Introducing: tailwindgps route library

You've probably been there. It's Friday evening, you're trying to work out what to do on Saturday morning, and you've got three browser tabs open: one with a weather app showing a wind arrow that means nothing without a compass, one with a half-remembered Strava route, and one with... honestly, you've forgotten what that one was for.

You just want to know: will this ride feel good tomorrow?

That's the gap we built the Tailwind GPS route library to fill. Not another map tool. Not another weather widget. A free cycling route library where every route already has its wind score waiting for you, so you can pick the loop and the departure hour in the same place.

A route library that actually answers the weekend question

The Tailwind GPS cycling route library spans destinations across dozens of countries. Browse by country, drill down to your city, filter by distance and elevation, and preview each loop on the map before you commit. Every route is a curated road cycling loop, free to view, free to download as a GPX, and free to load onto your Garmin, Wahoo, or any other head unit.

No paywall on the routes themselves. No login required to browse.

But here's what makes it different from every other free road cycling route library you've seen: those routes don't just sit on a map. They're scored, hour by hour, using wind direction, wind speed, temperature, rain probability, and a 25 km/h cycling pace. So when you open the best road cycling routes in Paris, or check out road loops in Barcelona, or browse routes in Berlin, you're not just looking at a map. You're looking at today's best departure time for each one.

That's a different kind of route library.

Why route libraries alone still let you down

Platforms like Komoot offer solid free route planning, and Ride with GPS has a broad feature set including turn-by-turn voice navigation and offline maps. Strava's route builder is genuinely powerful, though as Strava's own help documentation notes, creating new routes from scratch requires a subscription. All three are useful for finding routes.

None of them tell you when to ride them.

And that's the bit that actually determines whether your Saturday ride feels brilliant or grim. Wind doesn't care that your route looks good on a map. A south-westerly at 20 km/h means completely different things depending on whether your loop heads west into it for the first 30 km or catches it as a tailwind on the way home. A generic weather forecast can't tell you that. A static route library can't tell you that either.

Route-specific weather forecasting, built around the actual direction of every segment you'll ride, is the missing layer. That's what Tailwind GPS adds to the library experience.

How to set up your weekend route library for free

Getting started takes about five minutes.

Step 1: Browse and save library routes. Head to /cycling-routes, find your city, filter by distance and elevation, and save the loops that suit your weekend rides. The free plan lets you save up to 3 routes.

Step 2: Connect Strava. If your regular loops already live in Strava, connect your account and they import automatically. No rebuilding from scratch. Your Strava sync brings the routes you already ride into the scoring engine. See wind scores for your Strava routes for a walkthrough.

Step 3: Import a GPX or draw a route. Got a route from a cycling club, an event GPX, or a loop you've planned elsewhere? Upload the file directly. Alternatively, draw your own cycling route on the interactive map using snap-to-road or free draw. Both work on the free plan.

Step 4: Share with friends. Every route has a shareable link. Send it to your riding group, your club WhatsApp, or whoever you're meeting on Sunday morning.

You don't need to download an app. The whole thing runs in your browser, mobile-first, on any device.

The Tailwind Score: one number that answers "should I go?"

Once your routes are saved, each one gets a Tailwind Score (0–100) for every departure hour across the forecast window. The scale is straightforward:

• 80–100: Excellent. Favourable tailwinds for most of the ride.
• 55–79: Great conditions.
• 40–54: Neutral. Manageable either way.
• 20–39: Challenging.
• 0–19: Prepare for a tough one.

Scroll through departure times on Saturday, compare 7am versus 9am versus 11am, and pick the hour with the best number. That's your best departure time for a bike ride, personalised to your route's actual geometry.

The score accounts for wind direction relative to each segment, wind speed, your expected position on the route at each point in the ride (based on a 25 km/h pace), temperature, and rain probability. It's not a wind arrow at your postcode. It's a forecast built specifically around the kilometres you'll actually ride.

For a deeper look at how the scoring works, the Tailwind GPS wind scoring explainer walks through the methodology clearly.

Free plan vs subscriber: what you get for the weekend

The free plan is genuinely useful for weekend ride planning. Three saved routes, a 3-day forecast window, route drawing, GPX import and export, Strava sync, and shareable links. For most weekend cyclists deciding on Saturday's ride by Friday evening, that's more than enough.

Subscribers unlock a 14-day planning window and up to 40 saved routes — with a 7-day free trial. The 14-day cycling weather planning horizon is particularly useful if you're lining up a longer weekend trip, a sportive, or a training block where you want to spot the best conditions a fortnight out. Subscribers also get route-specific alerts: weekly ride summaries and notifications when a route's score improves or rain clears.

If you want to stop manually checking forecasts altogether, the cycling weather alerts guide explains exactly how to set those up.

Sometimes you want the headwind

Not every ride is about finding the easiest conditions. If you're building endurance or working on strength, Headwind Training mode does the opposite of the standard scoring: it highlights routes and departure times with sustained headwinds, so you can schedule the hard sessions deliberately rather than stumbling into them by accident. Find more on building that into your training in the wind-aware hard and easy day planning guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is Tailwind GPS a route library, a route planner, or a weather app? All three, but the combination is the point. The route library gives you curated loops to browse and save. The route planner lets you draw or import your own. The weather layer scores every route by departure hour using route-specific wind and rain forecasts. No other tool connects those three things in one place.

Is there a free plan? What does it include? Yes, and it's free forever, not a trial. You get 3 saved routes, a 3-day forecast, route drawing, GPX import and export, Strava sync, route sharing links, and full access to the route library. No credit card required to start.

Can I use my Strava routes? Yes. Connect your Strava account and your routes import automatically. Strava's own route builder requires a subscription for creating new routes from scratch, so Tailwind GPS is a useful complement for cyclists who want to plan and score the rides they already do.

Can I import a GPX or draw routes? Both. Upload a GPX from any source, or use the map builder to draw a new route directly. Snap-to-road and free draw are both supported. You can also export routes as GPX for your Garmin, Wahoo, or any other device. The guide to route planning with GPX files has more detail on the import/export workflow.

How is it more accurate than a normal weather app? A standard weather app forecasts conditions at a fixed point. Tailwind GPS divides your route into segments, samples the forecast at each one, and weights the result by distance and your expected riding pace. So if your loop spends 25 km heading directly into a south-westerly and 15 km running with it, the score reflects that split, not an average wind speed at your start line.

How does the Tailwind Score work? It's a 0–100 score per route per departure hour, built from wind direction, wind speed, temperature, rain probability, and your riding speed. Higher is better. The score tells you how favourable conditions will feel across the whole ride, not just at the moment you leave.

What's the difference between the 3-day and 14-day forecasts? Free users see conditions up to 3 days ahead, which covers most weekend planning decisions made by Friday. Subscribers unlock 14 days, which suits training blocks, cycling holidays, and sportive preparation where you want to plan further out.

Can I get alerts instead of checking manually? Yes, with a subscription. You can set route-specific alerts that notify you when a route's score hits your chosen threshold, when rain clears during your preferred riding window, and receive a weekly summary of the best upcoming conditions for your saved routes.

Get your routes set up in minutes

Start with the library. Open /cycling-routes, find your city, filter the loops to your distance and elevation range, and save the ones that suit your weekends. Then connect Strava or upload a GPX to bring in the routes you already know.

From there, every route you save gets scored by the hour. Saturday morning's best departure time is right there on the screen.

Free plan gets you started today. If you want the 14-day window, 40 saved routes, and alerts, the 7-day subscriber trial is on /pricing. No commitment needed to see whether it changes the way you plan your weekends.

Stop leaving the best departure time to guesswork. Your routes are ready. The scores are waiting.