AllTrails vs Komoot — Which Hiking App Is Best For You?
Two of the most frequently compared hiking apps are AllTrails and Komoot, both of which offer a huge range of excellent features. But which one is best for you?
Both offer similar features like trail navigation, route finding, statistics tracking and social sharing. They also both have free and premium versions of their app — as you would expect, the premium versions offer more features including offline navigation.
I’d say that if you’re purely interested in finding and navigating hiking routes, then AllTrails is the app for you. If you’re interested in both hiking and cycling, then Komoot may be the better option. Komoot is a fantastic hiking app, although not quite as good as AllTrails, but is one of the best apps out there for cycling navigation.
Keep reading to learn more about the pros and cons of each app and my full analysis of AllTrails vs Komoot.
AllTrails
AllTrails is without a doubt the best-known and most popular hiking app out there. It boasts a list of over 200,000 trails in its database and is used by more than 10 million outdoor enthusiasts each year.
Upon opening the app, you’ll be greeted with a list of nearby trails. You can scroll through, or filter them by most popular, closest to you, newly added, difficulty, length, rating and more. This allows you to really narrow down your search and find the perfect trail for you.
You can also search for hikes in an area of your choosing — AllTrails allows you to search by city, national park or trail. This is great for planning an upcoming hiking trip, as you can save hikes to “lists” and easily view the saved hikes within that list.
Once you’re on the trail, AllTrails serves as a great GPS navigation device. It will show you the route, exactly where you are on the route, and statistics such as your current time on trail, the distance you’ve covered, elevation gain and more. Once finished, you can save your track and easily share it with friends and family.
The free version of AllTrails doesn’t let you download maps for offline use. I personally feel that a hiking navigation app without this feature is pretty much useless, as a lot of the hiking I do takes me off-grid. However, the Pro plan is only £29.99 per year which I think is a bargain.
Pros and cons for AllTrails
✓ User-friendly interface: AllTrails has an attractive interface — it’s very easy to use and makes finding hiking trails and inspiration a lot of fun.
✓ Extensive database: My absolute favourite thing about AllTrails is its huge database of existing trails available to choose from. You can search for a location and then sort the trails by length or rating to find the perfect one for you.
✓ Community input: Within each trail, users can leave photos and reviews to help out others. This can be really useful for learning about path closures, a delicious restaurant on the route or amazing viewpoints to look out for.
✘ Map isn’t clickable: The AllTrails map isn’t clickable so it’s not possible to investigate icons further. It would be nice to be able to click on campsite or restaurant icons to read more about them.
Komoot
Komoot is another very well-known hiking navigation app, and is also great for bicycle sports including MTB, road cycling and touring.
When you first load Komoot, you’ll land on their Discover tab, which lists a mix of “collections” and friend activity. Collections contain a series of routes, and upon clicking on one, it will show you the list of routes within that collection with photos, information and maps. Examples of collections are “Heavenly hikes in the Yorkshire Dales” and “Top 20 Hikes and Walks in Surrey.” It’s kind of like Instagram or Pinterest for hiking.
To find specific hikes, such as ones nearby or in a certain location, simply tap the “Find Adventures” button in the top right corner. From here, you can choose to explore nearby trails or search specific areas. Just like in AllTrails, you can save hikes or collections to come back to later.
You can also plan your own hikes/rides by using the “Plan” tab. With this feature, you’re able to calculate the optimal route between A and B, and Komoot will provide the elevation profile and terrain of this route.
Once on the trail, Komoot will show you the route, exactly where you are on the route, and statistics such as your movement time, the distance you’ve covered, your average speed and more. You can even add “highlights” to the route by taking a photo. Once finished, you can save your route and easily share it with friends and family.
Just like AllTrails, the free version of Komoot doesn’t let you download maps for offline use. It also doesn’t let you create your own collections or plan multi-day adventures. However, the Premium plan is currently only £30 per year.
Pros and cons for Komoot
✓ Turn-by-turn navigation: A real pro of Komoot is its turn-by-turn navigation. Once on the route, the app will verbally guide you around every twist and turn. This is great for trails where the path isn’t so clear or for runners/cyclists who can’t keep stopping to check the map — just plug in your earphones and go.
✓ Discover tab: Komoot’s Discover tab is nice for finding future hiking inspiration with collections such as “Spellbinding hikes in the South Lake District.”
✓ Highlights: Other users can add highlights to routes, such as a scenic viewpoint or waterfall, so you know to check them out during your hike.
✘ Clunky user interface: It could just be me, but there’s something about the experience of using Komoot that isn’t very smooth. Sometimes it takes a lot of taps to access the feature you want to use.
AllTrails vs Komoot features
| Feature | AllTrails | Komoot |
| Price for PRO Version | £29.99 per year | £30 per year |
| Live Tracking Data | Duration, Distance, Speed, Elevation Graph | Duration, Distance, Current Speed, Average Speed |
| Completion Data | Duration, Distance, Speed, Elevation Graph, Max Speed, Average Speed | Duration, Distance, Average Speed, Ascent, Descent, Max Altitude, Min Altitude |
| Supports import/export of GPX tracks | Yes (only on the website, not in the app) | Yes |
| Turn-by-turn navigation | No | Yes |
| Download maps for offline use | Yes (pro version only) | Yes (pro version only) |
My verdict — is AllTrails or Komoot better?
AllTrails and Komoot are both good hiking apps with excellent features. They’re almost as good as each other, but AllTrails wins for me because it has more trails to choose from and a smoother, more seamless user experience. The database has over 200,000 curated trails — all filtered by length, duration and user rating — meaning you can find your ideal hiking route very easily. If your time in the outdoors is spent only hiking, AllTrails is the best option.
While I don’t think Komoot is quite as good as AllTrails as a hiking companion, it’s still a great app. In fact, I would recommend it to people who love both hiking and cycling, as it does both very well, whereas AllTrails really lacks on the cycling front. For hikers, the only real advantage Komoot has over AllTrails is the turn-by-turn navigation — you’ll have to decide how important this feature is to you.
About The Author
Lauren Pears is a freelance travel writer and blogger based in London. She writes about active adventure travel, aiming to encourage and inspire travellers to make the most of the great outdoors.
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I too was just looking at both apps (I’ve been using Alltrails for a year and it has some quirks that are annoying, such as an inability to duplicate a route I’ve created for tweaking).
My renewal has come though at £35.99, but Komoot have an offer of “£29.99 for the first year” then going up to £59.99!
That’s a big difference between these very similar apps.
My irritations with Alltrails (and things I like about Komoot) don’t outweigh the cost difference.
What is also important, you can build a course and send it to your device – whether it be mobile phone or compatible Garmin device. Therefore, you can have navigation without draining phone battery.
Hi, thanks for your helpful comparison. 🙂
First I was biased for AllTrails, but getting closer to Komoot. Komoot allows to creat routes easily directly in the app. Turn-by-turn navi and importing and exporting GPS tracks are additional plus point in my opinion.
Thanks for the reviews! Very useful. Just wanted to point out that I have a premium Komoot account and it costs me ~60 euro annually, instead of 30. All the best!
You might want to add that komoot offers lifetime offline maps for a single payment of 30$ (very often 10$ off).
For me this is a BIG difference as you don’t really need the membership for downloading the maps.
For the cheapskates that just want downloadable maps for free there are other apps to consider like maps.me or my personal favorite mapy.cz.
The interface can be a mess sometimes but it is quite good really with OSmaps integration and user comments.