Made by one rider, in Czechia

I’m Petr. I design and build software for a living and ride for the rest of it. ArcRoute is the navigation I kept wishing for on the bike, so I built it. This is why, and what your subscription pays for.

One season, 2,590 commits. From the first proof of concept in May 2026 to version 1.0 on the App Store in September.
3,125 km on one Norden 901. Test rides on roads the router had only seen as data.
6 riders, 9 builds. Every TestFlight build went to the same six riders first, on their own bikes and their own roads.

The itch

Something was always missing

I have been riding only a few years, and tried the big navigation apps from the first season. Some planned a beautiful route and let me down on the road. Many never sat right on a bar mount. Too many pushed feeds, badges and friends at me when all I wanted was the road.

What bothered me most was the moment the asphalt ended. I ride gravel, the Trans Czech Trail and the Trans Euro Trail, and that is exactly where the apps I tried stopped making sense: wrong turns, dead ends, a line across a field called a route. I wanted an app that navigates me reliably, builds a loop when I only want to go for a ride, and takes the field track without arguing. That is why ArcRoute exists.

A wet country crossroads at dusk from the saddle, a glowing red arrow on the road bending right

The app

For the ride, not the commute

ArcRoute scores every drivable road in twenty-seven countries for how much it turns, and routes on my own server, because no maps service would let me ask that question. Over one riding season it grew into the app on this site: the Twisty slider, round trips, spoken turns, recording, the heatmap.

Leave the road for a field or a forest track and ArcRoute reroutes along it, out to the nearest road the way your ride is heading. Bring your own GPX and it keeps the track exactly as drawn, guided like any other ride.

A small group of riders tests every build, and a lot of what works today started as their message about something that did not.

iPhone only, English and Czech, routes in twenty-seven countries, from Britain and Ireland to the Balkans and down to Morocco. No ads, no feed, no leaderboard. And honest about what it does not do: no Android version, no offline maps yet, closures only in Czechia so far. The support page says where each of those stands.

The money

Where the subscription goes

ArcRoute costs real money every month, and the subscription pays for that first.

A routing server holding twenty-seven countries of scored roads, map tiles, the closure feed, sync and backups, and Apple’s share of every subscription. Whatever is left goes back into the app: new regions, new languages, and the things riders write in about most.

I never sell your rides and never use them for advertising. I have no reason to and no wish to; the Privacy Notice lists every provider involved.
Prices stay as stable as I can keep them. No introductory price that turns into a different one later.
No AI chat on the map. A rider in gloves has no questions for a bot. Where something smarter helps the ride, it works quietly inside the features you already use.

Thanks for reading this far. See you on a road with more bends than it needed.

Petr Novák

Designer, engineer, rider, and the whole ArcRoute team

petr@arcroute.app All the ways to get in touch

What comes next

More regions first, because a router that stops at a border is only half a router. After that, the routes themselves.

Twenty-seven countries are in. Eight joined in September 2026, from Hungary to Albania. October brought Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Morocco, then the rest of France and Italy, Britain and Ireland, and the Benelux.
Scandinavia next. Country by country, as the server grows.
The app keeps getting better. Coming up: a detail view for every ride, and GPX export.
The whole of Europe by next season. The goal for the router.
A web planner by then too. Plan the route at your desk, ride it with your phone.
Then the roads themselves. Better routes, and pointers to the ones worth the detour.

What has changed in the app, and why, is in the journal.

Missing something, or riding somewhere ArcRoute does not go yet? Write to me, and it goes on the list.

Something was always missing

For the ride, not the commute

Where the subscription goes

What comes next

Ready to ride?