Komoot is the right app for most city break walking. AllTrails is for when you're actually leaving the urban area. Strava is for running. And none of them are necessary when the city itself is the route.

Komoot for Urban Hiking and Route Planning

Komoot's strength is elevation data and surface type, which matters when you're walking in hilly cities. Porto, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Bergen, Istanbul: these are cities where a flat-looking route on Google Maps turns out to involve a 200-metre climb on cobblestones. Komoot shows you this before you start.

It also has curated routes from local users, which are better than generic walking tours. Search the city and filter by "hiking" or "walking": the results will include routes that local enthusiasts have documented with honest descriptions of difficulty and surface conditions. These are often the best way to find the scenic version of a walk you'd otherwise just navigate point-to-point.

The app's urban routing is also better than Google Maps for pedestrians specifically, prioritising footpaths and avoiding arterial roads.

AllTrails for Leaving the City

AllTrails is designed for trails, not cities. Its database is strongest for marked footpaths in countryside, national parks, and hills. If you're doing a day trip from a city to a nature area, or if the city itself has notable hiking trails (the Guadarrama mountains above Madrid, the Cinque Terre coastal path, the hills above Dubrovnik), AllTrails is the right tool.

Using AllTrails for urban walking is like using a hammer for a screw. It works after a fashion but Komoot is better calibrated for what you need.

Strava Routes for Running

If you're running in an unfamiliar city, Strava's route builder and the Segments feature give you the local running routes that actual runners use. This is more useful than finding a generic route yourself because it surfaces well-surfaced, well-lit, and socially established running paths that locals trust.

The Honest Case for Just Wandering

Apps are a crutch and they produce a specific kind of experience. The app-navigated walk goes where the route goes. The wandering walk goes where curiosity goes. These are different experiences and the second one is not inferior.

When you wander without an app, you notice different things. You make different turns. You find places that aren't on any curated list because they haven't been added to one yet. You also get mildly lost, which in most European cities means finding something interesting rather than ending up somewhere dangerous.

The case for wandering is strongest in dense, legible cities with good street-level interest. Lisbon, Rome, Barcelona, Paris: these cities reward wandering because there is something at every turn and the urban fabric is interesting enough to sustain attention without structured direction.

The app is not a compass. It's a safety net and a starting point. Use it to understand a route before you set off, then put your phone away for the first hour.