A Scenic app alternative that works on Android too

Scenic is one of the nicest pieces of software in motorcycling. Somebody clearly cared about it — the interface is calm, the route planning is thoughtful, and the Apple Watch and CarPlay integration is the kind of detail most apps in this category never get to.

It is also iOS-only, and has always been. For a lot of riders that single fact ends the conversation before the features start.

The problem that is not about features

If you ride alone on an iPhone, platform lock-in costs you nothing. If you ride with people, it costs you the good part.

Every genuinely useful group feature — a shared route everyone is looking at, live position so the group does not fragment across 60 kilometres, a rider-reported hazard reaching the people behind you — requires everyone to be running the same app. In practice, motorcycle groups are not platform-homogeneous. One rider on an Android phone means the whole group falls back to a WhatsApp thread and a photo of a map.

Cross-platform is not a feature riders look for on a comparison table. It is the thing that quietly determines whether the group features work at all.

Feature comparison

	Motoridez	Scenic
iOS	Yes	Yes
Android	Yes	No
Curvy route planning	Free	Free tier limited, full features paid
Turn-by-turn voice navigation	Free	Paid tier
Ride recording and history	Free	Free
GPX import and export	Free	Paid tier
Ridden-roads map, GPS-confirmed	Yes	No
Avoid roads you have already ridden	Yes	No
Group ride, live position, hazard reports	Free	Limited
Crash detection	Free	No
Apple Watch and CarPlay	No	Yes
Offline maps	Free, per planned route	Paid tier, whole regions

One honest row: Scenic wins Apple ecosystem integration outright, and we have nothing to match it.

What you get instead

It runs on the phone your mate has

Obvious, but it is the whole point. Planning a group ride works when everyone can see the same route, RSVP to it, and share their position on the day, regardless of what is in their tank bag.

The map remembers what you have ridden

Scenic records rides. Motoridez records rides and then map-matches them to the roads themselves, so your map builds a picture of the network you have GPS-confirmed. Ask for a route that skips those, and you get sent down something new from your own front door.

Nothing important is behind a paywall

Curvy routing, voice navigation, round trips, GPX both ways, offline downloads for the route you are riding, group features, crash detection. Free, with no clock ticking.

Where Scenic still wins

Being straight about it, because a comparison that never concedes anything is an advert:

• Interface craft. Scenic is beautifully made and the attention to detail shows on every screen.
• Apple Watch. A glanceable next-turn on your wrist is genuinely excellent, and we do not have it.
• CarPlay. If you run a CarPlay-capable head unit on the bike, that integration is a real advantage.
• Whole-region offline. We download the map for a route you have planned; Scenic can hold entire regions, which is better if you improvise far outside coverage.

If you are an iPhone rider who rides mostly alone, values ecosystem integration, and rides outside coverage — stay. That is a coherent set of reasons and no comparison table should talk you out of it.

Where the alternative wins

• You ride an Android phone, so Scenic is not an option at all.
• You ride with a mixed group and want the group features to actually work.
• You are paying for planning and navigation, and that is essentially all you use.
• You want the app to solve “I have ridden all my local roads” rather than just draw prettier lines on the ones you know.

Moving your routes across

GPX is the bridge, as always. Export your saved routes from Scenic, import them into the new planner, and they come back as editable routes with draggable waypoints rather than a fixed line you cannot adjust. Read our guide to GPX files for motorcyclists if you have never done it — it takes ten minutes, and it is the single best insurance against any app changing its pricing on you.

Keep Scenic installed. Nothing about trying a second app requires deleting the first, and the only meaningful test is riding a real route on both.