A new trail network can eat a whole afternoon if the map lies. This rating gathers mountain bike trail apps that show where the singletrack goes, how hard it hits and whether the dirt is open today. It is built for riders who drive to unfamiliar zones, for locals who want a fresh loop instead of the same lap, and for anyone who has stood at a junction with four percent battery left, guessing.
Selection stuck to boring, practical things. How many trails are really mapped in a region, who keeps that data honest, and whether difficulty grades come from riders or from an office. Offline downloads counted more than pretty 3D flyovers, so every app was judged on what it does in airplane mode. Then money: what the free tier still allows, what the paywall swallows, how much a year costs. Condition reports, closures, land ownership layers, GPX export and sync with Garmin, Wahoo or Hammerhead all mattered.
Positions here move on community votes, not on editorial mood. So read the cards instead of the order: pros, cons and reviews from people who used these mountain bike trail apps on real rides, not in a shop demo. If one drained a phone in two hours or hid a closed trail, a review says so and the ranking shifts.
Trailforks started in 2013 inside Pinkbike and now sits under Outside. It maps more than 800,000 trails and routes, and much of that data is looked after by local trail associations and region admins, which is why status, closures and condition reports are usually current. Trail status and reports stay free worldwide. The free app locks the detailed map to one home region, a square roughly 60 km per side, and greys out the rest. Pro is $53.99 for the first year, or arrives inside Outside+ at $89.99 a year along with Gaia GPS Premium.
The rider who travels gets the most out of it: bike parks, a week in Moab, a trip to Squamish. Difficulty grades follow local signage, so blues and blacks read the way the trailhead board reads. Someone who laps one forest near home may never need Pro at all. The interface is packed, and the price has gone up more than once, so watch the renewal email.
MTB Project is the free option that refuses to grow a paywall. Built by Adventure Projects and now owned by onX, it lists over 180,000 miles of mountain bike trail with elevation profiles, photos and rider written descriptions. Downloads work offline with no cell signal, there are no ads, and the app was still getting updates through 2026. Trails only appear if they are sanctioned and shown on an official land manager map, so nothing sketchy sneaks in.
That rule is also the catch. Plenty of real, ridden singletrack never shows up, and the app leans toward cross country loops rather than shuttle laps and jump lines. Its data now also feeds onX Backcountry, which makes some riders nervous about the standalone future. As a free backup map, or a first app for someone who wants legal trails only, it still does the job.
onX Backcountry pairs a curated library of ski tours, splitboard descents and trails with the mapping layers needed to judge them, including slope angle shading, aspect, avalanche forecast zones with live danger ratings and 3D terrain views. Resort trail maps sit in the same app, which suits people who mix lift access with earning turns. Route descriptions, photos and community reports give beginners a sensible starting point rather than a blank map.
Subscription based, with a lower tier and a more expensive one that adds extra layers and offline capacity; there is a trial but no meaningful free version. Route coverage is strongest in the western United States and thinner in Europe. The polished presentation can make unfamiliar terrain look tamer than it is, so the usual homework still applies.
komoot began in 2010 near Potsdam and became the planner of choice for long days and bikepacking. Routing understands surface types and singletrack difficulty, community Highlights point at the good bits, and turn by turn navigation works offline. Bending Spoons bought the company in March 2025 for close to 300 million euros, cut most of the staff and redesigned the app that September. The old region packs were pulled for new signups on 27 February 2025, so new users need Premium, 59.99 euros a year or 6.99 a month, even to push a route to a Garmin or Wahoo.
For European riders it is still the strongest planner in this list, especially for mixing fire roads, passes and trails into one big day. It is weaker as a pure mountain bike tool: no live condition reports, no closure feed, and grades come from OpenStreetMap tags rather than local park standards. Longtime users are also wary after the layoffs.
Strava is not a trail guide, it is the ride log everybody already has. Founded in 2009 in San Francisco, it passed 195 million users by early 2026. For finding dirt, the useful parts are the global heatmap, which shows where riders actually go and often reveals trails no map lists, plus segments, the route builder and route recommendations. Subscription is $11.99 a month or $79.99 a year, with a family plan at $139.99.
Use it next to a real trail app, not instead of one. There is no trail status, no closure data and no land ownership, so it will happily point a heatmap line across ground that is shut or private. Segment leaderboards and the fuller analysis moved behind the paywall, which annoyed long term users, and GPS recording chews battery on long rides. As a record of what got ridden and who rode it fastest, nothing else comes close.
AllTrails is the giant of trail apps, San Francisco based and stuffed with user reviews and photos. AllTrails+ costs $35.99 a year and adds offline maps, wrong turn alerts, live activity sharing, 3D previews, printable maps and sending routes to a Garmin. Recent tie ins include T-Mobile satellite messaging in dead zones and trail lookups through ChatGPT and Claude. Sales drop the first year to around $18 fairly often.
The honest catch: it is a hiking app that also lists bikes. Reviews are written mostly by walkers, so a trail rated easy can still be a rooty mess on two wheels, and there is no gravity oriented grading, no bike park data and no builder or shuttle info. It shines for a rider stuck in an unfamiliar town who needs any legal dirt within twenty minutes, or for family rides on wide, tame trails.
Ride with GPS is the drafting table of cycling apps. It has been going since 2007 out of Portland, Oregon, and the route planner is why people pay: surface type data, a global heatmap built from millions of logged rides, custom cues, splitting long routes into daily chunks, points of interest that pop up on a Garmin. Plans run free Starter, a cheaper Basic and Premium at $9.99 a month or about $6.67 a month billed yearly. Club accounts are popular with shops and tour operators.
For big backcountry days, bikepacking and gravel to singletrack mixes it is excellent. For pure trail hunting it is not: no mountain bike difficulty grades, no condition reports, no closure feed. Most riders pair it with Trailforks, planning here and checking the dirt there. Turn by turn voice navigation and offline maps need a paid plan.
Gaia GPS is a general purpose backcountry navigation app that has become a winter staple thanks to its layer library. A slope angle shading layer, avalanche forecast layer with current danger ratings, snow depth and recent snowfall overlays and a deep catalogue of topographic maps can be combined and downloaded for offline use. Tracks record in the background, waypoints and routes sync between phone and browser, and GPX import from a partner takes seconds.
The free version is limited; offline downloads and most of the useful winter layers require the Premium subscription, billed annually. Navigation and record keeping are its strengths rather than avalanche specific analysis, and the forecast layer is only as current as the last sync. Battery drain in the cold is worth planning for, as with any phone based navigation.
Wikiloc came out of Girona, Spain in 2006 and works like a giant shared drawer of GPS tracks: millions of routes across roughly 80 activity types, mountain biking among them. Offline topographic maps are free. Premium, sold quarterly or yearly with a 14 day trial, turns the phone into a navigator with heading arrows and audio alerts when a rider drifts off the track, plus a route planner that stitches popular community segments, 3D previews, live tracking and downloads to Garmin, Suunto, COROS or an Apple Watch.
It is very cheap and very European. In Spain, Italy, Portugal or the Alps the density of tracks is hard to beat, and local riders keep uploading. Quality varies because these are raw recorded tracks, not curated trails: no difficulty grading system, no condition reports, and duplicate lines litter busy areas. North American coverage is thinner than Trailforks.
Bikemap is a Vienna made planner with a database of millions of user routes, strongest in Austria, Germany and eastern Europe. Routing can be set per bike type, mountain bike included, and it will favour gravel roads and forest tracks while dodging impassable paths. The loop planner spits out a round trip from a chosen distance and direction, tours can be split into daily stages, and routes export as GPX or KML. Premium unlocks turn by turn voice navigation, self guided off road following and unlimited offline maps, with a 14 day money back guarantee.
As a ride companion it stays a planner that also records. Sensor support is limited, there are no live segments, no trail conditions and no difficulty grades, so technical singletrack is guesswork. It suits riders who mix forest roads with light trail, or plan multi day trips, more than anyone chasing steep local jank.