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The Motorcycle Route Planner Built for Riders, Not Cars

Google Maps thinks the best route is the fastest one. Riders know better. Plan the road that’s worth riding, track every mile with GPS, and turn the good ones into group rides.






You’re on the list — we’ll be in touch. Now go ride.

Free to join. Early access is open now.

The short version: RideWolf’s motorcycle route planner builds a route three ways — drop waypoints on a map, import a GPX from another app, or turn a ride you actually rode into a route. Every route shows distance, ride time, difficulty, road type, and twistiness before you commit, with photos and reviews from riders who’ve run it. Track rides with GPS, keep your logs private, and turn any route into a group ride with one tap.
Pacific Coast Highway curving along the Malibu coastline — the kind of road a motorcycle route planner exists for
PCH through Malibu — 40 minutes longer than the 101, and worth every one of them.

Route planning for a bike is a different sport

Car navigation has one job: get you there fast. That’s the exact opposite of what we want. The whole point of a motorcycle trip is the part between here and there — the canyon that adds forty minutes, the lunch stop that turns into two hours, the road you take because it’s not the direct one.

So most of us end up planning rides with tools built for commuters, then fighting them the whole way as they try to reroute us onto the interstate. Or we don’t plan at all and ride the same three roads every weekend. I did that for longer than I’ll admit. When somebody in our crew drops a new route in the chat, you light up — that feeling is the reason this feature exists.

Three ways to build a route

RideWolf gives you three ways to create a route: search or tap the map to drop your stops and RideWolf routes the real roads between them, import a GPX file from another app or GPS unit, or take a ride you tracked and publish its actual GPS path as a route. Add a title, difficulty, road type, and a cover photo, and it’s live.

Method How it works Best for
Waypoint planner Add your stops — the app routes the actual roads between them Planning a ride you haven’t done yet
GPX import Bring a file in from Garmin, another app, or a buddy Routes you’ve already collected over the years
From a tracked ride Publish the actual GPS path of a ride you recorded That road you found by accident and never want to lose

That third one is my favorite, because it’s honest. The route isn’t what you meant to ride — it’s what you rode. The shape, the distance, the twistiness all come from the real ride.

What a route card tells you before you commit

Every route in RideWolf carries the numbers that actually matter to a rider. Mileage is the easy one. What kind of mileage is the useful one. And the one I want to point at is twistiness: RideWolf calculates it automatically from the route’s actual geometry. Nobody gets to claim their favorite backroad is a canyon carver when it’s a straight line with two bends.

On the card What it tells you
Distance & est. ride time How big a day you’re signing up for
Difficulty Beginner to Expert — set by the rider who built it
Road type Scenic, Twisty, Highway, Mixed, or Off-Road
Twistiness Mostly Straight to Very Twisty — calculated from the route’s real road geometry, not self-reported
Reviews 1–5 stars from riders who’ve actually ridden it, one review per rider
Road conditions Clear, Gravel, Construction, Rough surface, or Closed — reported after real rides

The conditions column matters more than people think. A five-star canyon road with fresh gravel in the hairpins is a different ride entirely, and the only people who know are the ones who were just there.

Find a route worth riding

RideWolf app home screen with popular motorcycle routes Malibu Run and Box Canyon Road, and Ride Now rider matching
Popular routes, right on the home screen — distance, difficulty, and location before you commit.

Browse the Routes tab, then filter by region, difficulty, road type, and bike type — and sort by rating, distance, newest, or twistiness if you’re hunting curves. The library is rider-built, so it grows the way good route knowledge has always spread: one rider hands it to the next.

The library launches stocked with a hand-built collection of Southern California’s best roads. Home country: the Snake above Calabasas, Angeles Crest out of La Cañada Flintridge, PCH through Malibu. Every rider can add to it. The planner itself works anywhere there’s a road.

Track the ride, keep the proof

Start tracking from a route, or hit Record a Ride and track a free ride with no route at all. RideWolf records your path, distance, and elevation as you go — and it’s built for how rides actually happen: progress is checkpointed, so a dead phone doesn’t erase your day, and stretches with no signal sync when you reconnect.

When you finish, you get a summary: distance, elevation gain, your line on the map. Saving it is your call. Dismiss it and nothing is stored. Your ride history and GPS logs are private to you, enforced server-side. Other riders never see where you’ve been. The only way a path becomes public is if you choose to publish it as a route — and even then, only the road is shared, never your history.

When you want company: route to group ride

Here’s where the two halves of RideWolf meet. On any route, tap Create Group Ride and the ride form pre-fills from the route — you just set the date, time, and group details. Rode it solo instead? Tap I Rode This and it logs to your history. Solo miles and group miles both count.

Group motorcycle ride in formation with the lead rider signaling — any RideWolf route becomes a group ride with one tap
The crew, mid-route. Solo miles and group miles both count.

And if you want to see what riding with a crew actually looks like out here, the motorcycle rides hub is where the group side lives — real roads, city by city.

Plays nice with the gear you already run

Every route exports as a GPX file for Garmin, Rever, Scenic, Calimoto, and anything else that reads GPX. Share any route with a link that opens straight to it in the app. And on a group ride, one tap opens the route in Apple Maps with turn-by-turn. Your routes are yours — we’re not interested in trapping them.

How to plan a motorcycle route that doesn’t suck

Planner or no planner, a good route is judgment. Here’s the checklist I actually use, learned the hard way — most of it on a Lake Arrowhead run where I planned the ride out and completely forgot to plan the ride home: 85 miles back with the sun in my eyes and my arms cooked.

Rule Why
Plan fuel at 75% of your range Canyon miles burn more than freeway miles, and backroad stations close early
Stop every hour Fatigue sneaks up on a bike — you don’t notice until a corner tells you
Put the technical stuff in the middle Warm up before the hard section, and never end a long day in it
Check the ride home, not just the ride out Sun angle, temperature drop, traffic — the return leg is where days go wrong
Know your bail-out roads Weather, energy, a buddy’s bike acting up — a good route has exits
Tell someone where you’re going Cheap insurance — RideWolf has alert contacts and ride check-ins built in for exactly this

Ready to plan your first one?

1

Drop your email

Get on the early-access list — free, no spam, no pitch.

2

Build your first route

Waypoints, a GPX you’ve been hoarding, or a ride you track.

3

Go ride

Solo at your own pace, or turn it into a group ride with one tap.






I waited 30 years to start riding because I didn’t know a single person on two wheels — and when I finally did start, at 50, I found out the bike was the easy part. RideWolf exists so the next rider doesn’t wait. Whether you ride with a pack or prefer the road to yourself, put that first foot forward.

— Johnny, founder of RideWolf

Route planning, asked and answered

What is the best motorcycle route planner app?

There are several good ones. Rever, Calimoto, and Scenic all have loyal riders. RideWolf’s planner adds rider-built routes with twistiness calculated from real geometry, GPS ride tracking that stays private by default, GPX import and export, and one-tap group rides — free, currently in early access.

How do I plan a motorcycle route?

Start with the road you want, not the destination — then work outward: fuel at 75% of your range, a stop every hour, technical sections in the middle of the day, and a planned ride home. In RideWolf you drop waypoints on the map, set difficulty and road type, and save.

Can I import and export GPX files?

Yes, both directions. Import a GPX from Garmin, another app, or a riding buddy and it becomes a RideWolf route. Export any route as a GPX for Garmin, Rever, Scenic, Calimoto, or anything else that reads the format. Your routes stay portable.

Does RideWolf track my rides?

Only when you tell it to, and only for you. Start tracking from a route or record a free ride; your path, distance, and elevation are logged privately — enforced server-side, invisible to other riders. A path only becomes public if you publish it yourself as a route.

What is twistiness and how is it measured?

Twistiness is RideWolf’s measure of how curvy a route really is — rated from Mostly Straight to Very Twisty, calculated automatically from the route’s actual road geometry, not self-reported by whoever created it. Sort the route library by twistiness when you’re hunting corners instead of scenery.

Is the RideWolf route planner free?

Yes. RideWolf is free to use, and the route planner, GPS tracking, and group rides are all part of it. The app is in early access now — drop your email above and you’ll get the invite when it opens up.