open-pedal

What OpenPedal is

OpenPedal is a website for planning, exploring and following cycling routes built on open data. Every route is shown on 3D terrain with its elevation profile, the surface of each section according to OpenStreetMap, the forecast weather along the way and points of interest. You can upload GPX tracks, plan routes on the cycling network, follow a route on your phone while riding —even with no signal— and publish the course of an organised ride. It is available in Spanish and Basque, and partly in English, Catalan and Galician.

Why I'm asking for donations

OpenPedal charges for nothing and never will: no subscription, no ads, no paid features. Running it is cheap today, and these are the numbers:

• The server: zero. It shares an already-paid machine with six other projects.
• The assistant that answers questions about routes: between 0.06 and 0.47 euro cents per question (measured in September 2026).
• The ceiling: the model provider's free tier allows 500 requests a day for the whole site, which is 125 to 250 questions. Once they run out, the assistant stops answering until the next day.
• Still unsolved: the base map tiles. They are served for free today with a CARTO key, and the day that stops working they will have to be paid for or served from our own server.

Donations pay for exactly that: the model provider's quota, so the assistant doesn't switch off mid-afternoon, and the base map when it stops being free.

What you get in return

Nothing, on purpose. No badge, no extra features, no extra quota, no list of donors. Someone who donates sees exactly the same site as someone who doesn't. The site doesn't even know who has donated, because the money never goes through it.

Who receives it and who decides

I do, as a private individual: there is no company, no foundation and no salaries. I maintain the project and I decide what the money is spent on.

And if you stop agreeing with that

The code is free software under AGPL-3.0-or-later, and the data derived from OpenStreetMap is under the ODbL. If OpenPedal changed hands, were abandoned or started charging, anyone could take the code, run their own version and carry on without asking anyone's permission. That doesn't depend on me keeping my word: the licence guarantees it.

OpenPedal · What it costs and who pays