Goat Maps vs AllTrails

The short version

AllTrails and Goat Maps answer different questions. AllTrails answers "where should I hike this weekend?" It has the biggest library of trails anywhere, with reviews, photos and recent conditions from millions of hikers. Goat Maps answers "how do I get from here to there?" It gives you the terrain, land and imagery to plan your own route, including where no trail goes.

Plenty of people use both: AllTrails to find an idea, Goat Maps to plan it properly and carry it offline.

Goat Maps is the better fit if you:

• plan your own routes, especially off trail, and want to draw them by hand.
• want slope angle shading and public land maps for free, rather than as part of AllTrails Peak at $79.99 a year.
• want private land ownership and satellite imagery from the last two weeks.
• want offline maps and a full route planner in the app for $29.99 a year.

AllTrails is the better fit if you:

• want someone else to have found the trail first, with reviews, photos and recent conditions.
• want spoken turn-by-turn directions and an alert when you take a wrong turn.
• use Android or Wear OS.
• want weather and trail conditions in the same app as your map.

Price

AllTrails has three tiers:

• Free: trail search, reviews and photos, track recording, following a trail while online, a basic 7-day forecast, and custom routes on the website.
• Plus, $35.99 a year: offline downloads, turn-by-turn directions with voice, wrong-turn alerts, trail conditions, the community heatmap, weather overlays, and no ads.
• Peak, $79.99 a year: everything in Plus, plus US public land, private land ownership, slope angle and lidar terrain layers, and creating and editing custom routes in the app.

REI Co-op members get Plus for $24.99 and Peak for $49.99.

Goat Maps membership is $29.99 a year, with one tier. Public land and slope angle shading are free. Membership adds offline maps, the route planner, private land ownership and recent satellite imagery.

If what you want from AllTrails Peak is the terrain and land layers and in-app route planning, Goat Maps gives you those for less than half the price. If what you want is turn-by-turn guidance on popular trails, AllTrails Plus does that and Goat Maps doesn't.

Finding trails vs making routes

This is the real difference between the two apps.

AllTrails is a trail library. It lists over 500,000 trails, checked by moderators before they go live, with about 72 million reviews. Each trail page has photos, difficulty, recent reports and, with Plus, forecast conditions along the trail. Choosing a hike from your couch is what AllTrails does best, and no other app comes close.

The trade-off is that AllTrails steers you towards the trails it lists. Popular hikes get the reviews and the attention. If you want to link two trails into a loop, scramble an unnamed ridge, or reach a lake with no trail to it, you're on your own.

Goat Maps is a map and a planner. It has no trail guides or reviews. Trails come from OpenStreetMap and show on the topo map, rebuilt at least once a month. What Goat Maps gives you instead is the information to plan your own way: slope angle shading to see how steep the ground is, public and private land to see where you can go, and satellite imagery from the last couple of weeks to check snow, burn scars or a washed-out road.

Route planning

In AllTrails, custom routes are free on the website. Routes snap to OpenStreetMap paths and roads by default, you can draw straight lines with snapping off, and Shift-drag draws freehand. Smart options can make a route shorter, flatter or more scenic, close a loop, or double back. Creating and editing custom routes in the AllTrails app needs Peak.

In Goat Maps, the route planner is part of membership, and the web map can create routes too. You add to a route by tapping points or drawing with your finger, with snapping on or off for each segment. Follow the trail to the lake, then sketch the cross-country line into the next basin by hand. Each segment can have its own name, color, notes and travel mode for time estimates, and a table shows the stats for every leg. Snapping in Goat Maps needs a connection for now.

Navigation and track recording

Both apps record tracks for free and show where you are on a route, with its elevation profile.

AllTrails Plus adds turn-by-turn directions, spoken cues (added in September 2026), and a wrong-turn alert when you're about 50 meters off route, which also works on Apple Watch and on downloaded trails offline. Goat Maps doesn't have turn-by-turn directions or off-route alerts. If you want the app to tell you where to turn, AllTrails Plus is the better choice.

Maps and layers

	Goat Maps	AllTrails
Topo map	Free	Free
Satellite	Free	Free
Recent satellite imagery	Members	No
Public land (US)	Free	Peak
Private land ownership (US)	Members	Peak
Slope angle shading	Free	Peak
Weather overlays	No	Plus
Current wildfires (US)	No	Free

AllTrails also has 3D maps, lidar terrain (Peak), Ordnance Survey maps for Great Britain (Plus) and France's IGN maps. Goat Maps also has historic wildfires, USFS motor vehicle use maps and USFS timber harvests. Its slope shading is customizable: set your own angle ranges and colors to highlight avalanche terrain or find flat ground to camp.

Offline maps

Neither app downloads maps on its free tier.

AllTrails Plus downloads a single trail, a whole park or a custom area, along with the ten most recent reviews for each trail. 3D maps stay online only.

Goat Maps downloads basemaps square by square from a grid, so you choose exactly what you need, and overlays like public land download in one go. Downloads run in the background and notify you when they're done.

Platforms

AllTrails runs on iPhone, iPad, Android, Apple Watch, Wear OS and the web. Goat Maps runs on iPhone, iPad and the web, and Android is in development.

Using AllTrails and Goat Maps together

AllTrails can export a trail as a GPX file. Goat Maps imports GPX files, so you can find a hike on AllTrails, bring it into Goat Maps, and plan the variation you actually want: an extra summit, a different descent, a connector to the next trail. See how to import GPX files.

Moving your recorded activities and custom routes over for good? Moving from AllTrails to Goat Maps has the steps.

Questions

Is Goat Maps a good AllTrails alternative?

For planning your own routes, yes: Goat Maps has slope shading, public and private land, recent satellite imagery and an in-app route planner for $29.99 a year. For finding popular trails with reviews and photos, no. Goat Maps has no trail guides, and AllTrails is the best at that.

Does Goat Maps have trail reviews?

No. Goat Maps shows trails from OpenStreetMap on its topo map, but has no reviews, photos or trail guides.

Can I import AllTrails routes into Goat Maps?

Yes. Export the trail or route from AllTrails as a GPX file and import it into Goat Maps from the My Data tab.

Does Goat Maps have turn-by-turn navigation like AllTrails?

No. Goat Maps shows your position on a route and its elevation profile, but doesn't give spoken directions or off-route alerts.