the website has not been updated either: link to komoot.com
Have they rolled back already?
There are a lot of way they could improve their premium offer (I contributed some ideas). Enshitifying the free product is not the way forward
Hmm, I just have the statement/something they e-mailed me last week. We had e-mail exchanges yesterday about it, so unless they changed their mind last night…
Statement thingy attached.
That page seems to have been updated:
link to support.komoot.com
Even if I am grandfathered for now, I can read the writing on the wall. Not going to keep on investing and building routes on this platform and wait for the day where they decide this is all theirs
Using premium for 3 or 4 years now, I like the route builder with amongst other it summary of surface/road types and the google streetview integration. I find it worth it’s money. You can also submit maps correction (or do it yourselves in openstreetmap).
What a bad decision on Komoot’s side. This is my reference application for planning, I use it quite a lot with the world pack unlocked a few years ago. At the moment I’m on a premium… unlocked out of curiosity a year ago thanks to points accumulated at one of their partners. There’s literally nothing interesting about premium for me and I even forgot I had a premium and remembered when I read this post. I wouldn’t pay for it as a new user.
I can’t summarize it better than Ray:
” but in an ever-increasing landscape of subscription offerings, it’s going to be hard for many users to justify yet another monthly/annual subscription, simply to sync a route.”
are you sure that free strava users can download a gpx? i am not able to do this in android app. selecting a route in the maps tap, redirects me to the subscribe page.
” others can create and share a route, and then you simply add it to your saved/favorites, and it syncs to your device in question (or you can download the GPX file). No payment is required to sync a route to your device (Garmin/Wahoo/etc). Strava only requires a premium subscription if you wish to save the entire offline map area to your Strava app on your phone.”
Yup, I just tried it from a different free account I have. No problems downloading GPX.
That said, you’ve never been able to export a GPX file from the app, only desktop. Even Premium/paid can’t.
The Android app allows downloading gpx file from the details page of the tour. I prefer that in combination with gimporter / gexporter to load komoot tracks to my Garmin devices
Interesting, yeah, that’s not an option on the iOS side. :(
“While Komoot certainly pays for certain mapping/trail/etc data, they’re also *HEAVILY* dependent on user data to contribute photos, actual trail usage data, and plenty more.”
Not sure on this one. Routing and mapping in Komoot is build upon OpenStreetmap data. Would be very interesting to know, what additional MAPPING data they provide, besides the popularity routing based on their users planned routes. How does komoot contribute to OpenStreetmap? Do they contribute code, money or input to map data like corrections or details like road surfaces?
You can switch to “satellite view” maps, which is apparently a service they buy from mapbox.
As for OSM contribution, someone here on this thread mentioned a way to send corrections to Komoot, who would then pass out on to OSM. Of that’s real, paying some people who do manual preprocessing of OSM contributions from laymen who wouldn’t remotely know enough about OSM to independently contribute, then that’s actually a pretty cool way to not only consume OSM.
Komoot seems to be collecting feedback/corrections on their routing rather than on the content of the map. When I engaged with Komoot a few years back they were encouraging me to correct things directly in OSM
Komoot is also a Gold Corporate Member of the OpenStreetMap foundation: link to osmfoundation.org I.e. the pay EUR 15 000 to the foundation annually.
A bit delayed on the response, but as usr pointed out, they buy satellite imagery from Mapbox. I’d take a swag that probably also buy other data sets as well here and there.
So the way I’m currently getting my Komoot routes onto my Wahoo is: Create route in Komoot and save. Open up the Wahoo Elemnt app and go to “Select route.” All my Strava, RwGPS, and Komoot routes show up there. I assume this way of getting routes onto a device going to change too? It’s still working for me right now, but I got a free Premium account last year (expires in 3 days…)
My assumption is that unless you paid for something historically, that feature will go away. At least, that’s the way Komoot has phrased it.
I’ll report back after my premium subscription ends. I’d still fall under the “paid for something historically” category.
And just a day later, it turns out that Komoot is being acquired by Bending Spoons (a technology company if you want to be benevolent, or a vulture capitalist if you don’t).
link to businesswire.com
That makes everything much sadder but at least it provides a straight-forward explanation for this change.
That will come as a surprise then (Komoot sold to the owner of meetup)
link to finance.yahoo.com
Bending spoons just announced their acquisition of Komoot. The change in the free tier is most likely a direct consequence of that.
Personally, I think this marks the end for Komoot as a good app for users; the app will get enshittified to no end from now. This is the modus operandi of Bending spoons, see what they did to Evernote and other acquisitions. Also, expect the German dev team to be laid off in the near future :(
Here’s everything you need to know about the acquisition, and yikes, it won’t end well: link to dcrainmaker.com
Wow, the situation is even worse than I thought. This is a very good article, Ray.
Koomot ? Who else uses it ! You have to pay for everything. I recommend RideWithGPS the free option is sufficient.
I have just tried to sync routes from Koomot to my Instinct 2 via the IQ Store app and had no problem.
I have the World “region” since in thid Southern Hemisphere sub continent therr isn’t a single region available. I don’t know if that affects the sync or not
As long as you previously bought a region/pack/anything at all, then you retain the ability to sync. It’s new customers that need Premium.
I see.
But the future seems “dark”
This is a bit disappointing, I got the world map, since some of the route planning was ok and the price was reasonable for what the app is (route planning and little else) but now they take away route syncing, this app is no where near good enough to charge a subscription. I guess it’s back to strava full time again.
Nothing changes for you. If you bought anything in the past (like the world map), you are excluded from this new restriction (for now at least). This is aimed at new users.
I find Komoot to be the most intuitive route planning tool (also have Strava, Garmin, Ordnance Survey maps for the UK etc) – just little things like clicking a point and having the choice to add as new end point vs including along the route. The BEST feature though has to be the Google Streetview integration on the web version – being able to instantly check whether the “road” you just directed yourself down is a highway / quiet back road / goat track is amazing, and I don’t think exists on other platforms. (Although let me know if it is!).
Hopefully Komoot can stay afloat…
From a consumer perspective, I find it hard to understand which apps to go with when there are so many that overlap with some features and not others. Between Komoot/Strava/AllTrails/Connect+/etc, I wonder if folks are going to subscribe to all of these to get the features they need, or just pick one knowing they are missing full functionality?
For some reason, I am still able to download GPX and click a button to sync with Garmin. I have never purchased anything from Komoot. I do have some region unlocked in my profile, probably it was offered for free some years ago.