Create an elevation profile from GPX – free

What it's for

When I plan a long ride I want a clean image of the profile: to put in a roadbook, send to the friends riding with me, or add to the write-up afterwards. Screenshots from Strava or Komoot do the job, but they come with menus, ads or the map, and the text is tiny on a phone. This tool does one thing: it draws the elevation profile of your route, with a title, the distance, the elevation gain and the highest point, in a format ready to share.

It's the same engine that draws the profile stickers for the top of your frame. I made it free because it's useful to me outside the sticker, and it probably will be for you too.

How it works

1. Get the GPX file of your route or ride. If you're not sure where to find it, my guide How to export a GPX file from Strava, Komoot, Garmin and others covers Strava, Komoot, Garmin and others.
2. Drop it in the box. Distance is calculated point by point (haversine formula) and the altitude is smoothed to remove GPS noise before the elevation gain is worked out.
3. Set up the image: title, subtitle (a date, a goal), theme, profile colour, units, grid. Add markers for a feed stop, a climb or a meeting point: one per line, the distance and then the label.
4. Download a PNG for a post or a chat, a PDF to print (A4 landscape for the landscape format, a square page for the square one), or the story overlay: a transparent PNG with just the profile line, to put over your photo.

Which format to choose

Landscape (1600 × 800 pixels) is the one I use for a roadbook or a ride report: the profile has room to breathe and the scales stay readable. Square (1080 × 1080) suits a regular social post. Story (1080 × 1920) puts the profile in the middle of the screen with the title above: leave the top and bottom free if you add text in the app afterwards.

For a printed roadbook, take the PDF: it's vector, so it stays sharp at any print size. To download it I ask for an e-mail address; getting news from the site is a separate, unticked box, and you can download without ticking it. The PNG and the story overlay stay free, no e-mail.

Why your elevation gain can differ from Strava or Garmin

Don't be surprised if the elevation gain here isn't exactly the one in your app. Every tool handles altitude its own way: some devices use a barometer, others GPS alone, and many services recalculate altitude from terrain maps. Smoothing, the way small spurious variations are removed, also changes the total. If your file has few points (a route drawn by hand on a map, for instance), the profile will be more angular and the gain often lower than in reality, simply because the small bumps between two points aren't in the file.

What it doesn't do

It only reads GPX files that include the altitude of each point. FIT files (the ones Garmin or Wahoo units record) aren't supported: convert them first or export the ride as GPX from your platform. It doesn't draw a map and doesn't know place names or climbs: add them yourself as markers. Every file carries the site address, small, in a corner.

Your route stays with you

A GPS track can reveal where you live, especially if it starts at your door. Here the file is read by your browser and the drawing is done on your device: nothing is sent or stored on a server, and you can go offline once the page has loaded and the tool keeps working. If you share the image, only the elevation profile is visible, never the line on a map.

And if you want to go further, you can turn the same profile into a sticker for the top of your top tube, with your feed stops and gel reminders.