Komoot reviews
What users love and hate, from real reviews
A route planner and navigator for cycling, running and hiking that users love for its trail quality but increasingly resent for aggressive subscription upselling — especially after the Bending Spoons takeover.
What users love
Route discovery is what keeps people around
The standout strength: it surfaces quiet, safe trails and bike routes even in unfamiliar areas, steers you away from highways and traffic, and leans on its community. For hiking, gravel and MTB it's often called the best mapping out there.
Komoot is a great way to discover new cycling routes or hiking trails anywhere you are. Especially if you don't know the area very well the suggested route usually follows the quietest roads or finds cycling paths.
Unlike Google Maps, it proposes routes more suitable for bicycle, away from cars where possible. Plus it has all small paths on the map.
Fantastic app for walking the wee paths that only locals know.
One-time map purchase instead of a subscription — that's the love
A historically loved feature: you can buy a region or world pack once and use it with no monthly subscription, unlike Strava and AllTrails. This is the model people paid for and recommended the app over.
Great for planning all types of cycle routes and hikes. You can buy map areas also so don't need that monthly subscription.
This met my needs that I got what I needed for a small payment, without paying a subscription on other apps for features I didnt need.
After testing the free version for a few months, i decided to buy the Global set of maps for a one-off payment.
Garmin, Wahoo and watch sync — when it works, it's brilliant
A prized combo for serious riders: routes push to Garmin Edge, Wahoo and smartwatches, with turn-by-turn on the wrist saving phone battery. Many stay with the app specifically for this integration.
I ride with confidence and use Komoot synced with my Wahoo Roam head unit.
I've used it for years to plan my routes and it transfers directly to my Galaxy watch and my Wahoo Elemnt Bolt. It's my go to for route planning.
The live map is almost perfect. Connection to Garmin edge devices is brilliant.
What users hate
Subscription ads hit the people who already paid for maps
You buy the World Pack or offline maps as a one-time payment and still get full-screen "go Premium" popups on every launch and screen switch. There's no way to turn it off, and it's the number-one reason long-time fans are leaving.
I already bought world offline maps, yet each time i use it I'm getting a popup ad nagging me to buy their subscription mode. And this happens several times over a span of just 2 minutes!
Even after you pay for the World Pack, you will still be forced to see the "buy premium subscription" screen all the time and you can't turn it off
Nags about premium on every single startup, even if you have purchased regions
Lifetime licences and the World Pack suddenly turn into a pumpkin
People paid for a "lifetime" licence or world pack and now hit a paywall as if they'd just installed the app. A region promised "free for life" demands payment, and restoring the purchase or getting a refund is impossible.
I've paid approx. 20€ for lifetime premium a few years ago, and now I'm back to the free trial as if I just downloaded the app.
After a single week of use, my supposedly "free for life " region is now forcing me to use a paywall to navigate within that region.
There is a faded link to restore previous purchases that had never worked. It gives the message "cannot restore purchases at this time."
Post-update the map lags and drops a pin on every tap
Recent updates turned a smooth map into a mess: scrolling stutters, every tap drops a stray pin, and planning a route becomes impossible. Many say outright the app became "unusable" right after an update.
the new update is broken. I cannot plan any routes anymore. every time i move the map it's laggy and keeps placing pins.
What happened? The map is now so laggy and unresponsive that this app is practically unusable.
Browsing by moving the map is so slow that the app is completely unusable, routes pop up unexpectedly from phantom taps
Drains the battery faster than any other map
Power draw is its own pain: the phone or watch dies within 1.5–3 hours of a ride, the screen won't sleep despite the settings, and there are reports of wakelocks held even when the app isn't in use. For multi-day or long hikes that's a dealbreaker.
Komoot absolutely obliterating my battery now. From 70% down to 10% on a 2 hour ride. Insane. Have to uninstall.
The app consumes 30% of my phone battery in 12 hours without even being used, and with live tracking disabled.
this app sucked the life out of two phones today when I went out cycling. both phones fully discharged after about 1.5 hours.
Navigation sends you the wrong way — onto highways, into rivers, into dead ends
Turn-by-turn navigation lets you down: it routes onto dangerous main roads instead of local cycleways, through rivers and private property, instructions arrive late, and dead-end U-turns are routine. Several say the app literally "insisted I walk off a cliff".
within 5 mins it was telling me, infact insisting I walk off a cliff. the turnings are so far wrong.
the routes lead you through rivers and streams when there is a perfectly good road right next to it.
Directed us onto an unsafe dual carriageway/motorway. Inability to adapt to slight changes of route.
Cancelling a subscription and deleting an account are built like a trap
You can't unsubscribe in-app — you're pushed to a browser; the delete-account button doesn't work and loops you through endless auth screens ending in an error. The trial charges immediately, and cancellation is "hidden so well it's close to a scam".
the way you need to cancel the subscription is simply unacceptable - you made it impossible to find and thus, close to scam experience
When you click delete accout icon, you will be send to an endless crusade of authentification by facebook, email, telephone at the end of this I got an error message.
Developers have very purposefully made it hard to canceling subscription and even deleting the account did not work from the app, had to use web browser for that.
The Bending Spoons takeover feels like the start of enshittification
Long-time users tie the decline directly to the sale to Bending Spoons: the dev team was laid off, ads and AI support replies appeared, and useful features get cut or paywalled. The word "enshittification" comes up again and again.
The app became incredibly intrusive and annoying after it was sold to Bending Spoons.
Used to be great, but since it's been bought by investors and many of its devs were let go, it's become predictably worse.
Sold to Bending Spoons. Laid off most of the existing staff. The app enshittification is on the way
The elevation profile now goes full-screen and breaks navigation
A specific regression that infuriates many: the elevation profile used to open in a small window you could scroll and measure distances on. After the update a tap expands it full-screen, hiding the map, with no interaction — a loss of a key feature for mountain hikes.
I have been using the altitude profile regularly during a hike. It could be zoomed in a subwindow on Android, and you could measure distances to other points on the map. Now: full screen picture without any interaction!!!
there's this bug with the altitude map covering the whole screen other users have mentioned, which makes navigation experience worse.
now i can't even check the altitude point on the map! why?? The altitude profile just changes to full-screen when I tap it.
You can't just follow a route — it forces you to record and save the trip
The basic "plot A→B, ride it, leave" flow is broken: navigation only works coupled with activity recording, and at the end the app forces you through 8 save screens. Want to just ride without tracking and social features — you have to fight the UI.
I make a route from a to b, start the navigation and at the end just want to finish the ride without saving it. it does appear that this option is not available. why?
I can't stop recording, when I just want to follow a route.
Just wish you could turn off the annoying forced saving of trips every time you end them, forcing several clicks after every trip
You can't shut up the voice prompts
An annoying detail with no off switch: the voice keeps shouting about lost GPS signal or "Let's go!", cutting into your music, with no way to disable it. For some that alone makes the app unusable.
has an annoying voice which tells you when your GPS signal is bad etc which can't be turned off at all. Unfortunately unusable for me
I don't need my music interrupted to hear "Let's go!" or that my GPS signal is lost blasting through my speaker.
unable to switch off annoying voice alarm on poor / lost signal.
Mandatory Google/Facebook login often breaks
You can't do anything without an account, and the login itself fails: Google and Facebook sign-in errors out, sometimes loops endlessly, and trying to register without internet is pointless. A barrier before you even reach your first route.
Cant login, eror with google, facebook and email
Mandatory login+ login with Google fails
App won't work without signing up.try to sign up without internet