Trailforks

Mountain-bike-specific trail database and navigation app owned by Outside Inc

As of 1 September 2026, Trailforks is free to use. A trail mapping app focused specifically on mountain biking, with community-reported trail conditions and difficulty ratings, alongside secondary support for hiking, gravel and moto. Softwr lists it under Maps. Trailforks is made by Outside Inc., available on iOS, Android, Web.

Visit siteVisit Trailforks

Overview

What Trailforks does

Trailforks maps mountain bike trail networks with difficulty ratings, direction of travel, community-reported conditions, and offline downloadable maps for one active region at a time on the free tier. It layers Strava heatmap-style usage data, weather and fire overlays, and premium basemaps including Gaia and ArcGIS satellite imagery on its paid Pro tier. The fact that matters commercially is ownership and specificity. Trailforks was acquired in 2021 by Outside Inc, formerly Pocket Outdoor Media, the same company that owns Pinkbike and CyclingTips, and its Pro subscription is increasingly positioned alongside the wider Outside+ media bundle rather than sold purely as a standalone product, so pricing structure has been shifting. Unlike Ride with GPS or AllTrails, which are general purpose, Trailforks is built specifically around mountain bike trail data, direction of travel and singletrack-specific difficulty ratings, which is real depth a general hiking or road cycling app does not have. Buyers are mountain bikers who need trail-specific detail, current conditions and offline access at a trailhead with no signal. The trade-off is that its free tier limits offline downloads to one region at a time, and confirming current standalone Pro pricing versus the Outside+ bundle price takes checking the site directly rather than trusting an older cited figure.

What people use it for

A mountain biker planning a ride on unfamiliar singletrack who needs direction-of-travel and difficulty data
Someone riding in an area with no signal who needs an offline downloaded trail map
A rider checking recent community trail condition reports before heading out
Someone comparing several mountain bike regions using the usage heatmap before choosing where to ride

Where it falls short

Concrete and checkable, so you can decide whether any of them matter to you. This is the half of a review a vendor will not write about Trailforks.

The free tier only allows one offline region downloaded at a time, which is limiting for a rider visiting multiple trail areas.
Pro pricing appears to be shifting toward bundling with the wider Outside+ media subscription, making the standalone price less stable and worth checking directly before buying.
Its focus on mountain biking means it is a weaker choice than Ride with GPS for road or gravel route planning.
Trail data quality depends on community contribution, so newer or less-ridden regions can have sparse or outdated information.
Being owned by a media company with a broader outdoor content bundle strategy introduces some uncertainty about how the standalone app product is prioritised long term.

Cross-shopped

What people choose instead of Trailforks

Each pairing was judged by two reviewers asking whether a buyer would genuinely weigh the two against each other. The ones that failed were deleted rather than published.

Trailforksvs
Ride with GPS
Ride with GPS: If you want general road and gravel route planning rather than mountain-bike-specific trail data
Trailforksvs
onX Maps
onX Maps: If you need land ownership and backcountry navigation data rather than trail-specific mountain bike detail

Pricing

What Trailforks costs

Taken from the vendor's own pricing page. Prices move, so check before you buy.

Trailforks Free

Free

Trail database access
Basic basemaps
One offline region at a time

Trailforks Pro

On request

Unlimited offline regions
Premium basemaps including Gaia and ArcGIS satellite
Heatmap, weather and fire overlays

Capabilities

Features

Mountain bike trail database
Difficulty ratings, direction of travel and trail-specific detail for MTB networks
Community trail reports
Rider-submitted conditions, closures and hazard reports
Offline maps
Downloadable maps for one active region at a time on the free tier
Premium basemaps
Pro tier adds Gaia and ArcGIS satellite imagery layers
Heatmap overlay
Usage data showing how frequently trails are ridden
Weather and fire overlays
Pro tier adds live weather and wildfire layers on the trail map

Answered, with sources

Questions people ask

Each answer names the page it came from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.

Is Trailforks free?

A free tier exists with trail data and one offline region at a time; Pro removes that limit and adds premium map layers.

Who owns Trailforks?

Outside Inc, which also owns Pinkbike and CyclingTips, acquired it in 2021.

Is it only for mountain biking?

Mountain biking is the core focus, though it has secondary support for hiking, gravel and motorised trail use.

Keep looking

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Softwr does not host reviews and shows no star rating for Trailforks, because a rating we did not collect is not ours to publish. What is here is the pricing and platform detail from the vendor’s own pages, limitations we could state concretely, and alternatives a reviewer confirmed people weigh against it. Tell us if any of it is wrong.

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