Who makes GPX Path, and with what data

I’m Charles. I come from Brittany and the Alps, and outdoor sports take up a good part of my free time.

To plan my outings, I wanted a simple tool: draw a route on a real topo map, see the elevation gain and get a clean GPX out of it, with no account to create. I couldn’t find one that suited me, so I built it, first as a Mac app, then as this site.

The gpxpath.com site brings the same idea to the browser: open, view and convert a track file, for free and without signing up. Files are read on your device; they are not sent to any server.

Maps and data

The base map is OpenTopoMap, drawn from OpenStreetMap data and SRTM relief. Place search on the home page uses Photon, which also queries OpenStreetMap.

The Mac app plans routes with BRouter and takes its elevations from IGN in France. Licence details are in the legal notice.

How the numbers are calculated

Distance adds up the gaps between successive points, measured on a sphere with a 6,371 km radius (the haversine formula).

For elevation gain, elevations are first averaged over 100 m, then a climb or a descent only counts once it exceeds 5 m. The site and the Mac app use the same calculation; other tools, with other settings, may differ by a few per cent.

The duration shown for a timestamped file is the time between the first and the last point, breaks included.