The Best Motorcycle Apps for iPhone in 2026

Updated September 15, 2026 · 7 min read · By Aivars Meijers

Three apps, three jobs. For navigation pick one of Calimoto, Scenic or Kurviger, and keep Apple Maps or Google Maps on the phone as the fallback, because all three of the motorcycle ones will eventually send you into a closed road. For keeping the ride afterwards, which none of the navigation apps does well, use RiderLog, which is mine. For service history use a maintenance app or a spreadsheet, never a ride tracker. That is the list. Below I say what each one is genuinely good at, and the specific thing riders complain about most in each, so you can pick knowingly.

The part none of the navigation apps does

RiderLog is the recorder in that list, not the router: it finds places worth riding to, records the ride with your phone locked, and gives you a card and a passport at the end. Keep your navigation app for the directions.

Free to download. Your rides stay on your phone.

Navigation and finding twisty roads

Calimoto is still the one to beat for curvy road routing and round trips: tell it how long you want to be out and it builds you a loop, which no general purpose map does. The complaint that dominates its low reviews is road closures and stale map data. "Still navigating me through closed roads" is a line riders write about it over and over, and the second complaint behind it is the yearly bill for an app used in one season.

Scenic is the tourer's planner: strong route building, good GPX handling, proper offline maps, and a following of riders who plan multi week trips inside it. Its problem is not capability, it is the learning curve, and a major version change annoyed a lot of long time users who had already learned the old one. "Horribly complicated app" is the review title that best captures the pattern, usually paired with a note that the tutorials do not exist.

Kurviger is the connoisseur's routing engine, closest to configurable of the three, and it has the deepest following among German riders. Its recurring complaint is that the curvy setting does not always produce curves. One German review translates to "Instead of curves the app chases me through housing estates every time", which is the same grievance riders level at every routing engine that optimises a number rather than a road.

Google Maps and Waze remain the answer for plain A to B with traffic, and they are the fallback I would keep installed whichever motorcycle app you pick, because closures and rerouting are the two things the big mapping companies genuinely do better. Google Maps with avoid highways switched on gets closer to a back road day than most riders expect.

Navigation is a mature, crowded category. Pick one of the three, accept its known weakness, and keep a general map as the backup. My own app is not in this section, and it should not be: it has no route engine, no turn by turn, no voice and no CarPlay.

Finding places worth riding to

Navigation apps answer how to get there, not where to go. Google Maps and the review sites answer that with star ratings, and star ratings are inflated everywhere. RiderLog (mine) keeps a map of places riders actually ride to: cafes, viewpoints, temples, sunset stops, hidden gems, each earning its pin through real check-ins from riders you know rather than a score. No star ratings to game, no sponsored pins, ever. Search anywhere in the world, tap a spot on the map, and add it in one step. Build a list, share it with a link that opens in a browser with the places on a map and no app needed, or follow a list another rider made, then plan a day loop through it and hand the route to Apple Maps, Google Maps or Waze.

The honest caveat: coverage is deepest where riders are already checking in, and for now that is Bangkok, where I live and ride. The collections are published on this site, 180 places I have ridden to myself. Elsewhere you will be adding places as much as finding them, which is how any map built from real visits starts.

Ride recording, memories, and sharing

RiderLog again, and this is the lane it was actually built for: what happens after the ride. It records route, stats and photos with the phone locked in a pocket, saves the ride on the phone and in your own private iCloud when that is on, and recovers the ride if the phone dies mid trip. You can check in with photos at every good stop, then turn the ride into a post ready card or a replay reel, keep a passport of every place you have been, watch a scratch map fill in with the roads you have covered, and group a multi day tour into one shareable trip. Every ride exports as GPX.

The navigation apps all record too, and if you only want a distance total, theirs is fine. The reason this is a separate category is that recording is where the category's worst failures live: rides that vanish on save, sessions that stop mid trip, histories locked behind an active subscription. If that has happened to you, this is the walkthrough.

Ride videos

Relive makes 3D flyover videos and is popular across cycling and moto. It is generic by design; if you want motorcycle specific cards with stat stickers and privacy zones, that is the RiderLog overlap, and some riders happily use both. For real footage, an action cam plus the manufacturer's app remains the answer, and you should expect editing time. There is more on the card and reel side in turning rides into shareable videos.

Safety and community

REVER offers tracking with live friend location and challenges, and it is the default in a lot of North American group rides. Detecht leads with crash detection and community. If an automatic alert matters to you, my advice is to use the feature built into the hardware, Apple's Crash Detection on iPhone and Apple Watch or a dedicated device, and to set up Medical ID and Emergency Contacts in the Health app today, because that works whether or not any app is running. The reviews of apps that promise crash alerts include riders describing real crashes where the alert never fired, which is why I do not ship one. Take this section as a recommendation to look outside this list, not inside it.

Maintenance and costs

Ride trackers are the wrong tool for service history. Riders consistently recommend AUTOsist and Drivvo for multi vehicle records, receipts and interval reminders, and honestly, a disciplined spreadsheet beats an abandoned app. Keep maintenance and ride memories as separate tools.

Weather

Windy for the big picture and any hourly forecast app you already trust for the go or no go call. Nothing motorcycle specific is needed here.

Which motorcycle app should I download first?

Whichever one matches the thing that annoys you most right now. If you keep riding the same roads and want new ones, that is a navigation app, and Calimoto is the easiest to get a good loop out of on day one. If you keep finishing rides with nothing to show for them, or you have lost a ride, that is a recorder, and that is what I built RiderLog to be. If you have no idea where to ride on Sunday, that is neither: it is a map of places, which is the other half of RiderLog. Download one, use it for a month, and add a second only when you can name what the first one is not doing.

Do I need to pay for a motorcycle app?

For navigation, in practice yes. Every motorcycle specific router now puts the routing behind a subscription, and several ask for an account before they tell you, which is the single angriest cluster of reviews in this whole category. The genuinely free navigation on your phone is Apple Maps and Google Maps, and they are better at closures and rerouting than any of the paid motorcycle apps. For recording and for finding places, no: RiderLog is free to download and the map, the check-ins, the recording and the ride log are included, with Pro adding watermark free cards and videos, unlimited place lists, a bonus weekly challenge and protected weeks. If you are already paying for something you use for five months of the year, the ordered way out is export first, then cancel.

The honest summary

Pick one navigation app and accept its known flaw: Calimoto for loops and closures you have to double check, Scenic for planning depth and a steeper curve, Kurviger for control. Keep Apple Maps or Google Maps behind it. Add one recorder that makes the rides worth keeping, which is RiderLog's job, and one maintenance tracker if you wrench your own. Three apps, three jobs, no overlap. The question none of the navigation apps answers is where to go next, which is the other half of what I build: a map of places built from real check-ins, with a worked example on this site, 180 curated places in Bangkok, mapped by riders who live there. If you are leaving a specific app, I have written the honest version for Calimoto and REVER.