Many adventurous cyclists turn to Bikerouter, or Brouter for short, when they plan a route. For years, the tool has been the first choice for precise route planning without depending on commercial services like Komoot, Strava, or RideWithGPS. What people appreciate most is that you can tweak the routing profiles down to the smallest detail, whether you ride a road bike, a gravel bike, or something more exotic like a recumbent or a velomobile.
On a desktop computer, this works perfectly: you build the route in the browser with plenty of time and patience, export it as GPX, and send it to your bike computer or your favorite navigation app. But what if you need a route on the spot while you’re out riding? That’s where Chainlane comes in. It’s a new Android app that brings Brouter, and with it navigation based on OpenCycleMap, straight to your smartphone, and it clearly leaves Google Maps behind as a bike navigation tool.
Chainlane: Brouter in your pocket
With Chainlane, you carry Brouter and offline maps right on your phone. You can plan a route on the spur of the moment, without having to export GPX files on your computer first. In my first test, this already worked quite reliably: enter a start and destination or just tap the map, pick a routing profile, and the app spits out a route.
For navigating on the road, you can use Chainlane with the phone mounted on your handlebars, but you don’t have to. Since a small update, the calculated routes can also be exported without any trouble, for example to bike computers like the Wahoo Roam or to Garmin devices. That makes the app very flexible, especially if you already have a bike GPS but don’t like its built-in routing algorithm, or if you’re riding a “special” bike like a velomobile.
Features and development status
The app is still in the middle of development. Basic features like route planning and simple navigation are already there. Turn-by-turn hints exist, but so far they only work reliably as long as you stay on the planned route. According to the developer, voice announcements and more robust active routing are still to come.
Something interesting for advanced users: you can plug your own BRouter profiles into Chainlane. The interface is still being reworked, but you can already calculate very individual routes with it. You’ll find more insight into the development process in the developer’s introduction post on Reddit. The author of the app is active there under the name RepulsiveRaisin7 and regularly answers questions.
Cost model and future
Right now, Chainlane is free, including all features. A subscription model is planned for later, with around 15 euros per year under discussion. Extra features like points of interest on the map (e.g. water points, cafés, bike shops, shelters) or a power-saving mode are supposed to end up behind that paywall.
There’s a catch for those of us who care about free software: Chainlane is not open source and is currently only available in the Google Play Store. That’s a shame, especially because the foundation, Brouter, is a prime example of how powerful and future-proof open source can be. If you have freed your Android phone from Google, you’ll have to keep relying on OsmAnd~.
A good option with potential
So Chainlane is an exciting addition for anyone who wants to use Brouter flexibly on the road. The app is still in its infancy, but in my testing it already works surprisingly well. If you’ve been wrestling with GPX exports and imports until now, this gives you a handy tool. If you’re a Brouter fan anyway, it’s worth a look. And maybe you can still convince the developer to release Chainlane as free software at some point. That would be a win for all of us.
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